北京师范大学 研究生英语
《学术英语读译》讲义2013~2014学年
春季学期
0
《学术英语读译》2013~2014学年秋季学期
Unit 1 College Pressures
by William Zinsser
Dear Carlos: I desperately need a dean’s excuse for my chem midterm which will begin in about 1 hour. All I can say is that I totally blew it this week. I’ve fallen incredibly, inconceivably behind.
Carlos: Help! I’m anxious to hear from you. I’ll be in my room and won’t leave it until I hear from you. Tomorrow is the last day for ...
Carlos: I left town because I started bugging out again. I stayed up all night to finish a take-home make-up exam and am typing it to hand in on the 10th. It was due on the 5th. P.S. I’m going to the dentist. Pain is pretty bad.
Carlos: Probably by Friday I’ll be able to get back to my studies. Right now I’m going to take a long walk. This whole thing has taken a lot out of me.
Carlos: I’m really up the proverbial creek1. The problem is I really bombed the history final. Since I need that course for my major I ...
Carlos: Here follows a tale of woe2. I went home this weekend, had to help my Mom, and caught a fever so didn’t have much time to study. My professor ...
Carlos: Aargh!! Trouble. Nothing original but everything’s piling up at once. To be brief, my job interview ...
Hey Carlos, good news! I’ve got mononucleosis. 1
Who are these wretched supplicants, scribbling notes so laden with anxiety, seeking such
miracles of postponement and balm? They are men and women who belong to Branford College, one of the twelve residential colleges at Yale University3, and the messages are just a few of the hundreds that they left for their dean, Carlos Hortas—often slipped under his door at 4 a.m.—last year. 2
But students like the ones who wrote those notes can also be found on campuses from coast
to coast—especially in New England4, and at many other private colleges across the country that have high academic standards and highly motivated students. Nobody could doubt that the notes are real. In their urgency and their gallows humor they are authentic voices of a generation that is panicky to succeed. 3
1
My own connection with the message writers is that I am master5 of Branford College. I live
The expression ―up the proverbial creek‖ is an altered version of the old saying ―up the creek without a paddle,‖ meaning ―to be in a difficult situation.‖ 2
―a tale of woe,‖ idiom, means a sad story; a list of personal problems; an excuse for failing to do something. 3
See ―Background and Cultural Notes 1.‖ 4
See ―Background and Cultural Notes 2.‖ 5
See ―Background and Cultural Notes 1.‖
1
《学术英语读译》2013~2014学年秋季学期
in its Gothic quadrangle and know the students well. (We have 485 of them.) I am privy to their hopes and fears—and also to their stereo music and their piercing cries in the dead of night (―Does anybody ca-a-are?‖). If they went to Carlos to ask how to get through tomorrow, they come to me to ask how to get through the rest of their lives. 4
Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more
unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don't want to hear such liberating news. They want a map—right now—that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a prepaid grave. 5
What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a
chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world. 6
My wish, of course, is naive. One of the few rights that America does not proclaim is the
right to fail. Achievement is the national god, venerated in our media—the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive—and the glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old. 7
I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental
pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villains—to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villians, only victims. 8
―In the late 1960‘s,‖ one dean told me, ―the typical question that I got from students was,
?Why is there so much suffering in the world?‘ or ?How can I make a contribution?‘ Today it‘s ?Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?‘‖ Many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said, ―They‘re trying to find an edge—the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.‖ 9
Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the
passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person.
2
《学术英语读译》2013~2014学年秋季学期
A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale‘s official system of grading, A means ―excellent‖ and B means ―very good.‖ Today, looking very good is no longer enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh, Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170 students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000.
10 It‘s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it‘s nice to think that admission officers are really reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with A‘s that they regard a B as positively shameful. 11 The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the ―gentlemen‘s C,‖ when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses—music, art, philosophy, classics1, anthropology, poetry, religion—that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would employ graduates who have this range and curiosity rather than those who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I don‘t know if they are getting A‘s or C‘s, and I don‘t care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They can‘t.
12 Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now comes to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60% of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what colleges receive in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs higher every year, of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in America the creation of a brotherhood of paupers—colleges, parents and students, joined by the 1
See ―Background and Cultural Notes 3.‖
3
《学术英语读译》2013~2014学年秋季学期
common bond of debt.
13 Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part-time at college and full-time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years—loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used ―he,‖ incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society hasn‘t yet caught up with that fact.
14 Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined.
15 I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know them in other corners of their life as cheerful people.
―Do you want to go to medical school?‖ I ask them. ―I guess so,‖ they say, without conviction, or ―Not really.‖ ―Then why are you going?‖
―Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They‘re paying all this money and ...‖
16 Poor students, poor parents. They are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean well; they are trying to steer their sons and daughters toward a secure future. But the sons and daughters want to major in history or classics or philosophy—subjects with no ―practical‖ value. Where‘s the payoff on the humanities? It‘s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do, indeed, pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics—an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective—are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many fathers would rather put their money on courses that point toward a specific profession—courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or as I sometimes put it, ―pre-rich.‖
17 But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obligated to
4