評論
打印
"Do you want to go to medical school?" I ask them.
我問他們：“你想學醫嗎？”
"Not really," they reply.
他們回答說：“其實并不想。”
"Then why are you going?"
“那為什么還要進醫學院呢？”
"Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They're paying all this money and ...
“嗯，因為我爸媽希望我當醫生。他們一直在供我讀書，而且......”
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 are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many parents 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 heard it put, "pre-rich."
可憐的學生，可憐的父母啊！他們被困在一張亙古以來由愛、責任和自責交織而成的網中，難以自拔。父母的出發點是好的，他們想引導自己的孩子走向無憂無慮的未來，但孩子們卻想攻讀歷史、古典學課程或哲學，這些專業毫無“實用”價值。人文學科的專業有什么回報？要說服這些關愛子女的父母人文學科的專業確有回報并非易事。恰恰是攻讀歷史、古典文學等專業而開發出來的智能造就了商界及其他領域內附有創造力的領袖人物。然而，許多家長還是寧愿出錢供孩子攻讀那些面向某一具體職業的課程，比如法律預科、醫學預科、商務預科、或者是我有時聽到的所謂“財富預科”。
But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obligated to fulfill their parents' expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them.
可是，學生承受的壓力太大，他們簡直無所適從了。一方面，他們覺得有義務不辜負父母對自己的期望，畢竟父母比自己年長，該更有智慧吧。但另一方面，他們又覺得，父母認為合適的期望未必適合自己。
Just like economic pressure and parental pressure, peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also closely intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year.
如同經濟壓力和來自父母的壓力之間的關系一樣，來自同伴的壓力和自己給自己的壓力也是交織在一起，而且幾乎是從大學一年級剛開學就開始存在了。
"I had a freshman student I'll call Linda," one dean told me, "who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn't tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda."
有一位系主任告訴我：“我知道這么一個大一的學生，姑且叫她琳達吧，她來向我訴說她正承受著可怕的壓力，因為室友芭芭拉比她更聰明，一天到晚在學習。我不便告訴她，就在兩小時前芭芭拉也來我這里，說了與琳達同樣的話。”
