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The story is almost funny ― except that it's not. It's symptomatic of all the pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clack of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: "Will I get everything done?"
這件事看起來可笑，但其實并不可笑，這表明所有壓力都匯集在一起了。當每個學生都認為別人更勤奮、成績更好時，他唯一能做的就是更加努力地學習。我看到許多學生每天吃完晚飯就去圖書館，直到深更半夜圖書館關門才回來。我真希望他們有時能忘掉他們的學伴，去看場電影。我常常在拂曉時分還聽到打字機在噼噼啪啪地響，考試來臨或論文限期快到時，我能從學生的眼神中看到他們的緊張情緒：“我能把所有的事情做完嗎？”
Probably they won't. They will get sick. They will get "blocked." They will sleep. They will oversleep.
他們很可能完成不了。因為他們會生病，腦袋會“僵硬”，無法正常思維；他們要睡覺，而且會睡過頭。
Part of the problem is that they do more than they are expected to do. A professor will assign five-page papers. Several students will start writing ten-page papers, and a few will multiply it to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment.
出現這一問題的部分原因是：他們會遠遠超額完成任務。老師布置一篇5頁的論文，一些學生就會寫上10頁，而少數人甚至會增加到15頁。可憐那些僅僅按照要求完成作業的學生。
"Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting," one dean points out, "it's bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic works, psychologically."
一位系主任指出：“一旦20%或30%的學生刻意地過分努力，對每個學生來說都不是好事。當一位教師看到班上學生越發地努力，那些只是正常完成作業的學生就會被看做是表現不夠好。就心理上而言，這個策略還是有效的。”
People around, professors, parents, and friends can help, but ultimately it will be the student's own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents' dreams and their classmates' fears. They must be jolted into believing in themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future.
要打破這些學生陷人的“怪圈”，周圍的人們、老師、父母、朋友都能給予幫助，但歸根結底還是要靠學生自己。他們太年輕，不該成為父母的夢想和懼怕同學心理的俘虜。我們必須喚醒他們，使他們相信自己是獨一無二的、有能力創造自己未來的人。
