Text B
文章B
College used to be and is still regarded by many people as an "ivory tower," cut off from the real world. However, this doesn't mean that college students are free of earthly worries and pressures. The following text discusses the pressures that college students are faced with.
大学一直被很多人看作是与世隔绝的“象牙塔”。然而,这并不意味着大学生没有尘世的烦恼和压力。下面的文章讨论了当今大学生面对的压力。
College Pressures
象牙塔里的压力
William Zinsser
威廉·津瑟
As master at Branford College, 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 villains; only victims.
身为布兰福德学院的院长,我发觉当今的大学生面临着四种压力:经济压力、来自父母的压力、来自学伴的压力、以及自己给自己的压力。环顾四周,"罪魁祸首"轻而易举便可找到:学校收费太高,老师布置太多作业,父母逼迫孩子太紧,学生对自己要求太严。但在压力问题上,没有恶人,只有受害者。
Students today live in a brutal economy. Tuition, rooms, books and various kinds of fees have come to such a great sum that it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part time at college and full time during the summer, to accumulate $5,000 in loans after four years ― loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation.
当今的学生生活在一个残酷的经济现实中,学费、住宿费、书本费及这样那样的费用加起来数量不菲,即使一个学生在校期间做兼职,暑期做全职,四年内还是会欠下5,000美元贷款,毕业后一年内就要开始偿还。
For those lucky few who can get financial help from their parents, money may not be a tough problem, but they will suffer from the pressure that comes from their parents.
少数幸运的学生能得到父母的经济援助,钱并不是一个棘手的问题,但是来自父母的压力让他们的日子也不好过。
I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless determination. 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.
我看到很多学生一门心思修读医学院预科课程,但却毫无快乐可言。他们去实验室就像去看牙医一样痛苦。这让我很伤心,因为我知道在生活的其他方面他们是开朗快乐的人。