评论
打印
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?"
这件事看起来可笑，但其实并不可笑，这表明所有压力都汇集在一起了。当每个学生都认为别人更勤奋、成绩更好时，他唯一能做的就是更加努力地学习。我看到许多学生每天吃完晚饭就去图书馆，直到深更半夜图书馆关门才回来。我真希望他们有时能忘掉他们的学伴，去看场电影。我常常在拂晓时分还听到打字机在噼噼啪啪地响，考试来临或论文限期快到时，我能从学生的眼神中看到他们的紧张情绪：“我能把所有的事情做完吗？”
Probably they won't. They will get sick. They will get "blocked." They will sleep. They will oversleep.
他们很可能完成不了。因为他们会生病，脑袋会“僵硬”，无法正常思维；他们要睡觉，而且会睡过头。
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.
出现这一问题的部分原因是：他们会远远超额完成任务。老师布置一篇5页的论文，一些学生就会写上10页，而少数人甚至会增加到15页。可怜那些仅仅按照要求完成作业的学生。
"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%的学生刻意地过分努力，对每个学生来说都不是好事。当一位教师看到班上学生越发地努力，那些只是正常完成作业的学生就会被看做是表现不够好。就心理上而言，这个策略还是有效的。”
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.
要打破这些学生陷人的“怪圈”，周围的人们、老师、父母、朋友都能给予帮助，但归根结底还是要靠学生自己。他们太年轻，不该成为父母的梦想和惧怕同学心理的俘虏。我们必须唤醒他们，使他们相信自己是独一无二的、有能力创造自己未来的人。
