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"Do you want to go to medical school?" I ask them.
我问他们：“你想学医吗？”
"Not really," they reply.
他们回答说：“其实并不想。”
"Then why are you going?"
“那为什么还要进医学院呢？”
"Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They're paying all this money and ...
“嗯，因为我爸妈希望我当医生。他们一直在供我读书，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."
可怜的学生，可怜的父母啊！他们被困在一张亘古以来由爱、责任和自责交织而成的网中，难以自拔。父母的出发点是好的，他们想引导自己的孩子走向无忧无虑的未来，但孩子们却想攻读历史、古典学课程或哲学，这些专业毫无“实用”价值。人文学科的专业有什么回报？要说服这些关爱子女的父母人文学科的专业确有回报并非易事。恰恰是攻读历史、古典文学等专业而开发出来的智能造就了商界及其他领域内附有创造力的领袖人物。然而，许多家长还是宁愿出钱供孩子攻读那些面向某一具体职业的课程，比如法律预科、医学预科、商务预科、或者是我有时听到的所谓“财富预科”。
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，学生承受的压力太大，他们简直无所适从了。一方面，他们觉得有义务不辜负父母对自己的期望，毕竟父母比自己年长，该更有智慧吧。但另一方面，他们又觉得，父母认为合适的期望未必适合自己。
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.
如同经济压力和来自父母的压力之间的关系一样，来自同伴的压力和自己给自己的压力也是交织在一起，而且几乎是从大学一年级刚开学就开始存在了。
"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."
有一位系主任告诉我：“我知道这么一个大一的学生，姑且叫她琳达吧，她来向我诉说她正承受着可怕的压力，因为室友芭芭拉比她更聪明，一天到晚在学习。我不便告诉她，就在两小时前芭芭拉也来我这里，说了与琳达同样的话。”
