为职业咨询、去面试的火车票或书籍付费是件好事;过于强势就不一样了。虽然父母们应该小心不要变得太软弱，但林登菲尔德建议他们在工作受挫几天甚至几周后要表现出同情的态度——这取决于打击的程度。在那之后，儿子或女儿需要被坚定地推回到马鞍上。

Boys are more likely to get stuck at home. Lindenfield believes that men are often better at helping their sons, nephews, or friends’ sons than are mothers and sisters. Men have a different way of handling setbacks than women, she says, so they need the male presence to talk it through.

男孩更容易被困在家里。林登菲尔德认为，与母亲和姐妹相比，男性通常更善于帮助他们的儿子、侄子或朋友的儿子。她说，男性处理挫折的方式与女性不同，所以他们需要男性的存在来解决问题。

As for bar work, she is a passionate advocate: It’s a great antidote to graduate apathy. It just depends on how you approach it. Lindenfield, who found her first job as an aerial photographic assistant through bar work, says it is a great networking opportunity and certainly more likely to get you a job than lounging in front of the TV.

至于在酒吧工作，她是一位热情的倡导者:这是消除毕业生冷漠情绪的良方。这取决于你如何去做。林登菲尔德的第一份工作是在酒吧做航拍助理。

“The same goes for shelf-stacking. You will be spotted if you’re good at it. If you’re bright and cheerful and are polite to the customers, you’ll soon get moved on. So think of it as an opportunity; people who are successful in the long run have often got shelf-stacking stores,” she says.

堆货架也是一样。如果你擅长，你会被发现的。如果你聪明开朗，对顾客有礼貌，你很快就会得到提升。所以把它当作一个机会;从长远来看，那些成功的人通常都有可以堆放货架的商店，”她说。

Your son or daughter may not want to follow Hollywood stars such as Whoopi Goldberg into applying make-up to corpses in a mortuary, or guarding nuclear power plants like Bruce Wills, but

even Bard Pitt had to stand outside the El Pollo Loco restaurant chain in a giant chicken suit at one time in his life. None of them appears the poorer for these experiences.

你的儿子或女儿可能不想跟着乌比·戈德堡到化妆等好莱坞明星在太平间的尸体,或保护核电站像布鲁斯遗嘱,但即使是吟游诗人皮特不得不站在一个巨大的连锁餐厅提供墨西哥炸鸡外鸡服一次。他们都没有因为这些经历而显得更穷。

Unit 1 Active reading (2) / P11 If you ask me

If you ask me, real life is not all it’s cracked up to be. Twelve years at school and three years at university, teachers banging on about opportunities in the big wide world beyond our sheltered life as students, and what do I find?

如果你问我，我觉得现实生活并不像人们说的那么美好。12年的学校生活和3年的大学生活，老师们不停地在我们作为学生的庇护生活之外的广阔世界里寻找机会，我发现了什么?

Try as I might to stay cheerful, all I ever get is hassle, sometimes with people (especially boys – when will they grow up?), but mostly with money. It’s just so expensive out here! Everyone wants a slice off you. The Inland Revenue wants to deduct income tax, the bank manager wants repayments on my student loan, the landlord wants the rent, gas, water and electricity, and my mobile bills keep coming in, and all that’s before I’ve had anything to eat. And then some bright spark calls me out of the blue, asking if I’m interested in buying a pension. At this rate, I won’t even last till the end of the year, let alone till I’m 60.

尽管我尽量保持愉快，但我得到的只是麻烦，有时与人(尤其是男孩——他们什么时候才能长大?)，但主要是与钱。这里太贵了!每个人都想从你身上分一杯羹。国税局想要扣除所得税，银行经理想要偿还我的学生贷款，房东想要房租、煤气、水和电，我的移动账单不断地寄来，所有这些都是在我吃东西之前发生的。然后某个聪明的人突然打电话给我，问我是否

有兴趣买养老金。照这个速度，我活不到年底，更别说活到60岁了。

I didn’t really want to go out to work just yet. I mean, I wasn’t a dropout and I knew I’d have to some day. According to any number of people “life’s not a picnic”, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. But given that I’d got a good degree, I thought I’d like to go on to get my master’s. Actually, I had my eye on the course at the London School of Economics (LSE). Top school, very good for my CV. But I talked to my mum about it, and she said she couldn’t afford to support me any more. I kind of understand it, and not just because my degree is in economics. She’d worked hard for 15 years to give me an education. My dad wasn’t around most of the time, and when he was, he didn’t have any money. He’d spent it gambling on the dogs or down the pub. So it came to the point when I just agreed with Mum, and bowed myself towards the inevitable.

我还真不想出去工作。我不是辍学生，我知道总有一天我会失学的。许多人认为“生活不是野餐”，“天下没有免费的午餐”。但是考虑到我已经获得了一个不错的学位，我想继续攻读硕士学位。事实上，我一直在关注伦敦经济学院(LSE)的课程。最好的学校，非常适合我的简历。但是我和我妈妈谈过了，她说她再也养不起我了。我能理解，不仅仅是因为我的学位是经济学。她努力工作了15年才让我接受教育。我爸爸大部分时间都不在身边，即使在他身边，他也没有钱。他把钱花在赌博上，买狗，或者去酒吧。所以，当我同意妈妈的观点，并向不可避免的事情低头时，事情就发生了。

If you ask me, and despite everything you hear, fortunately there are some really nice people out there. Take Mike, for example. When I left university, what I thought was my mum would feel obliged to look after me if I returned home. So I packed up my belongings and went to London to get a job. I wanted something in finance and investments, because, you know, maybe with a job like that, I could use my degree. But by that time, there were no jobs left, and I didn’t really want to end up in some boring office, doing photocopies and making the tea.

如果你问我，不管你听到什么，幸运的是，有一些非常好的人。以迈克为例。当我离开大学时，我以为如果我回家，我妈妈会觉得有义务照顾我。所以我收拾行李去伦敦找工作。我想学金融和投资，因为，你知道，也许有这样的工作，我可以利用我的学位。但那个时候，已

经没有工作了，我真的不想在无聊的办公室里，复印文件，泡茶。

Go anywhere you like in London and there’s usually a good pub. The day I realized no one in the city was going to offer me a job, I went into The Salisbury on Leadenhall Street for a drink and something to eat. Mike the landlord was at the bar, pouring pints with one hand, making sandwiches with the other, and washing the glasses all at the same time – it’s true, he really did seem to have three hands. He also seemed to know everyone, and greeted the regulars by name, getting their drinks ready with the question, “The usual today, is it?” I thought he looked kind of cool – he was doing what he did best, serving thirsty clients, and no one did it better. So I went up to him and asked him whether there was a job for me.

在伦敦，你喜欢去哪儿就去哪儿，而且通常都有一家不错的酒吧。当我意识到这个城市没有人会给我提供工作的那一天，我去了位于利登霍尔街的索尔兹伯里，喝了一杯，吃了点东西。酒吧老板迈克正在酒吧里，一手倒品脱酒，一手做三明治，一手洗杯子——的确，他看上去确实有三只手。他似乎也认识所有的人，他直呼老顾客的名字，为他们准备饮料，并问他们:“今天还是老样子吗?”“我觉得他看起来很酷——他在做自己最擅长的事情，为口渴的客户服务，没有人比他做得更好。于是我找到他，问他是否有我的工作。

Well, to cut a long story short, I started work in the pub one Friday lunchtime. It was quite demanding work, but I liked it. People seemed to find me amusing and it made me feel better too. There was one middle-aged regular in a suit who always had a half of bitter and a ham and pickle sandwich, with the crusts cut off. When I saw Tony coming, I tried to have his lunch ready for him even before he asked. He was another one of those really nice people.

嗯，长话短说，一个星期五的午餐时间，我开始在酒吧工作。这是一项要求很高的工作，但我喜欢它。人们似乎觉得我很有趣，这也让我感觉好多了。有一个穿西装的中年常客，总是吃半份苦啤酒和火腿泡菜三明治，连面包皮都切掉了。他是另一个非常好的人。

If you ask me, spending money when you don’t have any is dead easy. I began to think about how I’d spend my first month’s wages. The flat where I was staying was expensive, and I just about had