Vance, J.D. - Hillbilly Elegy
Chapter 12
第12章
During my first round of law school applications, I didn’t even apply to Yale, Harvard, or Stanford—the mythical “top three” schools. I didn’t think I had a chance at those places. More important, I didn’t think it mattered; all lawyers get good jobs, I assumed. I just needed to get to any law school, and then I’d do fine: a nice salary, a respectable profession, and the American Dream. Then my best friend, Darrell, ran into one of his law school classmates at a popular D.C. restaurant. She was bussing tables, simply because that was the only job available to her. On the next round, I gave Yale and Harvard a try.
在我的第一輪法學院申請中，我甚至沒有申請耶魯大學、哈佛大學或斯坦福大學——神話般的“前三名”學校。我不認為我有機會去那些地方。更重要的是，我認為這並不重要;我以為，所有的律師都能找到好工作。我只需要去任何一所法學院，然後我就會做得很好：一份不錯的薪水，一份受人尊敬的職業，還有美國夢。然後，我最好的朋友達雷爾（Darrell）在華盛頓特區一家受歡迎的餐廳遇到了他的一位法學院同學。她正在忙桌子，只是因為這是她唯一能找到的工作。在下一輪中，我嘗試了耶魯大學和哈佛大學。
I didn’t apply to Stanford—one of the very best schools in the country—and to know why is to understand that the lessons I learned as a kid were sometimes counterproductive. Stanford’s law school application wasn’t the standard combination of college transcript, LSAT score, and essays. It required a personal sign-off from the dean of your college: You had to submit a form, completed by the dean, attesting that you weren’t a loser.
我沒有申請斯坦福大學——美國最好的學校之一——要知道為什麼，就要明白我小時候學到的教訓有時會適得其反。斯坦福大學的法學院申請不是大學成績單、LSAT 分數和論文的標準組合。它需要你所在學院的院長親自簽字：你必須提交一份由院長填寫的表格，證明你不是一個失敗者。
I didn’t know the dean of my college at Ohio State. It’s a big place. I’m sure she is a lovely person, and the form was clearly little more than a formality. But I just couldn’t ask. I had never met this person, never taken a class with her, and, most of all, didn’t trust her. Whatever virtues she possessed as a person, she was, in the abstract, an outsider. The professors I’d selected to write my letters had gained my trust. I listened to them nearly every day, took their tests, and wrote papers for them. As much as I loved Ohio State and its people for an incredible education and experience, I could not put my fate in the hands of someone I didn’t know. I tried to talk myself into it. I even printed the form and drove it to campus. But when the time came, I crumpled it up and tossed it in the garbage. There would be no Stanford Law for J.D.
我不認識我在俄亥俄州立大學的院長。這是一個很大的地方。我敢肯定她是一個可愛的人，而這種形式顯然只不過是一種形式。但我就是不能問。我從未見過這個人，從未和她一起上過課，最重要的是，我不信任她。無論她作為一個人擁有什麼美德，抽象地說，她都是一個局外人。我選擇寫信的教授贏得了我的信任。我幾乎每天都聽他們講課，參加他們的考試，為他們寫論文。儘管我非常熱愛俄亥俄州立大學及其人民，因為它擁有令人難以置信的教育和經歷，但我不能把我的命運掌握在我不認識的人手中。我試著說服自己。我甚至列印了表格並開車去了校園。但時機一到，我就把它揉成一團，扔進了垃圾桶。法學博士不會有斯坦福法學院。
I decided that I wanted to go to Yale more than any other school. It had a certain aura—with its small class sizes and unique grading system, Yale billed itself as a low-stress way to jump-start a legal career. But most of its students came from elite private colleges, not large state schools like mine, so I imagined that I had no chance of admission. Nonetheless, I submitted an application online, because that was relatively easy. It was late afternoon on an early spring day, 2010, when my phone rang and the caller ID revealed an unfamiliar 203 area code. I answered, and the voice on the other line told me that he was the director of admissions at Yale Law, and that I’d been admitted to the class of 2013. I was ecstatic and leaped around during the entire three-minute conversation. By the time he said goodbye, I was so out of breath that when I called Aunt Wee to tell her, she thought I’d just gotten into a car accident.
我決定我比其他任何學校都更想去耶魯。它有一定的光環——憑藉其小班授課和獨特的評分系統，耶魯大學自稱是一種快速開始法律職業的低壓力方式。但它的大多數學生來自精英私立大學，而不是像我這樣的大型公立學校，所以我認為我沒有機會被錄取。儘管如此，我還是在網上提交了申請，因為這相對容易。那是2010年早春的傍晚，我的電話響了，來電顯示顯示一個陌生的203區號。我接了電話，電話那頭的聲音告訴我，他是耶魯大學法學院的招生主任，我被錄取了2013屆。在整個三分鐘的談話中，我欣喜若狂，跳來跳去。當他告別時，我已經氣喘吁吁了，當我打電話給黃阿姨告訴她時，她以為我剛剛出了車禍。
I was sufficiently committed to going to Yale Law that I was willing to accept the two hundred thousand dollars or so in debt that I knew I’d accrue. Yet the financial aid package Yale offered exceeded my wildest dreams. In my first year, it was nearly a full ride. That wasn’t because of anything I’d done or earned—it was because I was one of the poorest kids in school. Yale offered tens of thousands in need-based aid. It was the first time being so broke paid so well. Yale wasn’t just my dream school, it was also the cheapest option on the table.
我有足夠的決心去耶魯大學法學院，我願意接受我知道我會累積的二十萬美元左右的債務。然而，耶魯大學提供的經濟援助計劃超出了我最瘋狂的夢想。在我的第一年，這幾乎是一次完整的旅程。那不是因為我做了什麼或賺了什麼，而是因為我是學校里最窮的孩子之一。耶魯大學提供了數以萬計的基於需求的援助。這是第一次破產，薪水這麼高。耶魯不僅是我夢寐以求的學校，也是我最便宜的選擇。
The New York Times recently reported that the most expensive schools are paradoxically cheaper for low-income students. Take, for example, a student whose parents earn thirty thousand per year—not a lot of money but not poverty level, either. That student would pay ten thousand for one of the less selective branch campuses of the University of Wisconsin but would pay six thousand at the school’s flagship Madison campus. At Harvard, the student would pay only about thirteen hundred despite tuition of over forty thousand. Of course, kids like me don’t know this. My buddy Nate, a lifelong friend and one of the smartest people I know, wanted to go to the University of Chicago as an undergraduate, but he didn’t apply because he knew he couldn’t afford it. It likely would have cost him considerably less than Ohio State, just as Yale cost considerably less for me than any other school.
《紐約時報》最近報導說，對於低收入學生來說，最昂貴的學校卻自相矛盾地便宜。舉個例子，一個學生的父母每年掙三萬——不是很多錢，但也不是貧困水準。這名學生將支付一萬美元購買威斯康星大學（University of Wisconsin）一個選擇性較差的分校，但該校的旗艦麥迪遜校區將支付六千美元。在哈佛，儘管學費超過四萬，但學生只需支付大約一千三百美元。當然，像我這樣的孩子不知道這一點。我的好友內特（Nate）是我的終生朋友，也是我認識的最聰明的人之一，他想去芝加哥大學讀本科，但他沒有申請，因為他知道自己負擔不起。他的成本可能比俄亥俄州立大學低得多，就像耶魯大學對我來說比其他任何學校都要低得多一樣。
I spent the next few months getting ready to leave. My aunt and uncle’s friend got me that job at a local floor tile distribution warehouse, and I worked there during the summer—driving a forklift, getting tile shipments ready for transport, and sweeping a giant warehouse. By the end of the summer, I’d saved enough not to worry about the move to New Haven.
在接下來的幾個月里，我準備離開。我姨媽和叔叔的朋友在當地的一家地磚配送倉庫給我找了一份工作，我在那裡工作了整個夏天——開叉車，準備運輸瓷磚，並清掃一個巨大的倉庫。到夏天結束時，我已經攢夠了錢，不用擔心搬到紐黑文了。
The day I moved felt different from every other time I’d moved away from Middletown. I knew when I left for the Marines that I’d return often and that life might bring me back to my hometown for an extended period (indeed it did). After four years in the Marines, the move to Columbus for college hadn’t seemed all that significant. I’d become an expert at leaving Middletown for other places, and each time I felt at least a little forlorn. But I knew this time that I was never really coming back. That didn’t bother me. Middletown no longer felt like home.
我搬家的那天感覺與我搬離米德爾敦的每一次都不同。當我離開海軍陸戰隊時，我知道我會經常回來，生活可能會讓我回到我的家鄉很長一段時間（確實如此）。在海軍陸戰隊服役四年後，搬到哥倫布上大學似乎並不那麼重要。我成了離開米德爾敦去其他地方的專家，每次我都至少感到有點孤獨。但我知道這一次我再也回不來了。這並沒有打擾我。米德爾敦不再有家的感覺。
On my first day at Yale Law School, there were posters in the hallways announcing an event with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. I couldn’t believe it: Tony Blair was speaking to a room of a few dozen students? If he came to Ohio State, he would have filled an auditorium of a thousand people. “Yeah, he speaks at Yale all the time,” a friend told me. “His son is an undergraduate.” A few days after that, I nearly bumped into a man as I turned a corner to walk into the law school’s main entrance. I said, “Excuse me,” looked up, and realized the man was New York governor George Pataki. These sorts of things happened at least once a week. Yale Law School was like nerd Hollywood, and I never stopped feeling like an awestruck tourist.
在我進入耶魯法學院的第一天，走廊上貼滿了海報，宣佈與英國前首相托尼·布萊爾（Tony Blair）舉行活動。我簡直不敢相信：托尼·布萊爾（Tony Blair）正在對一個有幾十個學生的房間講話？如果他來到俄亥俄州立大學，他會坐滿一千人的禮堂。“是的，他一直在耶魯演講，”一位朋友告訴我。“他的兒子是本科生。”幾天后，當我轉過拐角走進法學院的正門時，我差點撞到一個男人。我說，“對不起，”抬起頭，意識到那個人是紐約州州長喬治·帕塔基。這些事情每周至少發生一次。耶魯法學院就像好萊塢的書，我從未停止過像一個令人敬畏的遊客的感覺。
The first semester was structured in a way to make life easy on students. While my friends in other law schools were overwhelmed with work and worrying about strict grading curves that effectively placed you in direct competition with your classmates, our dean asked us during orientation to follow our passions, wherever they might lead, and not worry so much about grades. Our first four classes were graded on a credit/no credit basis, which made that easy. One of those classes, a constitutional law seminar of sixteen students, became a kind of family for me. We called ourselves the island of misfit toys, as there was no real unifying force to our team—a conservative hillbilly from Appalachia, the supersmart daughter of Indian immigrants, a black Canadian with decades’ worth of street smarts, a neuroscientist from Phoenix, an aspiring civil rights attorney born a few minutes from Yale’s campus, and an extremely progressive lesbian with a fantastic sense of humor, among others—but we became excellent friends.
第一學期的結構是為了讓學生的生活更輕鬆。當我在其他法學院的朋友被工作壓得喘不過氣來，擔心嚴格的評分曲線實際上讓你與同學直接競爭時，我們的院長在迎新會上要求我們追隨我們的激情，無論他們可能走向何方，不要太擔心成績。我們的前四門課是以學分/無學分為基礎評分的，這很容易。其中一門課，一個有16名學生參加的憲法研討會，對我來說就像一個家庭。我們稱自己為格格不入的玩具之島，因為我們的團隊沒有真正的團結力量——一個來自阿巴拉契亞的保守鄉巴佬，一個超級聰明的印度移民的女兒，一個擁有數十年街頭智慧的加拿大黑人，一個來自鳳凰城的神經科學家，一個有抱負的民權律師，出生在耶魯大學校園幾分鐘的地方，以及一個非常進步的女同性戀者，有著奇妙的幽默感， 等等，但我們成了很好的朋友。
That first year at Yale was overwhelming, but in a good way. I’d always been an American history buff, and some of the buildings on campus predated the Revolutionary War. Sometimes I’d walk around campus searching for the placards that identified the ages of buildings. The buildings themselves were breathtakingly beautiful—towering masterpieces of neo-Gothic architecture. Inside, intricate stone carvings and wood trim gave the law school an almost medieval feel. You’d even sometimes hear that we went to HLS (Hogwarts Law School). It’s telling that the best way to describe the law school was a reference to a series of fantasy novels.
在耶魯的第一年是壓倒性的，但以一種好的方式。我一直是美國歷史愛好者，校園裡的一些建築早於獨立戰爭。有時我會在校園裡走來走去，尋找標明建築物年齡的標語牌。這些建築本身令人歎為觀止，是新哥特式建築的高聳傑作。在內部，錯綜複雜的石雕和木飾給法學院帶來了近乎中世紀的感覺。你有時甚至會聽說我們去了HLS（霍格沃茨法學院）。描述法學院的最佳方式是參考一系列奇幻小說，這很能說明問題。
Classes were hard, and sometimes required long nights in the library, but they weren’t that hard. A part of me had thought I’d finally be revealed as an intellectual fraud, that the administration would realize they’d made a terrible mistake and send me back to Middletown with their sincerest apologies. Another part of me thought I’d be able to hack it but only with extraordinary dedication; after all, these were the brightest students in the world, and I did not qualify as such. But that didn’t end up being the case. Though there were rare geniuses walking the halls of the law school, most of my fellow students were smart but not intimidatingly so. In classroom discussions and on tests, I largely held my own.
上課很辛苦，有時需要在圖書館度過漫長的夜晚，但並不難。我的一部分以為我最終會被揭露為一個知識份子的騙子，政府會意識到他們犯了一個可怕的錯誤，並把我送回米德爾敦，並向他們最誠摯的道歉。我的另一部分認為我能夠破解它，但只有非凡的奉獻精神;畢竟，這些是世界上最聰明的學生，而我沒有資格成為這樣的學生。但事實並非如此。雖然在法學院的大廳裡走來走去的天才很少見，但我的大多數同學都很聰明，但並不令人生畏。在課堂討論和考試中，我基本上堅持自己的觀點。
Not everything came easy. I always fancied myself a decent writer, but when I turned in a sloppy writing assignment to a famously stern professor, he handed it back with some extraordinarily critical commentary. “Not good at all,” he scribbled on one page. On another, he circled a large paragraph and wrote in the margin, “This is a vomit of sentences masquerading as a paragraph. Fix.” I heard through the grapevine that this professor thought Yale should accept only students from places like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton: “It’s not our job to do remedial education, and too many of these other kids need it.” That committed me to changing his mind. By the end of the semester, he called my writing “excellent” and admitted that he might have been wrong about state schools. As the first year drew to a close, I felt triumphant—my professors and I got along well, I had earned solid grades, and I had a dream job for the summer—working for the chief counsel for a sitting U.S. senator.
並非一切都來得容易。我一直認為自己是一個體面的作家，但當我把一份草率的寫作作業交給一位以嚴厲著稱的教授時，他把作業還給了他，並附上了一些非常批判的評論。“一點也不好，”他在一頁紙上潦草地寫道。在另一張照片上，他圈了一大段，並在空白處寫道：“這是一堆偽裝成段落的句子。修復。我從小道消息中聽說，這位教授認為耶魯大學應該只接受來自哈佛、耶魯、斯坦福和普林斯頓等地的學生：「做補習教育不是我們的工作，其他孩子中有太多人需要補習教育。這讓我不得不改變他的想法。到學期結束時，他稱我的寫作“優秀”，並承認他對公立學校的看法可能是錯誤的。第一年快要結束時，我感到很得意——我的教授和我相處得很好，我的成績很好，而且我在暑假有一份夢寐以求的工作——為一位現任美國參議員的首席法律顧問工作。
Yet, for all of the joy and intrigue, Yale planted a seed of doubt in my mind about whether I belonged. This place was so beyond the pale for what I expected of myself. I knew zero Ivy League graduates back home; I was the first person in my nuclear family to go to college and the first person in my extended family to attend a professional school. When I arrived in August 2010, Yale had educated two of the three most recent Supreme Court justices and two of the six most recent presidents, not to mention the sitting secretary of state (Hillary Clinton). There was something bizarre about Yale’s social rituals: the cocktail receptions and banquets that served as both professional networking and personal matchmaking events. I lived among newly christened members of what folks back home pejoratively call the “elites,” and by every outward appearance, I was one of them: I am a tall, white, straight male. I have never felt out of place in my entire life. But I did at Yale.
然而，儘管有所有的喜悅和陰謀，耶魯在我心中種下了一顆懷疑我是否屬於自己的種子。這個地方超出了我對自己的期望。我在家鄉認識零常春藤盟校的畢業生;我是我的核心家庭中第一個上大學的人，也是我大家庭中第一個上專業學校的人。當我在2010年8月到達耶魯大學時，耶魯大學已經教育了三位最高法院大法官中的兩位和最近六位總統中的兩位，更不用說現任國務卿希拉蕊·柯林頓了。耶魯大學的社交儀式有些奇怪：雞尾酒會和宴會既是專業的社交活動，也是個人婚介活動。我生活在家鄉被人們貶低地稱為「精英」的新成員中，從每一個外表來看，我都是他們中的一員：我是一個高大、白人、直男。在我的一生中，我從未感到格格不入。但我在耶魯做到了。
Part of it has to do with social class. A student survey found that over 95 percent of Yale Law’s students qualified as upper-middle-class or higher, and most of them qualified as outright wealthy. Obviously, I was neither upper-middle-class nor wealthy. Very few people at Yale Law School are like me. They may look like me, but for all of the Ivy League’s obsession with diversity, virtually everyone—black, white, Jewish, Muslim, whatever—comes from intact families who never worry about money. Early during my first year, after a late night of drinking with my classmates, we all decided to stop at a New Haven chicken joint. Our large group left an awful mess: dirty plates, chicken bones, ranch dressing and soda splattered on the tables, and so on. I couldn’t imagine leaving it all for some poor guy to clean up, so I stayed behind. Of a dozen classmates, only one person helped me: my buddy Jamil, who also came from a poorer background. Afterward, I told Jamil that we were probably the only people in the school who’d ever had to clean up someone else’s mess. He just nodded his head in silent agreement.
其中一部分與社會階層有關。一項學生調查發現，耶魯大學法學院超過95%的學生有資格成為中上階層或更高階層，其中大多數人有資格成為徹頭徹尾的富人。顯然，我既不是中上層階層階級，也不是富人。在耶魯法學院，很少有人像我一樣。他們可能看起來像我，但儘管常春藤盟校對多樣性的癡迷，幾乎每個人——黑人、白人、猶太人、穆斯林等等——都來自從不擔心錢的完整家庭。在我第一年年初，在和同學們喝了一夜酒後，我們都決定在紐黑文的一家雞肉店停下來。我們一大群人留下了一團糟：髒盤子、雞骨頭、牧場調味品和濺在桌子上的蘇打水，等等。我無法想像把這一切留給一個可憐的傢伙來清理，所以我留下來了。在十幾個同學中，只有一個人説明了我：我的朋友賈米爾，他也來自一個較貧窮的背景。後來，我告訴賈米爾，我們可能是學校里唯一一個不得不收拾別人爛攤子的人。他只是默默地點了點頭。
Even though my experiences were unique, I never felt like a foreigner in Middletown. Most people’s parents had never gone to college. My closest friends had all seen some kind of domestic strife in their life—divorces, remarriages, legal separations, or fathers who spent some time in jail. A few parents worked as lawyers, engineers, or teachers. They were “rich people” to Mamaw, but they were never so rich that I thought of them as fundamentally different. They still lived within walking distance of my house, sent their kids to the same high school, and generally did the same things the rest of us did. It never occurred to me that I didn’t belong, even in the homes of some of my relatively wealthy friends.
儘管我的經歷很獨特，但我從不覺得自己是米德爾敦的外國人。大多數人的父母從未上過大學。我最親密的朋友都經歷過生活中的某種家庭衝突——離婚、再婚、合法分居，或者父親在監獄里呆了一段時間。一些父母是律師、工程師或教師。對媽媽來說，他們是“有錢人”，但他們從來沒有富裕到我認為他們有根本的不同。他們仍然住在我家的步行距離之內，把他們的孩子送到同一所高中，並且通常做著和我們其他人一樣的事情。我從來沒有想過我不屬於這裡，即使在我一些相對富有的朋友的家裡也是如此。
At Yale Law School, I felt like my spaceship had crashed in Oz. People would say with a straight face that a surgeon mother and engineer father were middle-class. In Middletown, $160,000 is an unfathomable salary; at Yale Law School, students expect to earn that amount in the first year after law school. Many of them are already worried that it won’t be enough.
在耶魯法學院，我覺得我的宇宙飛船在奧茲國墜毀了。人們會板著臉說，外科醫生的母親和工程師的父親是中產階級。在米德爾敦，160,000 美元是一份深不可測的薪水;在耶魯大學法學院，學生希望在法學院畢業后的第一年獲得這筆錢。他們中的許多人已經擔心這還不夠。
It wasn’t just about the money or my relative lack of it. It was about people’s perceptions. Yale made me feel, for the first time in my life, that others viewed my life with intrigue. Professors and classmates seemed genuinely interested in what seemed to me a superficially boring story: I went to a mediocre public high school, my parents didn’t go to college, and I grew up in Ohio. The same was true of nearly everyone I knew. At Yale, these things were true of no one. Even my service in the Marine Corps was pretty common in Ohio, but at Yale, many of my friends had never spent time with a veteran of America’s newest wars. In other words, I was an anomaly.
這不僅僅是關於錢或我相對缺乏錢的問題。這是關於人們的看法。耶魯讓我有生以來第一次感覺到，別人對我的生活充滿好奇。教授和同學們似乎對一個在我看來很無聊的故事很感興趣：我上了一所平庸的公立高中，我的父母沒有上過大學，我在俄亥俄州長大。我認識的幾乎每個人都是這樣。在耶魯，這些事情對任何人都不是真的。在俄亥俄州，即使我在海軍陸戰隊服役也很常見，但在耶魯大學，我的許多朋友從未與美國最新戰爭的老兵共度時光。換句話說，我是一個異常。
That’s not exactly a bad thing. For much of that first year in law school, I reveled in the fact that I was the only big marine with a Southern twang at my elite law school. But as law school acquaintances became close friends, I became less comfortable with the lies I told about my own past. “My mom is a nurse,” I told them. But of course that wasn’t true anymore. I didn’t really know what my legal father—the one whose name was on my birth certificate—did for a living; he was a total stranger. No one, except my best friends from Middletown whom I asked to read my law school admissions essay, knew about the formative experiences that shaped my life. At Yale, I decided to change that.
這並不是一件壞事。在法學院第一年的大部分時間里，我陶醉於這樣一個事實，即我是精英法學院中唯一一個擁有南方人頭銜的大海軍陸戰隊員。但隨著法學院的熟人成為親密的朋友，我對自己過去的謊言變得不那麼自在了。“我媽媽是一名護士，”我告訴他們。但當然，這不再是真的了。我真的不知道我的合法父親——我出生證明上的名字——是靠什麼謀生的;他是一個完全陌生的人。除了我在米德爾敦最好的朋友，我要求他們閱讀我的法學院入學論文，沒有人知道塑造我一生的成長經歷。在耶魯，我決定改變這種狀況。
I’m not sure what motivated this change. Part of it is that I stopped being ashamed: My parents’ mistakes were not my fault, so I had no reason to hide them. But I was concerned most of all that no one understood my grandparents’ outsize role in my life. Few of even my closest friends understood how utterly hopeless my life would have been without Mamaw and Papaw. So maybe I just wanted to give credit where credit is due.
我不確定是什麼促使了這種變化。部分原因是我不再感到羞愧：我父母的錯誤不是我的錯，所以我沒有理由隱瞞它們。但我最擔心的是，沒有人理解我祖父母在我生命中的巨大作用。即使是我最親密的朋友，也很少有人明白，如果沒有媽媽和爸爸，我的生活會是多麼絕望。所以也許我只是想在應得的功勞上給予功勞。
Yet there’s something else. As I realized how different I was from my classmates at Yale, I grew to appreciate how similar I was to the people back home. Most important, I became acutely aware of the inner conflict born of my recent success. On one of my first visits home after classes began, I stopped at a gas station not far from Aunt Wee’s house. The woman at the nearest pump began a conversation, and I noticed that she wore a Yale T-shirt. “Did you go to Yale?” I asked. “No,” she replied, “but my nephew does. Do you?” I wasn’t sure what to say. It was stupid—her nephew went to school there, for Christ’s sake—but I was still uncomfortable admitting that I’d become an Ivy Leaguer. The moment she told me her nephew went to Yale, I had to choose: Was I a Yale Law student, or was I a Middletown kid with hillbilly grandparents? If the former, I could exchange pleasantries and talk about New Haven’s beauty; if the latter, she occupied the other side of an invisible divide and could not to be trusted. At her cocktail parties and fancy dinners, she and her nephew probably even laughed about the unsophisticates of Ohio and how they clung to their guns and religion. I would not join forces with her. My answer was a pathetic attempt at cultural defiance: “No, I don’t go to Yale. But my girlfriend does.” And then I got in my car and drove away.
然而，還有別的東西。當我意識到我與耶魯的同學們有多麼不同時，我越來越意識到我與家鄉的人是多麼相似。最重要的是，我敏銳地意識到我最近的成功所帶來的內心衝突。開學後我第一次回家時，在離黃阿姨家不遠的一家加油站停了下來。最近的加油站的那位女士開始交談，我注意到她穿著一件耶魯T恤。“你去耶魯了嗎？”我問。“不，”她回答說，“但我的侄子知道。你呢？我不知道該說什麼。這很愚蠢——看在基督的份上，她的侄子在那裡上學——但我仍然不願意承認自己會成為常春藤盟校的學生。當她告訴我她的侄子去了耶魯大學的那一刻，我不得不做出選擇：我是耶魯大學法學院的學生，還是一個有鄉巴佬祖父母的米德爾敦孩子？如果是前者，我可以寒暄幾句，聊聊紐黑文的美;如果是後者，她佔據了無形鴻溝的另一邊，不值得信任。在她的雞尾酒會和豪華晚宴上，她和她的侄子甚至可能嘲笑俄亥俄州的樸素，以及他們如何堅持自己的槍支和宗教。我不會和她聯手。我的回答是對文化反抗的可悲嘗試：“不，我不去耶魯。但我的女朋友知道。然後我上了車，開車走了。
This wasn’t one of my prouder moments, but it highlights the inner conflict inspired by rapid upward mobility: I had lied to a stranger to avoid feeling like a traitor. There are lessons to draw here, among them what I’ve noted already: that one consequence of isolation is seeing standard metrics of success as not just unattainable but as the property of people not like us. Mamaw always fought that attitude in me, and for the most part, she was successful.
這不是我最自豪的時刻之一，但它凸顯了快速向上流動所激發的內心衝突：我對一個陌生人撒謊，以避免感覺自己像個叛徒。這裡有一些教訓可以吸取，其中包括我已經注意到的：孤立的一個後果是將成功的標準標準視為不僅無法實現，而且是與我們不同的人的財產。媽媽總是與我這種態度作鬥爭，而且大多數情況下，她都成功了。
Another lesson is that it’s not just our own communities that reinforce the outsider attitude, it’s the places and people that upward mobility connects us with—like my professor who suggested that Yale Law School shouldn’t accept applicants from non-prestigious state schools. There’s no way to quantify how these attitudes affect the working class. We do know that working-class Americans aren’t just less likely to climb the economic ladder, they’re also more likely to fall off even after they’ve reached the top. I imagine that the discomfort they feel at leaving behind much of their identity plays at least a small role in this problem. One way our upper class can promote upward mobility, then, is not only by pushing wise public policies but by opening their hearts and minds to the newcomers who don’t quite belong.
另一個教訓是，強化局外人態度的不僅僅是我們自己的社區，還有向上流動將我們聯繫在一起的地方和人——就像我的教授建議耶魯法學院不應該接受來自非著名公立學校的申請者一樣。沒有辦法量化這些態度如何影響工人階級。我們確實知道，美國工人階級不僅不太可能攀登經濟階梯，而且即使他們已經達到頂峰，他們也更有可能跌落。我想，他們在拋棄大部分身份時感到的不適至少在這個問題中起了很小的作用。因此，我們的上層階層階級促進向上流動的一種方式不僅是推動明智的公共政策，而且要向不太有歸屬感的新移民敞開心扉。
Though we sing the praises of social mobility, it has its downsides. The term necessarily implies a sort of movement—to a theoretically better life, yes, but also away from something. And you can’t always control the parts of your old life from which you drift. In the past few years, I’ve vacationed in Panama and England. I’ve bought my groceries at Whole Foods. I’ve watched orchestral concerts. I’ve tried to break my addiction to “refined processed sugars” (a term that includes at least one too many words). I’ve worried about racial prejudice in my own family and friends.
雖然我們歌頌社會流動性，但它也有其缺點。這個詞必然意味著一種運動——理論上更好的生活，是的，但也遠離某些東西。而且你不能總是控制你偏離的舊生活部分。在過去的幾年裡，我在巴拿馬和英國度假。我在 Whole Foods 買了雜貨。我看過管弦樂音樂會。我試圖打破對「精製加工糖」 （一個至少包含一個太多單詞的術語）的成癮。我擔心自己的家人和朋友會有種族偏見。
None of these things is bad on its own. In fact, most of them are good—visiting England was a childhood dream; eating less sugar improves health. At the same time, they’ve shown me that social mobility isn’t just about money and economics, it’s about a lifestyle change. The wealthy and the powerful aren’t just wealthy and powerful; they follow a different set of norms and mores. When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst. At no time was this more obvious than the first (and last) time I took a Yale friend to Cracker Barrel. In my youth, it was the height of fine dining—my grandma’s and my favorite restaurant. With Yale friends, it was a greasy public health crisis.
這些事情本身都不是壞事。事實上，他們中的大多數都很好——訪問英國是兒時的夢想;少吃糖可以改善健康。與此同時，他們向我展示了社會流動性不僅關乎金錢和經濟，還關乎生活方式的改變。富人和有權勢的人不僅僅是有錢有勢;他們遵循一套不同的規範和習俗。當你從工人階級變成職業階層時，你過去生活的幾乎所有事情都變得不合時宜，往壞了說是不健康的。這一點在我第一次（也是最後一次）帶耶魯朋友去Cracker Barrel時表現得最為明顯。在我年輕的時候，那是高級餐廳的巔峰時期——我奶奶的餐廳和我最喜歡的餐廳。對於耶魯的朋友來說，這是一場油膩的公共衛生危機。
These aren’t exactly major problems, and if given the option all over again, I’d trade a bit of social discomfort for the life I lead in a heartbeat. But as I realized that in this new world I was the cultural alien, I began to think seriously about questions that had nagged at me since I was a teenager: Why has no one else from my high school made it to the Ivy League? Why are people like me so poorly represented in America’s elite institutions? Why is domestic strife so common in families like mine? Why did I think that places like Yale and Harvard were so unreachable? Why did successful people feel so different?
這些都不是大問題，如果重新來一次，我會用一點社交不適來換取我心跳加速的生活。但當我意識到在這個新世界里，我是文化的外星人時，我開始認真思考從我十幾歲起就一直困擾著我的問題：為什麼我的高中沒有其他人進入常春藤盟校？為什麼像我這樣的人在美國精英機構中的代表性如此之低？為什麼家庭衝突在像我這樣的家庭中如此普遍？為什麼我認為像耶魯和哈佛這樣的地方如此遙不可及？為什麼成功人士感覺如此不同？