语言与文风2014austingwalters.com
请原谅我的语法
Please Excuse my Grammar
导读
这篇个人随笔从作者自身的学习经历出发，讨论成绩、标准化考试与“聪明/能力”评价之间的关系，并为自己在学术体系中的处境辩护。它值得写作者读，因为它既是“个人叙事+制度批评”的样本，也暴露了主观感受与客观标准并置时容易出现的论证矛盾。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写个人经历时要区分“我的感受”和“可验证的事实”，否则容易把自我评价直接当成论证前提。
- 02
批评制度时先交代它运行的真实约束，比如成绩、推荐信、容错空间，论点才不流于抱怨。
- 03
避免对同一标准双重使用：不能用考试证明自己聪明，又用“GPA不代表能力”否定另一套标准。
- 04
把个人故事作为切入点后，要回到可讨论的公共问题，而不是停在“系统辜负了我”。
HN 评论精选
研究生院筛选不只看努力，还看成绩、考试、推荐信和容错空间；作者缺乏后者，制度本质冷酷。
问题很简单：光努力不够。拿不到全A、好考试成绩和强推荐信，就进不了研究生院。这显然不公平，尤其因为更富有的人不必为生存奔波、可以专心学习。但反过来说，当事情变难、真正考验来临时，这名学生还有一些容错余地；本文作者没有，他自己也承认。这让他在学术体系里成为负担，因为该体系要求教授让许多研究生像奴隶一样长时间工作，以便按标准发表。我读到研究生院最高阶段，因个人问题不得不离开。没有什么比被告知配偶身患绝症对考试委员会的看法几乎没有影响更痛苦了。（注：我在欧洲学校，提交和答辩前最多只能休三年假；考官本可以再给我一年，但拒绝了，说我配偶在那段时间也不会好转。）这一切完全不公，但可悲的是研究生院不适合作者——它不会在乎作者的生活处境。
etrevino查看英文原文
The problem here is simple: working hard isn't enough. If you can't pull all A's, get good test scores, and great recommendations, then you can't have graduate school. Obviously it's unfair, in large part because someone wealthier won't have to work to survive and can concentrate on his or her studies. The converse of that, though, is when things get hard and the rubber hits the road the student will have some margin of error. The author of this piece has none, as he admits. That makes him a liability to an academic system that requires professors to make many of their graduate students slave labor hours so that they can publish at an appropriate level. I've been to the highest levels of grad school and had to leave because of personal problems. There's nothing quite so painful as being told that your spouse's terminal illness has little to no bearing on your examining committee's opinion of you. (n.b., I was in a European school, so I couldn't take more than a three year leave of absence before presenting and defending my thesis. My examiners could have given me another year, but they refused, saying that my spouse wasn't exactly going to get better during that span) This is all utterly unfair, but the sad fact of the matter is that graduate school isn't for the author. I don't mean that it's an unrealistic dream, I mean that it's not going to give a rat's ass about the author's life situation and grad school will treat him like shit when he has to take time to deal with very real life problems that academics tend to gloss over. The author would be better served by avoiding grad school for now and establishing himself financially. Good professional experience will counteract many of his GPA shortcomings (and most schools will ignore those if he has professional experience). When he's in a position to get a fully-funded position in grad school, only then should he go, because only then will he be able to commit himself 100% to his studies.
评论指出作者对考试和GPA采用双重标准；真正问题是没有单一客观指标能衡量能力，整体评估又依赖对人的信任。
作者认为标准化考试证明自己“聪明”（“我觉得自己聪明，我的考试也显示我聪明”），随后又说标准化成绩（GPA）不能衡量“聪明”（“3.5+的GPA真能说明吗？在我看来，这更像是他们求稳，没有足够逼自己”）。他的结论是考试对（因为他觉得对），而制度和GPA辜负了他。我的结论是：其实没有很好的指标能衡量“聪明”或学生是否真正吃透课程……教育系统需要更强调灵活性，并培养教师整体地看待学生的能力和表现。我想说，一个好辅导员本应对作者说：“你考试不错，我也理解环境干扰很大；我们安排你和AP老师见个面，让他们评估你？”但依赖好老师和好辅导员很可怕：这意味着要信任人，而不是能直接判“通过/不通过”的客观指标。
sdrothrock查看英文原文
The author argues that he is "smart" due to his performance on standardized tests ("I feel smart, my tests showed I’m smart"), but then turns around and argues that a standardized measurement of performance (the GPA) does not measure "smart" ("does a 3.5+ GPA really mean that? To me it seems more like they played it safe, they didn’t push themselves hard enough"). His takeaway is that the tests are right (because he feels they are right) and that the system and the GPA have failed him. My takeaway is that there really isn't a good metric for measuring "smart" or whether someone really groks the material offered in class... and that the education system really needs to have more of an emphasis flexibility and really grooming teachers to look at students' abilities and performances holistically. I want to say that a "good" counselor would have looked at the author and said "Ok -- you've done well on your tests and I understand that the environment is disruptive for you. Why don't we set up a meeting with an AP teacher and let them gauge you?" Relying on "good" teachers and "good" counselors is scary, though. It means you have to trust human beings and not objective metrics where you can say "this is a pass" or "this is a fail."
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