Unite 1 Brave new worlds 勇敢新世界 I remember my first night on campus, lying on a hard and slightly stained mattress, surrounded by four blank walls and listening to the heartbeat of a fast-moving city outside my window. I felt very small. It was as if I had literally been transported into another world, and in a way I had:One day I had been at home in the suburban town where I had lived for 18 years and knew everyone, and the next day I had moved into a tiny room in a huge city across the country where I didn’t know anyone.I had always thought there would be a neat transition between my previous self and my college self, but it turns out identity is more complex than that. 我还记得在大学的第一个夜晚，我一个人躺在有些污渍的硬床垫上，面对着四面空墙，聆听着窗外这座快节奏的城市的心跳声。我感到自己非常渺小。毫不夸张地说，这感觉就好像自己到了另一个世界一样，而且从某个方面来说确实是这样：某一天，我还在郊区小镇的家里，我在那里生活了18年，我认识那里的所有人。而第二天，我却到了这个国家的另一边，住在大城市的一个小房间里。在这里，我谁也不认识。 我曾以为从中学到大学的过渡应该是顺利的，但是我发现，身份的转换要比想象中复杂得多。 It was strange to feel my past life almost drop away as I entered this brand-new phase of my life. I didn’t know how to define myself during my first couple of months at Penn because everything that defined me was back in California. I felt disconnected from my college friends because they only knew the college me.How could they really know me without knowing what Mission Boulevard looked like late at night with the Niles hills standing out in the background?How could they know me without knowing the friends who I had journeyed to Japan with or the friends I had gone to school with since kindergarten? How could they know me if they hadn’t met my family? How could they know me, or I them, if we didn't know one another's self-defining experiences? 进入了人生的这个崭新阶段之后，之前的生活好像都在逐渐远离我，这种感觉很奇怪。在刚到宾夕法尼亚大学的最初几个月里，我不知道如何给自己定义，因为过去能定义我的一切都在加利福尼亚州。我和我的大学同学有种疏离感，因为他们只了解作为大学生的我。如果他们不知道奈尔斯社区的山丘映衬下的米申大道在深夜里是什么样子，他们怎么能真的了解我呢？如果他们不认识和我同行去日本的朋友，或者不认识我从幼儿园起就一起上学的朋友，他们怎么能了解我呢？如果他们不认识我的家人，又怎么能了解我呢？如果我们不了解彼此的成长经历，又怎么能互相了解呢？ Having now been a college student for a year and a half, I still spend a lot of time selfanalyzing, trying to reconcile this feeling of double identity. College me versus home me. College friends versus home friends. Activities in Philadelphia versus activities in Fremont. And this sensation of double identity and double worlds sometimes leaves me feeling uprooted, like I’m drifting along in the wind, lacking any stable foothold. 大学生活到现在已经过了一年半，我仍然在花很多时间进行自我分析，并且试图去调和这种双重身份的感觉——作为大学生的我和在家乡的我，大学朋友和在家乡的朋友，费城的活动和弗里蒙特的活动。这种双重身份和双重世界的感觉有时让我有种背井离乡的感觉，就像是随风漂泊，没有稳定的落脚点。 Who am I, and where do I belong? As college students, we bounce back and forth between home and school, but most of us won’t be living at either of those places in a couple of years. We’ll be creating new lives for ourselves, working in places we did not expect to be in, adjusting to the rhythm of life in other places with other people. 我是谁？我属于哪里？作为大学生，我们在学校和家之间来回奔波，但是我们大多数人在几年之后都不会在这两个地方居住。我们将会为自己开创新的生活，在我们未曾想到过的地方工作，在不同的地方与不同的人打交道，并相应地不断调整自己的生活节奏。 As we attempt to bridge the gap between who we were and who we’re becoming, we must come to terms with the fact that there is only one constant in our lives, and that is our selves.We are the only people that we are with day in and day out. We are the only people who we’re going to have for our whole lives. We are the only ones who know all of our experiences, all of our feelings, who can replay all of our memories, who have been with ourselves in all of the places that we’ve been and know all the people we know. There is a certain sadness in realizing this, in watching our identities become more individual and more distinct from the factors that originally shaped them. 当我们试图在曾经的自己和未来的自己之间建立联系的时候，我们就必须接受这样一个事实，那就是在我们的生活中，唯一不变的只有我们自己。我们自己才是那个唯一天天陪伴自己的人，我们自己才是唯一我们终生都能拥有的人，我们自己才是了解我们所有经历、所有感受、所有记忆的人，我们自己才是陪伴我们去过所有地方并结识我们所熟识的人的人。我们目睹着自我身份变得越来越个性化，越来越远离那些最初塑造自我身份的因素。意识到这一点还是有些令人伤感的。 And college is a unique time when this autonomy becomes most apparent. It is a fouryear period that is sandwiched between an 18year period of living with family and postcollege life, which generally involves an eventual settling down with a job, life partner and family.College is the transition space between those two worlds, but it is also a world unto itself. 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/d5ccd62f5222aaea998fcc22bcd126fff6055d3e.html