大学教授凭运气拿到学位的神奇经历(图)

　　Now it can be told: I got my B.A. by sheer luck. I say sheer luck because, if events were ordinary, I would have failed almost every course. Instead, when things looked impossible, some "Chance" idea pulled me out. Here is my story.

　　现在可以将这段经历讲给各位听了。实不相瞒，我得学士学位全靠走运。如果一切都按部就班，我也许哪门课都过不了关。不过，就在我觉得山穷水尽之时，偶发奇想却让我绝处逢生。下面我就讲讲我的故事。

　　Professor Kolb (the students called him "King Tut") was especially rough that year. Some said that an editor had turned down his manuscript; others said that he was just tired of students. But whatever it was, exactly 63.6 percent of the class failed Egyptian History. And if it were not for sheer luck, I'd have raised the percentage to 65.4.

　　科尔布教授(学生们都称他“啧啧王”)，那年特别不通融。有人说是因为他的投稿被哪个编辑给毙了，也有人说他就是对学生觉得腻烦了。不管是什么原因吧，反正埃及史课全班63.6%的学生都没有及格。要不是我的运气好，班里的不及格率就该上升到65.4%了。

　　I remember most vividly the frightening pace of the lectures. No one could take notes as fast as "King Tut?talked, especially when he became excited. My frantic scribbling and almost indecipherable abbreviating were so slow that I missed more than half. Without complete notes, it was impossible to study. I was lucky to have gotten even the 38 on one exam. As the fellows used to say, the "handwriting on the 'sarcophagus'" was clear for me. I knew that my only chance for survival was to get fuller notes.

　　他讲课快得吓人，到现在我还记忆犹新。谁记笔记的速度都赶不上“啧啧王”说话的速度快，特别是他激动起来的时候。我手忙脚乱，奋笔疾书，记的几乎是无法辨认的缩略语，就这样还是跟不上他，有一半以上记不下来。笔记不全，学习就无从谈起。一次考试我竟还得了38分，就像当时同学说的那样，“石棺”上的字我还算是认清楚了。我明白，要想不栽在这门课上，就得把笔记记全些。

　　That night after the exam grades came out, I tried to fall asleep--to forget my devastating grade for even awhile--but words like "hieroglyphics" and "rosetta stone" kept kaleidoscoping and rolling through my mind. As I mulled over my missing more than half of each lecture, I suddenly hit upon an idea: Why not leave every other line on my note paper blank? Then during the following period I could recall the lecture and fill in the missing portions. In deference to the ancients, I called this the "Osiris Plan."?

　　考试成绩出来的那天晚上，我努力想进入梦乡，哪怕是能将那让我伤心欲绝的分数忘记片刻呢。可是“象形文字”啦，“罗塞塔石碑”啦这类词语像万花筒一样不断在我脑中转来转去。想着自己有半堂课的笔记记不下来，我突然灵机一动，干嘛不在笔记本上隔行留空呢？这样下课以后，我就可以回想老师讲的内容，把落掉的部分补齐。为了表达对古人的敬意，我把这种方法命名为“奥西里斯计划”。

　　The next day I tried the "Osiris Plan," and it worked! What luck! At first it was difficult to recall the lecture, but as days passed, it became sort of a game. Often, in the privacy of my room I would, in softer voice, imitate the old professor and try to redeliver the lecture as best as I could without looking at my notes. This mimicry almost got me into trouble, when, on a rare occasion, the professor called on me to answer a question. Stunned by being called, I jumped to my feet and for the first two sentences, before I caught myself, the fellows said I sounded "exactly like Old Tut."

　　第二天，我实行了“奥西里斯计划”，居然成功了！太走运了！刚开始的时候，上课的内容很难回忆起来。但是随着日子一天天过去，这种回忆成了一种游戏。我常常呆在房间里，在不受干扰的情况下，轻声模仿老教授讲课，并试着在不看笔记的情况下，尽可能地复述课堂的内容。这样的模仿差点给我惹了麻烦。有一次很偶然地，教授叫我回答问题。我没料到教授会叫我，有些发懵。据我的同学说，我当时跳了起来，在还没有回过神的时候说出的几个句子听起来“像极了老啧啧”。

　　One evening while quietly reciting the day's lecture to myself, I made an important discovery. In trying to make my presentation as smooth as possible (about this time I had begun imagining that I was a lecturer), I used the transitional words "Now that we have discussed the major reason for the phenomenal success of Pharaoh Hophra, let us look at the subsidiary reasons." At that moment I stopped still, for at no time did the professor ever cut up the lecture into topics and subtopics; nevertheless, the topics and subtopics were neatly packaged and embedded into the seeming onrush of words, waiting to be perceived by the student. With this secret in mind, I found that I could take better notes during the lecture, and during the periods after class I could very easily supply the missing portions, filling in the blank every-other-line.

　　一天晚上，我在默诵白天上课的内容时，发现了一件非常重要的事。为了使我的复述尽可能地流畅，(差不多在那个阶段，我已开始想象自己是个讲课教师)，我用了过渡性的语句，比如“我们已经讨论了霍夫拉法老重大胜利的主要原因，现在我们讨论一下次要原因。”这时候，我突然停了下来，因为教授从来没有把课上的内容分成主要的和次要的。然而，这些主要和次要的内容都整齐地排列和隐藏在看似滔滔不绝的语言中，等待学生们去发现。心里带着这个秘密，我发现我的笔记做得更好了，而且课后能够轻而易举地把每隔一行所缺的内容填上。