The Rise of the "Trauma Essay" in College Applications | Tina Yong | TED
发布时间 2023-05-02 11:00:23 来源
摘要
As if college applications aren't stressful enough, disadvantaged youth are often encouraged to write about their darkest traumas in their admissions essays, creating a marketable story of resilience that turns "pain into progress," says politics student Tina Yong. She brings this harrowing norm to light, exploring its harms and offering a more equitable process for colleges everywhere.
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中英文字稿 
There's a story of mine that I've told about a million different times and it goes a little something like this. When I was 10, my family and I packed up our entire lives into large suitcases and dragged them across the Pacific to a foreign land called Canada. I was put in a school where I was the only Asian kid in my grade and I got teased from my broken English, Asian features and funny smelling ethnic lunches. The racism was a real doozy, but don't feel bad. Through the magical healing powers of extracurricular activities and pure perseverance, I stand before you today a new woman, healthy, healed and extremely employable.
有一个故事，我已经讲了无数次，大概是这样的。当我十岁的时候，我的家人和我将我们所有的生活都塞进了大的行李箱中，搬到了一个叫做加拿大的国家。我进入了一个学校，我是班里唯一的亚洲孩子，因为我说着不流利的英语、有亚洲特征和吃着异国口味的午餐，所以被嘲笑。种族歧视是真的让人难受，但是不要难过。通过课外活动和坚定不移的毅力，今天我站在你们面前，成为一个新的女人，健康、疗愈并且极具雇用能力。
You wouldn't even be able to tell from just looking at me that I was once the weird little immigrant girl who begged her mom to pack PVNJ sandwiches so she wouldn't have to eat lunch alone in the back room. This is a story that I've told in academic essays, job interviews and even in the very application that got me into this fine university. It's also a story that, despite all of its truth, I've come to hate. Now, this is a story that I don't have copyright claim over. It's one that continues to be regurgitated by immigrant kids all across the country to be served on a silver platter to prestigious universities who true these stories and spit out acceptance letters in return.
你只看看我的外表，就不会想到我曾经是一个古怪的小移民女孩，求妈妈为我做PVNJ三明治，这样我就不用独自在后房吃午饭了。这是我在学术论文、求职面试甚至是进入这所优秀大学的申请中都讲过的故事。虽然这个故事是真实的，但现在，我对它很讨厌。这个故事我没有版权，它仍然被全国各地的移民孩子们重复讲述，并被呈现给著名大学，以换取录取通知书。
The contents of the story may change. Instead of a difficult immigration experience, it might be the death of a loved one, a chronic illness or a racist encounter. But what remains constant is the moral. A bad thing happened to me, but it made me a good person. This is part of the larger phenomenon that I'm here to talk about today. The overwhelming pressure being put on high school students to write about their deepest traumas in their college application with the hopes that they seem resilient and interesting enough to be given a spot.
这个故事的内容可能会变化。不一定是艰难的移民经历，可能是亲人去世、患上慢性病或者种族歧视的遭遇。但是一个道德信念是始终如一的。有件坏事发生在我身上，但它让我成为了一个好人。这是我今天要谈论的更广泛现象的一部分。高中生们面临着巨大的压力，要在他们的大学申请中写出他们最深的创伤，希望自己看起来具有足够的韧性和趣味，能够被录取。
I believe that these are not only bad metrics by which to evaluate applicants, but also incredibly harmful to the storyteller themselves and risks reinforcing existing inequities in higher education. There's also pressure that's being amplified by admissions counselors themselves who play a huge role in influencing what applicants decide to write about. Take for example this tip from the MIT admissions blog where the author compares two different introductions for a potential essay. The first one reads, I'm honored to apply for the Master of Library Science program at the University of Okoboji.
我认为这些并不是评估申请人的好指标，这对于讲述者本身来说也非常有害，有可能会强化高等教育中已存在的不平等状况。招生顾问也会加重压力，他们在影响申请人写什么时发挥了巨大的作用。比如，麻省理工学院的招生博客中就提到一个关于潜在文章的两个不同引言的提示。首先是这个引言，“我很荣幸申请于奥科博吉大学的图书馆科学硕士课程”。
For as long as I can remember, I've had a love affair with books. Since I was 11, I've wanted to be a librarian. The second introduction reads, when I was 11, my great-amphg retching passed away and left me something that changed my life, a library of about 5,000 books. Some of my best days were spent arranging and reading her books. Since then, I've wanted to become a librarian. The author notes that the second introduction is much more striking and leaves a much better impression. Consider another tip from college essay guy.com where he advises students to get personal. He says, weirdly, including painful memories and what you learned from them usually helps a personal statement meet the goals of a college application essay.
从我记事起，我就和书有一段恋爱般的故事。自从我11岁时，我就想成为一名图书管理员。第二段介绍说，当我11岁时，我伟大的祖母去世了，她留下了一万多册的图书，这改变了我的人生。我最美好的时光之一就是整理和阅读她的书。从那时起，我就想成为一名图书管理员。作者指出，第二段介绍更引人注目，留下了更好的印象。再考虑一下来自“大学文章家”的另一个技巧，他建议学生们变得更个人化。奇怪的是，包括痛苦的回忆以及你从中学到的东西，通常有助于个人陈述达到大学应用论文的目标。
You come up as humble, accessible, likable, and mature. Students from admissions officers themselves can also be telling. Io Waller Bay, a former admissions officer from Georgetown University, said in a forms article that, within months on the job, I saw how the personal statements of black and other racially minor high students deferred from those of white applicants. Black students highlighted resilience through stories of survival while their counterparts wrote casual essays about service abroad and sporting championships. Black students shared their pain, white students shared their passions.
你显得谦逊、易接近、讨人喜欢且成熟。招生人员听取学生的见解也能起到重要作用。来自乔治敦大学的前招生官Io Waller Bay 在一篇文章中称，在工作数月后，我发现黑人和其他少数种族高中生的个人陈述与白人申请者有所不同。黑人学生通过生存故事突显了坚毅不拔，而他们的同龄人则写了关于海外服务和体育锦标赛的随笔。黑人学生分享他们的痛苦，而白人学生分享他们的热情。
Now, lastly, and perhaps the least reliable source is my own life. I remember feeling this way when I was applying to universities. Like I had no other choice, no other experiences worthy of mentioning, and no other merit beyond the fact that I had thrived despite what I had gone through. I even remember worrying that my tale wouldn't be harrowing enough after hearing from a counselor that writing about immigration has become a bit of a cliche because of how overused it is.
最后，也许最不可靠的来源是我的个人经历。我还记得申请大学时的感受。好像我别无选择，没有其他值得一提的经历，也没有除了我尽管经历过很多磨难却依然茁壮成长的事实之外其他的优点。我甚至还担心自己的故事不够惊心动魄，毕竟听过一位辅导员说写移民经历已经成为了陈词滥调。
So what's the university's role in all of this? And why are these stories even harmful to begin with? Well, I believe that using your college application essay to discuss your trauma actually doesn't help you process it. There are a couple of different reasons why. Just writing about a difficult experience is, as you may have guessed, difficult. Not only do you have to relive the event itself, but you also have to actively suppress any negative emotions that arise during the process.
那么大学的角色是什么？为什么这些故事开始就有害呢？我相信，在你的大学申请文章中讨论你的创伤实际上并不能帮助你处理它。这有几个不同的原因。仅仅写下一个困难的经历就像你已经猜到的那样很难。你不仅要重温事件本身，还必须积极抑制任何在这个过程中出现的负面情绪。
That kind of emotional labor can be taxing for anybody, but perhaps especially so for these young applicants who haven't had enough time on this world to process the terrible things that have happened to them. So that space to be one in which they're confessing to a faceless stranger who gets to make the most consequential decision of their adolescent life, it imposes an incredibly heavy psychological burden.
这种情感劳动对任何人都是沉重的负担，但对这些年轻的申请者来说可能尤其如此，因为他们在这个世界上的时间还不够长，无法处理他们经历的可怕事情。因此，这个空间成为了一个他们向一个陌生人坦白的地方，而这个陌生人能够做出他们青少年生命中最重要的决定，这给他们带来了极重的心理负担。
I mean, imagine if you walk into your therapy appointment and your therapist tells you that they're not going to respond to anything you tell them, except with a rejection or acceptance email sent months later. And also that whatever you tell them would determine the trajectory of your entire academic and professional career. Hard to imagine that being therapeutic.
我的意思是，想象一下，假如你走进治疗师的办公室，他告诉你，除了几个月后的接受或拒绝邮件，他不会对你说的任何事情做出回应。而且，你所告诉他的任何事情都将决定你整个学术和职业生涯的轨迹。很难想象这会有治疗效果。
Secondly, the trauma essay makes one assumption that is extremely problematic. It's not always the learning opportunity through which you can gain more confidence or develop better time management skills. Sometimes it's just a sucky thing that really sucks. And asking students to prove how they turn their pain into progress, ignores this truth, and falls prey to the toxic positivity narrative that everything happens for a reason, ignoring the very valid resentment and anger that many victims still feel.
其次，创伤论文存在一个极为棘手的假设。并不是所有的学习机会都能让你获得更多信心或者成为更好的时间管理者。有时候只是一件糟糕的事情。要求学生证明他们如何将痛苦转化为进步，无视了这个事实，并陷入有毒的积极性叙事，认为一切都有原因，忽略了许多受害者仍然感到合理的憎恨和愤怒。
Lastly, the things we write aren't just informed by our experiences. They shape how we view those experiences as well. And if we're writing about our trauma to prove to an admissions officer that we are worthy of a decent education, then it becomes necessary to sanitize our pain. And make it marketable and strategic. To scrub away all the suffering, so all that's left is what will fit into the narrow margins of what is palatable.
最后，我们写的东西不仅受到我们经历的影响，也会塑造我们对这些经历的看法。如果我们写关于我们的创伤，来证明我们值得得到良好教育的入学官员，那么必须要让我们的痛苦变得干净并有营销策略。要抹去所有的痛苦，只留下能够适应狭窄标准的内容。
And this is what I see as being the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the trauma essay. It seems to get the writer free reign of vulnerability, but actually leaves them very little room to be vulnerable. Your story has to be just sad enough that it gains sympathy, but not so sad that it makes you seem beyond help. Just critical enough to inspire change, but not so much that it actually criticizes systemic structures. Just honest enough to seem real, but not so unfiltered that it creates discomfort.
这就是我认为心理创伤论文中存在的根本矛盾。它似乎使作家有了表现脆弱的自由，但实际上却给了他们非常少的表现脆弱的空间。你的故事必须足够悲伤，以获得同情，但不能太悲伤，以至于让你看起来无法得到帮助。必须具有足够的批判性，以激发变革，但不能过于批判系统性结构。要足够诚实，以显得真实，但不能过于无过滤，以至于引起不适。
The protagonist also overcomes whatever struggled their facing by the end of the 500 word count, instilling the reader with a sense of optimism that despite our deeply unequal society, it is possible to rise through the ranks and overcome all the isms. This of course is not the reality of our world today. And for me, this looked like settling for the familiar story of the stinky lunch, one that's been told so many times that it's devoid of any real meaning.
主角在500个单词的结尾也克服了他们面临的所有难题，让读者产生一种乐观的感觉，即尽管我们的社会极度不平等，但还是有可能超越一切主义，晋升到更高的层次。当然，这并不是今天我们世界的真实情况。对我来说，这意味着接受一个熟悉的故事，也就是讲述那个臭饭盒的故事，这个故事已经讲了很多遍，但缺乏真正的意义。
Instead of talking about the ongoing social and political disenfranchisement of immigrants, the permanent loss of cultural identity that I suffered, or the sense of disbelanging that still haunts me every time I make a grammar mistake, or someone mispronounces my name. These are all struggles that never really go away, but are carefully tucked away in my essay because they don't fit the linear narrative that is being constructed.
我不想谈论移民持续的社会与政治被剥夺、我所经历的永久文化认同的失落，或是每次我犯语法错误或别人发错我的名字时还一直浮现的失归感。这些都是我永远无法摆脱的斗争，但它们因为不适应正在构建的连续叙述而小心地藏在我的文章中。
But how are universities to blame for all of this? I mean, they never explicitly asked students to trauma-duff in their essays, and many admissions experts have actually come out and discouraged discussing explicit trauma in essays. However, I still don't think that universities are blameless. The reason why the trauma essay is so ubiquitous is because it seems to be working.
但是，大学如何有罪？我的意思是，他们从来没有明确要求学生在文章中将创伤作为主题，许多招生专家实际上已经出面反对在文章中讨论明显的创伤。但是，我仍然认为大学不是无罪的。创伤文章之所以如此普遍，是因为它似乎是有效的。
Antrobac, who helped low-income high school students at Oberlin College write their essays, expresses the ethical dilemma that she faces. By pushing students to reveal their horror stories, I risk taking away their dignity. But by not pushing, I could be hindering their chances of getting into their dream school.
Antrobac是奥伯林学院帮助低收入高中学生写论文的志愿者。她所面临的道德困境是，通过要求学生揭示他们的恐怖经历，她有可能会剥夺学生的尊严。但如果不督促他们，又会影响他们进入心仪的学校的机会。
Whether trauma essays and acceptance letters are actually causally correlated is impossible to tell from the outside, so this could all just be speculation and myth. But in failing to resolutely clear up these speculation and myths about whether trauma essays are rewarded or discouraged, universities are indirectly enabling the rise of the trauma essay and all of its harmful implications.
无法从外部确定创伤性论文和录取通知书是否存在因果关系，因此所有这些可能只是猜测和神话。但是，大学未能坚决澄清关于是否鼓励创伤性论文的猜测和神话，间接地促使了创伤性论文的崛起及其所有有害的影响。
So what are they to do about all of this? Well, first of all, I think that this is a problem that goes much deeper than individual universities and even perhaps the institution of higher education itself. It's rooted in the cultural obsession with appropriating trauma and making it consumable, as well as the systemic tendency to tokenize oppressed people and their experiences.
那么他们对于所有这些应该怎么办呢？首先，我认为这是一个比单个大学甚至是高等教育机构本身更深层次的问题。这是源于文化上对于利用创伤并使其可消费的痴迷以及系统性地对被压迫人群及其经历进行象征化的倾向。
But there are still things that universities can do to make things better. First, they can be more transparent about their admissions guidelines. If it's really true that they don't want to reward trauma stories, telling just for the sake of it, then they should be more forthcoming about this expectation. They could also restructure their prompts to avoid putting pressure on students to talk about past hardships and adversities and instead refocus prompts to ask students about their goals for the future and their academic interests.
但是大学仍有一些可以做的事情来改善情况。首先，他们可以更加透明地公布招生指南。如果他们真的不想奖励刻意讲述创伤故事，那么他们应该更明确地表明这一期望。他们还可以重构问题，避免给学生们施加谈论过去困苦和逆境的压力，而是将重点放在询问他们对未来的目标和学术兴趣上。
Secondly, admissions counselors should be trauma informed and trained in working with BIPOC folks. As the unofficial gatekeepers to the secrets of getting into your dream college, they should wield their power responsibly and not pressure students to talk about traumatic experiences that they're not yet ready to talk about.
其次，招生顾问应该了解创伤并接受针对 BIPOC 族群的培训。作为进入梦想大学的官方守门人，他们应该负责任地行使自己的权力，不要对学生施加压力，让他们谈论他们还没有准备好谈论的创伤经历。
Lastly, and this one for anyone who's actually applying to a post-secondary institution sometimes soon, remember that you are more than the bad things that happen to you. I know that when it seems like every other classmate of yours is writing an essay that could be adapted for an HBO original drama, that you may feel like your experiences are not worth talking about. But I promise that they are. You just have to find your voice and use it.
最后，这条建议是给即将申请高等教育机构的人，记住你不仅仅是那些发生在你身上的坏事。我知道当你看到其他同学写的文章好像都可以被改编成HBO原创剧集时，你可能觉得自己经历的不值得谈论。但是我保证它们是值得的，你只需要找到属于你自己的声音并用它说话。
Now, as much as I don't want to live that nail-bitingly stressful time of my life ever again, I can't help but wonder what would I have written about if I got the chance to apply to UBC again? This time absent the pressure to strategically use my immigrant background to gain sympathy points. Maybe I would have written about how I overcame my fear of public speaking and became comfortable with being the loudest voice in the room, or I could have written about watching trashy reality television is what first sparked my interest in political science. Or maybe I still would have written about my immigrant story because that was a big part of my life journey and still impacts me to this day. But I would have done it on my own terms.
尽管我非常不想再经历那段心惊胆战的时期，但我不禁想知道如果我有机会重新申请到UBC，我会写些什么？这次，没有压力强制我利用我的移民背景来赢取同情分数。也许我会写关于我如何克服了公众演讲的恐惧，成为房间里最响亮的声音而感到自在，或者我可以写关于看垃圾真人秀电视节目是我对政治学产生兴趣的第一次启蒙。或者我仍然会写我的移民故事，因为那是我人生旅程的重要部分，而且至今仍在影响着我。但我会按照自己的条件完成它。
Instead of being written as a one-dimensional trauma-turn triumph, drama-drama, I would have been able to tell a story that actually reflects who I am today. And acknowledge the fact that my journey is ongoing and it doesn't begin or end with my racial identity. This is the kind of ownership that I wish for everyone to one day have over their story. And now it's up for universities to decide whether they get to tell it. Thank you.
与其将我的故事描述成一维的从创伤到胜利的戏剧化，我希望能够讲述一个真正反映今天的我，并承认我的旅程仍在继续，而我的种族认同并不是开始或结束的标志。我希望每个人都能拥有对自己故事的归属感。现在，该由大学决定他们是否能够讲述我的故事。谢谢。