2020《纽约时报》最佳文书出炉﹙上﹚

自从2013年开始，《纽约时报》开始每年征集学生们的申请文书，并从中选出优秀的四至五篇文章发至网上，供大家参考与学习。

在2020疫情期间，《纽约时报》依然向高中生们征集了他们申请大学时的个人陈述文书，并从中选取了四篇内容深刻、感情动人、表达流畅的文章。

这四位学生中，一位是在移民父母的建筑项目中工作的艺术家；一位是用诗歌来表达思想的黑人学生；一位在康涅狄格州高档区却表现地格外与众不同；一位用编制毯子的故事讲述自己的人生。

《纽约时报》评论道：“疫情之后再次阅读他们的申请文书，我们很难不对未来生出更多希冀。这些高中生们也在忙忙碌碌，也在实现自我。他们反思着自己，观察着世界，也探索着自己如何在世界中立足。”

本次为大家展示其中两篇，此篇为上篇。

康奈尔大学录取文书

申请者：maria menoza blanco

申请院校：cornell university

文书内容

if i ha it my way, i’ never set foot in a home epot ever again. 

every ace harware, every lowe’s, every boutique tile place, every obscure little harware store that only sells phillips-hea screwrivers smells the same way: usty. sawust, catust, paint-flake-ust, laminate-ust, ancient-grumpy-cashier-ust. it’s post-apocalyptic, the shuffling shoppers ea-eye from looking at a thousan ientical refrigerators, fluorescent tube lights casting ultramarine pallor over their faces.

we kill tigers, you see.

“where are we going?” i’ll ask, an my father will say, “lowe’s. hay que matar tigres.” gotta kill tigers, gotta take sie jobs to fill in the gaps where the money oesn’t quite reach. where others might have taken up uber, my family starte builing houses, with me an my brother in tow.

when we arrive, my parents caught the american ream like tío conejo use his rabbit tricksiness to outwit tío tigre in the fables: so artfully that they themselves harly believe they’ pulle it off. we kille tigers in georgetown an langley, iplomat townhomes an tasteless mcmansions alike. we move seven times within the same zip coe, as my parents bought ugly houses an sol them beautiful.

it isn’t much like hgtv. i spent countless hours searching for nonexistent cans of spackle in the back shelves of home epot. my mother lai out carpet samples on the floor an pace aroun them, forever eliberating between ivory an cream. she’ be on the phone with some hung over subcontractor when she picke me up from art club. i’ sit in an abanone corner an sketch as they haggle eternally over harwoo pallets at auction. i wouln’t be surprise if i spent more time uner the watchful eye of an orange-aprone paint mixer than a babysitter.

all this is to say that construction runs in the veins of the blancos. my granfather, after all, came out of nowhere to buil a concrete empire on the bake irt of maracaibo. the mixers moler now in that hinterlan, but the force of his success was what fuele our escape from venezuela before things got ba.

what use woul my granfather have ha for all the sketches i’ve sketche, all the paintings i’ve painte, i woner? coul my parents paper their clients’ walls with pages from my sketchbook, coul they tear up the canvas an use it for insulation? probably not.

in art, there’s this fantasy of the muse reaching own an the lucky artist’s paintbrush ancing with a press of her rosy fingertip. the truth is that i can have the most perfect concept hane to me by the ghost of gentileschi herself, an i’ll still get in my own way. perfectionism won’t let me pick a backgroun color for weeks, envy will istract me with foolhary attempts at others’ success, simple laziness will keep me in be watching episoes of “choppe” 15 times.

whenever my still-white canvas stretche blankly into the infinite, i thought about that, about the long nights my parents must have spent thinking about their own parents. about the three hours aily my mother spens commuting to her ay job. about my father’s lost stories, the jokes he oesn’t tell because english warps his humor. about the life they left behin in maracaibo, all so that we coul live here. all so that i coul come here an be an artist, of all things.

so it’s not easy moving from concrete to canvas. but i must o it anyway, because the force of my ambition an, well, my talent eman it. because my family’s risk eserves a risk of my own. a risk that i must fight my inolence an ennui for. a risk that will honor our sacrifice of all these years between two lans. i can’t let all those usty hours at home epot go to waste. hay que matar tigres.

参考译文

如果让我自己选择，我再也不会踏进home epot家居装修商店了。

每个五金件商店、每个家居装修店、每个精品瓷砖商店、每个不起眼的只卖十字螺丝刀的小五金店，闻起来都一样：满是灰尘的味道。锯屑，猫咪毛发，脱落的油漆粉尘，层压粉尘，古旧的柜子带来的粉尘。这简直是世界末日。来来往往的购物者们在上千个看起来完全相同的冰箱中疲惫地扫视，日光灯照在他们的脸上，泛着青色的苍白。

你看，我们能杀死老虎。

“我们去哪？”我会问，我父亲会回答：“ 家居装修店。hay que matar tigres（西语：要杀死老虎）。”要杀死老虎，必须要做些副业来填补家庭收入的空白。别人可能选择去当优步司机，而我的爸爸则会拖着我和我的兄弟一起装修房屋。

我们刚来美国的时候，我的父母实现了他们的美国梦，就像在寓言中兔子先生用自己的计策击败了老虎先生：如此巧妙，连他们都几乎不相信自己会实现这一梦想。我们在乔治敦和兰利、外交官联排别墅，和没有品味的麦克马斯特都“杀了老虎”。我的父母买下旧房子，装修精美后再售出，我们也因此在一片区域内搬了七次家。

它不像美国家居生活频道hgtv的节目。我花了无数个小时在家居超市的后货架上寻找仿佛不存在的墙粉喷罐。我的母亲把地毯样品铺在地上，走来走去，比较象牙白和奶油白的区别。她从艺术俱乐部接我时，还会一直和一些分包商打电话。当他们在拍卖会上为了一个硬木小床讨价还价时，我就坐在一个不起眼的角落里素描。如果说和一个居家保姆比，我出现在橙围裙的油漆工眼皮子下的时间更长，我也不会觉得奇怪。

我们的建筑事业从布兰科斯起步。毕竟，我的祖父就从那里发家，在马拉开波的泥地上建立起一个水泥帝国。祖父的搅拌机留在了那片土壤，但他的成功却让我们得以在委内瑞拉事态恶化前逃了出来。

我想，祖父对我的画和我的事业起了什么作用？我的父母能用我速写本的纸涂在顾客的墙上吗，我的画布能给他们用做绝缘材料吗？应该不能。

在艺术界有个传说，说如果得到了缪斯的眷顾，她就会来到艺术家玫瑰色的指尖上，让笔刷翩翩起舞。事实是，真蒂莱斯基（意大利女画家﹚常常在我身上“显灵”，而我仍然能够展示出自己的风格。我的完美主义不会让我在一个背景色上纠结好几周；眼红别人的成功，我也会分心去鲁莽尝试模仿，而简单的懒惰会使我瘫在床上看“choppe”节目看15次。

空白的画布常常给人无限联想，每当我看到空画布，我都会想到，我的父母也会在漫漫长夜里想起他们的先辈；会想到我母亲每天大约要花三个小时上下班；会想到记忆深处父亲的故事，和他因为英语不好而讲不出的笑话；会想到他们为了让我们住在美国而放弃了马拉开波的记忆。这一切的一切，都是为了让我能够来到这里，成为一名艺术家。

因此，从“混凝土”过渡到“画布”并不容易。但是无论如何我也必须这样做，为了我的志向和我的天赋，也为了努力不辜负我的家人。因此，我要挑战我的懒惰和疲倦，来弥补我们家族辗转两地而付出的牺牲。我不能让家具店里那些尘土飞扬的时光浪费掉。hay que matar tigres（西语：要杀死老虎）。

补充说明

文中提到的“杀死老虎”是一种比喻：爸爸妈妈杀死的老虎是去装修房子保证家里的生活，而主人公杀死的老虎就是去追求艺术家的生活，体现了家族的传承精神，但也同时确认了她个人的追求。作为一个移民家庭，能够在最后找到自己的梦想，点明了学生坚定的兴趣以及她这样精神的来源。文中不少段落体现着学生的思考以及对存在意义的探索，值得我们去学习。

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