When I arrived at university in 1978 I was driven by my mother in an orange Citroën Dyane with a cardboard trunk containing a few books and my Patti Smith and Talking Heads LPs in the back.
1978年，我上大学的时候，是我妈妈用一辆橘色的雪铁龙(Citroën) Dyane把我送到学校的。我带了一个纸壳箱，里面装了几本书，背包里装着帕蒂•史密斯(Patti Smith)和传声头像(Talking Heads)的黑胶唱片。
This year students starting university can make a bigger entrance, arriving by helicopter, private plane, MacLaren P1, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce – or by horse and carriage. This is thanks to the Very Important Fresher service launched last week by Uni Baggage, which charges up to £35,000 to transport teenagers and their belongings to uni in style.
今年的大学新生可以更加华丽地登场，坐直升飞机、私人飞机、迈凯轮P1(MacLaren P1)、阿斯顿马丁(Aston Martin)、劳斯莱斯(Rolls-Royce)——或马车——来学校。这得益于Uni Baggage不久前推出的VIF（Very Import Fresher，尊贵新生）服务，收费最高达3.5万英镑，承诺将新生们和他们的行李别具一格地送达大学校园。
The service is not only aimed at unconscionably loaded foreign students who have not been told that Brits don’t do that sort of thing. According to the company, there is a small but growing slice of Britain that hasn’t been told this either. Increasingly, Brits want to be Very Important Freshers too.
这项服务不仅针对行李超多超重的外国新生（他们还不知道英国的规矩是，新生的行李一般比较简单）。Uni Baggage表示，有一小部分英国新生也不知道这个规矩，并且这部分人的数量还在增加。英国新生也越来越想要当VIF了。

Even those who can’t afford the helicopter are nevertheless arriving at university with much more luxurious kit than they used to. The other day I was in John Lewis – the department store patronised by the terminally un-flash, middle classes – to find it festooned with “Off to University” signs over expensive saucepans, duvets and cushions. On the website, the “essentials” list for students consists of more than 60 inessential items including an office chair. Click on the link, and it takes you straight to the Herman Miller model, priced at £899.
即便是那些坐不起直升飞机的新生，也带着比过去奢侈得多的行李。那天我在约翰路易斯(John Lewis)，发现这家主要顾客为丝毫不浮夸的中产阶层的百货商场，居然在昂贵的平底锅、羽绒被和坐垫等商品上打出“开学季”的宣传语。在它的网站上，为新生准备的“开学必备”清单上包括60多种根本没必要的东西，其中包括办公椅。点击办公椅那一项，一款赫曼米勒(Herman Miller)牌办公椅直接呈现在眼前，售价899英镑。
At university in the late 1970s, the first rule for students with lots of money was to pretend they had none at all. I knew only one man who sometimes took me out to dinner in smart places – but he had the excuse of being American.
在上世纪70年代末的大学，有钱人家子弟的头号原则就是，要假装一文不名。我当时只认识一位有时带我去高档餐厅吃饭的男士，不过他是美国人，情有可原。
The new ostentation is so obviously a bad thing it is dull to say so. It’s bad for those who splash it about, and it’s bad for those with none to splash. Being poor as a student not only seems the natural order of things, it surely motivates you to be less poor later on.
这股新的摆阔风潮明显不好，明显到指出它来都是件没劲的事。不管是对一掷千金的人，还是没钱摆阔的人，它都不是好事。学生时代的贫穷不仅看上去再正常不过，还必然会激励你以后努力让自己富裕起来。
While it is depressing that vast riches are a socially acceptable status symbol for 18-year-olds, they are no worse than more traditional ways of lording it over others.
社会居然接受18岁孩子用大量财富来体现自己的地位，这一点固然令人沮丧，但这种方式并不比其他传统逞威风方式更有害。
Two of my children have recently graduated from two different British universities and tell me that to stand out, money helps a bit, though not nearly as much as being cool. This is – and was – the top way of differentiating yourself and is done by following six pernicious and foolish cool rules.
我有两个孩子最近从英国两所不同的大学毕业，两人告诉我，要想凸显个性，金钱可以起一点点作用，但是跟摆酷比起来，金钱的作用要小得多。摆酷在现在和过去都是凸显个性的首要方式。摆酷要遵循以下六条危险而愚蠢的原则。
The first way to be a Very Cool Fresher is to treat with disdain everything laid on by the university, shunning all freshers’ activities and holding your own parties instead – which is hard if you don’t know anyone. Next you must act unfriendly to almost everyone, save a few people you’ve deemed cool enough. This rather defeats the point of university which is to broaden, not narrow, horizons.
当“超酷新生”(Very Cool Fresher, VCF)的第一种方法是，对大学组织的一切都嗤之以鼻，拒不参加所有新生活动，而是自己组织聚会——这事儿对于谁都不认识的新生来说挺难的。其次，你必须对几乎所有人爱搭不理，除了少数你认为够酷的人以外。这颇违背上大学的意义——上大学原本是为了扩大（而不是缩小）你的视野。
Taking drugs, getting very drunk, chain-smoking roll-ups all help at being cool – as they always did – and they are still just as bad for you.
吸毒、豪饮、一支接一支地抽烟，都有助于增加酷感——一向如此——但毒品和烟酒仍然对你有害。
Being from London is eternally cool. Being from Swansea, anywhere in the countryside, Southampton, Hull, and everywhere else in the world save a few capital cities – is eternally not cool. This is tough, since there is not a lot you can do about where your parents live.
如果你来自伦敦，那酷极了。要是你来自斯旺西、乡村地区、南安普敦、赫尔或世界其他任何地方（只除了几个著名的首都），那就极不酷。这一条比较残酷，因为你的父母在哪里生活，是你基本无法左右的。
Looking gorgeous is cool. And looking thin. So is wearing the right clothes. The first is unfair, the second dangerous, and the third a lot of hard work.
帅气或漂亮很酷。纤瘦也酷。打扮入时同样很酷。第一点是不公平的，第二点是危险的，第三点则很费工夫。
Being clever is also cool, and getting good marks in all assignments and getting a first-class degree is very cool – the catch being that visibly working hard is not. Being in the library at opening time is only cool if you’ve been up all night.
聪明也很酷，所有作业都得高分、以优等生获得学位非常酷，不过有一个难题是，被人看到勤奋学习可不酷。只在一种情况下，在图书馆刚开门的时间出现在那里很酷，那就是你整晚都没睡。

While all these rules are familiar to me, they are more lethal now as the cool bar is set far higher. On my first day at university I felt passably cool in my apple green OshKosh dungarees – but that was only because half the girls were in tweeds and twinsets. Now that everyone can buy the same clothes online, to be really cool you have to spend half a lifetime combing vintage shops.
尽管这些摆酷原则在我听来都很耳熟，但它们如今的危害更大，因为如今酷的标准比以往高得多。大学入校第一天，我穿着苹果绿的OshKosh工装裤，已经勉强算酷了，但那是因为当时一半的女生都穿着花呢和运动服套装。如今每个人都能在网上买同样的衣服，要真正酷起来，你必须穷尽半生在古着店里搜罗别致的东西。
Being a VCF is also more punishing physically because no night out ends before breakfast time; in my day it was no shame for a cool person to go to bed at midnight. This makes it fantastically tough to be cool and do well, and doing well itself is even more important than it was for us, as we knew we’d all get decentish jobs at the end anyway.
当一名超酷新生对体力的挑战也更大，因为没有哪个“有节目的夜晚”结束于早餐时间以前。在我那个时候，摆酷的学生午夜12点睡觉算不上羞耻。这使得摆酷和学习好变得很难兼得，而如今学习好对大学生更重要了，因为在我们那个时候，大家都清楚，每个人最后都会找到不错的工作。
So which is more lethal: the Very Cool Fresher, or the very rich one? I’m going for the former: at least the VRF might buy you a drink or take you for a ride in the Ferrari, having failed to notice that you are not cool enough to be worth bothering with.
那么，哪一种学生危害更大：超酷新生，还是超富新生？我觉得是前者。至少超富新生有可能没注意到你不是酷到值得理睬，而会请你喝杯酒，或邀请你坐他的法拉利(Ferrari)。