The Real World
真实的世界
Este Griffith had it all figured out. When she graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in April 2001, she had her sights set on one thing: working for a labor union.
格里菲斯把所有事情都盘算好了。她2001年4月毕业于匹兹堡大学，她给自己定了个目标：在工会找份工作。

The real world had other ideas. Griffith left school with not only a degree, but a boatload of debt. She owed $15,000 in student loans and had racked up $4,000 in credit card debt for books, groceries and other expenses. No labor union job could pay enough to bail her out.
但真实的社会有另一种声音。格里菲斯离开学校时不仅带走了文凭同样也带走了一堆债务。她欠了学生贷款1.5万美元还有刷信用卡买书、食品和其它杂费花了4000美元。没有哪个工会的工作可以帮她还清这么多债务。

So Griffith went to work instead for a Washington, D.C., firm that specializes in economic development. Problem solved? Nope. At age 24, she takes home about $1,800 a month, $1,200 of which disappears to pay her rent. Add another $180 a month to retire her student loans and $300 a month to whittle down her credit card balance. "You do the math," she says.
因此格里菲斯去了华盛顿一家经济发展公司工作。问题就这样解决了吗？没那么简单！24岁的她，每月从家拿1800美元，其中1200美元用以支付房租。加上每月180美元还学生贷款，300美元还信用卡欠账。她无奈地说道：“你自己算吧，还能剩下钱？”

Griffith has practically no money to live on. She brown-bags her lunch and bikes to work. Above all, she fears she’ll never own a house or be able to retire. It’s not that she regrets getting her degree. "But they don’t tell you that the trade-off is the next ten years of your income," she says.
格里菲斯实际上没有钱养活自己。她自带盒饭当午餐骑自行车去上班。最重要的是，她害怕自己永远买不起一套房子或者要无休止地工作下去不能退休。她并非对自己上学拿到学位而后悔。她说：“但是他们绝不会告诉你这是要以未来十年的薪水作为代价来收回成本的。”

That’s precisely the deal being made by more and more college students: They’re mortgaging their futures to meet soaring tuition costs and other college expenses. Like Griffith, they’re facing a one-two punch at graduation: hefty student loans and smothering credit card debt - not to mention a job market that, for now anyway, is dismal.
越来越多的大学生正在面临这一事实：他们在按揭自己的未来去支付大学高额的学费和其它一些开支。就像格里菲斯那样，他们在毕业之时就会面临“连环打击”：沉重的学生贷款和令人窒息的信用卡账单，更别提现在这低迷的就业市场了。

"We are forcing our children to make a choice between two evils," says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor and expert on bankruptcy. "Skip college and face a life of diminished opportunity, or go to college and face a life shackled by debt."
哈佛大学法学院教授、破产法方面的专家伊丽莎白?沃伦曾这样说过：“我们正在逼我们的孩子在两个魔鬼之间做抉择。跳过了大学教育的人生就会错失很多机遇，走进大学就面临着负债累累的生活。”