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1、新视野大学英语读写教程第四册第五单元新视野大学英语读写教程第四册第五单元 B B 篇原文和翻译篇原文和翻译unit5BRoommate ConflictsIdentical twins Katie and Sarah Monahan arrived at Pennsylvanias Gettysburg College last year determined to strike out on independent paths. Although the 18-year-old sisters had requested rooms in different dorms, the housi
2、ng office placed them on the eighth floor of the same building, across the hall from each other. While Katie got along with her roommate, Sarah was miserable. She and her roommate silently warred over matters ranging from when the lights should be turned off to how the furniture should be arranged.
3、Finally, they divided the room in two and gave up on oral communication, communicating primarily through short notes. During this time, Sarah kept running across the hall to seek comfort from Katie. Before long, the two wanted to live together again. Sarahs roommate eventually agreed to move out. “F
4、rom the first night we lived together again, we felt so comfortable,” says Sarah. “We felt like we were back home.” Sarahs ability to solve her dilemma by rooming with her identical twin is unusual, but the conflict she faced is not. Despite extensive efforts by many schools to make good roommate ma
5、tches, unsatisfactory outcomes are common. One roommate is always cold, while the other never wants to turn up the furnace, even though the thermometer says its minus five outside. One person likes quiet, while the other person spends two hours a day practicing the trumpet, or turns up his sound sys
6、tem to the point where the whole room vibrates. One eats only organically produced vegetables and believes all living things are holy, even ants and mosquitoes, while the other likes wearing fur and enjoys cutting up frogs in biology class. When personalities dont mix, the excitement of being away a
7、t college can quickly grow stale. Moreover, roommates can affect each others psychological health. A recent study reports that depression in college roommates is often passed from one person to another. Learning to tolerate a strangers habits may teach undergraduates flexibility and the art of compr
8、omise, but the learning process is often painful. Julie Noel, a 21-year-old senior, recalls that she and her freshman year roommate didnt communicate and were uncomfortable throughout the year. “I kept playing the same disk in my CD player for a whole day once just to test her because she was so tim
9、id,” says Noel. “It took her until dinner time to finally change it.” Although they didnt saw the room in half, near years end, the two did end up in a screaming fight. “Looking back, I wish I had talked to her more about how I was feeling,” says Noel. Most roommate conflicts spring from such small,
10、 irritating differences rather than from grand disputes over abstract philosophical principles. “Its the specifics that tear roommates apart,” says the assistant director of residential programs at a university in Ohio. In extreme cases, roommate conflict can lead to serious violence, as it did at H
11、arvard last spring: One student killed her roommate before committing suicide. Many schools have started conflict resolution programs to calm tensions that otherwise can build up like a volcano preparing to explode, ultimately resulting in physical violence. Some colleges have resorted to “roommate
12、contracts” that all new students fill out and sign after attending a seminar on roommate relations. Students detail behavioral guidelines for their room, including acceptable hours for study and sleep, a policy for use of each others possessions and how messages will be handled. Although the contrac
13、ts are not binding and will never go to a jury, copies are given to the floors residential adviser in case conflicts later arise. “The contract gives us permission to talk about issues which students forget or are afraid to talk about,” says the director of residential programs. Some schools try to
14、head off feuding before it begins by using computerized matching, a process that nevertheless remains more of a guessing game than a science. Students are put together on the basis of their responses to housing form questions about smoking tolerance, preferred hours of study and sleep, and self-desc
15、ribed tendencies toward tidiness or disorder. Parents sometimes weaken the process by taking the forms and filling in false and wishful data about their childrens habits, especially on the smoking question. The matching process is also complicated by a philosophical debate among housing managers con
16、cerning the flavor of university life: “Do you put together people who are similar or different, so they can learn about each other?” A cartoon sums up the way many students feel the process works: Surrounded by a mass of papers, a housing worker picks up two selection forms and exclaims, “Likes chess, likes football; theyre perfect together!” Alan Sussman, a second-year student, says, “I think they must have known each of our personalities and picked the opposite,” he recalls.
