首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
When I was 16, I worked in the nursing home a few miles from my house. It sat without irony right next to a funeral parlor. Ther
When I was 16, I worked in the nursing home a few miles from my house. It sat without irony right next to a funeral parlor. Ther
admin
2018-01-01
49
问题
When I was 16, I worked in the nursing home a few miles from my house. It sat without irony right next to a funeral parlor. There was just a driveway between the two buildings, and the funeral director used to send leftover flower arrangements that we’d dismantle and put in vases so they weren’t quite so recognizable. There was, as you can imagine, some traffic going the other way too.
It was a sobering place to spend your days as a teenager. Most of us did one or two shifts after school, 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., and Sundays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Each aide was responsible for getting eight or so residents up for the day, fed, bathed, dressed and their sheets changed before noon, which was impossible if you tried to take care of them sequentially. You had to strategize. Get Martha’s breakfast unwrapped while her roommate is inching to the bathroom, or they’d still be eating breakfast when the lunch trays arrived. I learned more in that job than I did in school. But that wasn’t why we worked there. We did it because the home paid more than fast food, and we needed the money. It was a tough, threadbare little town, but we could leave. We had the most perishable of advantages: youth.
These days I’m just another privileged white woman in a cushy part of Brooklyn, as my teen daughters point out constantly. They’re right. I won’t suffer directly from racism or homophobia or fear that I’m not safe or that we won’t have enough to eat. And I should note that I had an aunt and uncle who helped pay for college and got me my first job, which opened a thousand doors. So, yeah, I didn’t build this life by myself, to paraphrase President Obama.
But their comments sting. I get all indignant and tell them nursing-home stories. Or McDonald’ s fry-station stories. Or protest stories. It’s my version of "I walked five miles to school in the snow so you don’t have to"—a lame attempt to prove that I’m more than a mom in pricey yoga pants who’s forgotten what it was like to do shift work or worry about whether the groceries would run out before the week ends.
Being accused of unchecked privilege is a fearsome insult in this climate. The advice is legit: acknowledge your inherent advantages and biases when considering someone else’s situation. But in practice it can be complicated and divisive, and not just for clueless boomers. Just ask Lena Dunham, whose brand of feminism critics have savaged as elite and oblivious to racism. There are even online quizzes that test how privileged you are and in what ways. Questions range from "I never had to ’come out’" to "I have had an unpaid internship" and "I have never been shamed for my body type." Some companies have workshops that run along the same themes hoping to inspire more empathy for others. Left or right, no one wants to be seen as having unearned advantages. Every politician has a hard-luck origin story, if not about themselves, then about their parents. The Clinton campaigns fought over which movement was less elite. Even Donald Trump says he worked his way up without much help from his millionaire father.
So, yes, we all need to remind ourselves of our advantages; whether it’s straight privilege, or financial privileges, or able-bodied privilege, or whatever extra boost we’ve gotten. Humans are prone to credit our successes to our own ingenuity, true or not. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, asked randomly selected subjects to play Monopoly. But the game was rigged. The winner of a coin toss got twice the starting cash and higher bonuses for passing Go.
Not surprisingly the advantaged players won. But as they prospered they moved their pieces more loudly than their opponents, reveled in triumphs and even took more snacks. Some, when asked about their win, talked about how their strategy helped them succeed. They began to think they earned their success, even though they knew the game was set up in their favor. Sometimes privilege is in the eye of the beholder. The lesson I keep relearning is: don’t assume. Not all privilege is obvious, and not all disadvantages are easily defined. No one would guess that my father, an athletic guy with endless cheer, suffered such trauma as a child, thanks to a horrible family situation and the stress of war; it’s a wonder he was functional. Dad died a few years ago of dementia—that terrible equalizer. There was nothing his privileged daughters could do about it except help the aides when we were there. At least we knew how to change a hospital bed.
Why does the author introduce her work experience at the beginning of the passage ?
选项
A、To contrast the difference between work life and school life.
B、To show how hard her life was when she was studying at school.
C、To tell us that life of youth was short and fleeting away and we must cherish it.
D、To demonstrate that such experience was quite beneficial to her later development.
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/3lSO777K
本试题收录于:
NAETI高级口译笔试题库外语翻译证书(NAETI)分类
0
NAETI高级口译笔试
外语翻译证书(NAETI)
相关试题推荐
中国西藏自治区位于青藏高原的主体,地势高峻,地理特殊,野生动植物资源、水资源和矿产资源丰富,素有“世界屋脊”和“地球第三极”之称。这里不仅是南亚、东南亚地区的“江河源”和“生态源”,还是中国乃至东半球气候的“启动器”和“调节区”。//西藏自治区面
当前,国际金融危机已从局部发展到全球,从发达国家传导到新兴市场国家,从金融领域扩散到实体经济领域,给世界各国经济发展和人民生活带来严重影响。值此关键时刻,我们在这里共同探讨维护国际金融稳定、促进世界经济增长的举措,具有十分重要的意义。//我们正在
A、Childrennaturallyandeasilylearnmathematics.B、Childrenlearntoaddbeforetheylearntosubtract.C、Mostpeoplefollowt
A、ItsentthembacktoSpain.B、IthadconstantphonecontactwiththeSpanishConsulinIstanbul.C、IttreatedtheminSpanish
Bioinformaticsisanewcomputersoftwaretechnologythatmakesresearchfindingsongeneticengineeringpubliclyavailabletot
A、Thepotentialhealthhazardsofmobilephonescallforfurtherresearch.B、TheAustralianscientistsfindnoconnectionbetwee
A、hesuffersfromanirrationalcompulsion.B、hetakesgreatpleasureinthethingshebuys.C、heneedsmorenecessitiesinlife
自父母离异后,我从一个娇生惯养的孩子,转变成了一个通情达理的大学生。父母离异前,我指望着母亲服侍我。她为我洗衣、做饭、洗碗,甚至为我铺床。我15岁时父亲离开了我们,之后一切都变了。母亲找了份全职工作供养我们,我成了家里有时间做家务的人。另外,我在周末兼职挣
A、InaschoolB、Onthephone.C、Ataneducationfair.D、Inastreet.B
A、Dinosaurs.B、Mammoths.C、Saber-toothedcats.D、Tropicalfrogs.D
随机试题
Scientistsfindthathard-workingpeoplelivemuchlongerthanaveragemenandwomen.Careerwomenarehealthierthanhousewives
晚孕期,超声不易显示的胎盘位置是
A.流感嗜血杆菌B.副流感嗜血杆菌C.埃及嗜血杆菌D.杜克嗜血杆菌E.溶血嗜血杆菌可引起急性结膜炎的是
《建设工程委托监理合同》属于()。
在代办股份转让业务中,股份转让公司已确认的可进行股份转让的股份在托管后方可开始转让。()
古代任官授职的称谓有哪些?
关于《巴塞尔协议I》的表述,不正确的是()
[2010年]设存在正交矩阵Q使QTAQ为对角矩阵.若Q的第1列为求a,Q.
Feelinganxious?Yourmoodmayactuallychangehowyourdinnertastes,makingthebitterandsaltyflavorsrecede,accordingto
In1942,theHMSEdinburghwassunkintheBarentsSea.Itwasonits【C1】________backtoBritainwithninety-oneboxesofRussi
最新回复
(
0
)