The son of an acquaintance of mine has recently landed a good job on a national newspaper. For the past few months I've been reading the articles written by this boy – let's call him Derek – and thinking how delightfully original they were. Last week I ran into Derek's mother and told her that her son was brilliant and that she must be proud of him. She rolled her eyes and said he hadn't always been a star. He had been expelled from his state comprehensive school at 15, failed dismally academically and had spent his teenage years off the rails. So how, I asked, did he land this most sought after of jobs, one that Oxbridge graduates kill for?
我一位熟人的儿子最近在一家全国性报社找到了一份好工作。过去几个月，我一直在阅读这个小伙子——让我们叫他德里克(Derek)好了——写的文章，令人高兴的是，这些文章是如此具有独创性。上周，我遇到他的妈妈，我告诉她，她的儿子非常有才气，她一定为他感到骄傲。她转了转眼睛不屑地说，他并非一直那么出色。15岁时，他就被一所公立综合学校开除了，从此他灰溜溜地中断了学业，误入歧途地度过了他十几岁的青春。于是我问道，他是如何获得这份牛津和剑桥 (Oxbridge)毕业生都梦寐以求的工作的呢？

She said that Derek had decided in his early 20s that he wanted to be a journalist and simply refused to take no for an answer. He more or less took up residence outside the newspaper of his choice, bombarding it with e-mails, until eventually he was allowed in as an unpaid intern. He financed his journalism by working night shifts as a hospital porter, until eventually he was offered a job.
她说，德里克20岁出头就决定，他希望成为一名记者，且压根不接受“不行”这样的答复。他几乎是住在他所中意的报社门外，用电子邮件对其进行狂轰乱炸，直到最后被录用为一名没有报酬的实习生。他靠夜间在一家医院当门童来获取经济来源，直到最终拿到了正式合同。

We all love an underdog story, and this one vastly cheered me up. All the more so because it seems to belie the conviction of every pushy parent that if a child puts one foot wrong academically they have blown it for life. Both in London and New York there is this feverish notion that the journey to success starts at around three years old. It is vital to get a child into the right nursery school that will get them into Harvard or Cambridge or wherever. And if the child does not land up with straight A grades then clearly their chances of success in life are very low indeed.
我们都爱听失败者的故事，上面这个故事令我兴奋不已。更重要的原因在于，这似乎有悖于每一位望子成龙的家长的看法，即如果孩子在学业上步入歧途，他们的一生就毁了。无论在伦敦还是纽约，都存在着一种狂热的观念：即通往成功之路始于3岁左右。让孩子进入合适的托儿所，对于他们将来进入哈佛(Harvard)或剑桥之流的学府至关重要。而如果孩子最终未能连续取得A等成绩，那么他们一生获得成功的机会显然会非常低。

This tiresome hysteria has got worse in one generation. When I was at school and at university there was a lot of opportunity for screwing up, and most of us availed ourselves of it at one point or another. In fact, if you cruised effortlessly from one academic triumph to another you were regarded as rather dull. As a schoolgirl, not only did I fail to get straight As, I didn't get any As at all – though I did get an F and even a U (for unclassified).
对于一代人而言，这种令人生厌的歇斯底里式的想法愈发严重。在我上中学和大学时，有的是把我一生搞砸的机会，而我们大多数人也或早或晚地利用了这种机会。实际上，如果你不费吹灰之力就接连取得学业上的成功，你会被视为一个相当无趣的人。上学期间，我不仅没有连续获得A等成绩，甚至连一个A都没拿到过——我还拿过一个F，甚至一个U（代表不予评级，比F还差）。

Having failed in a small way – though not as impressively as Derek – I like to think it does one good. It means one then has to work like a dog to catch up, and that one may have a fresher way of doing things.
经历过小小的失败之后——尽管不像德里克那样不同凡响——我愿意认为这有好处。这意味着，一个人为了赶上别人，就不得不像条狗那样拼命工作，做事时也可能会另辟蹊径。

Though it is depressingly rare for the underdog to win in the real world, I'd like to cling to the idea that when they do, they have something special to offer that the overdog does not.
尽管在现实世界中失败者成功的可能性小得令人沮丧，但我愿意坚持这种观点，那就是一旦他们获得成功，他们会带来一些特别的东西，而这些是那些天之骄子们所不具备的。

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