If you ask me, real life is not all it's cracked up to be. Twelve years at school and three years at university, teachers banging on about opportunities in the big wide world beyond our sheltered life as students, and what do I find?
Try as I might to stay cheerful, all I ever get is hassle, sometimes with people (especially boys, god, when will they grow up?), but mostly with money. It's just so expensive out here! Everyone wants a slice off you. The Inland Revenue wants to deduct income tax, the bank manager wants repayments on my student loan, the landlord wants the rent, gas, water, electricity and my mobile bills keep coming in, and all that's before I've had anything to eat. And then some bright spark calls me out of the blue, asking if I'm interested in buying a pension. At this rate, I won't even last till the end of the year, let alone till I'm 60 。
依我看，现实生活并没有人们想象的那么好。我们上了12 年的中、小学，又上了3 年的大学，这期间老师们一直在没完没了地谈论在备受呵护的学生生活之外的那个广阔天地里的各种机会，可我遇到的又是什么呢？
无论我怎么想保持心情愉快，可麻烦事总是接踵而来：有时是和人发生矛盾(尤其是跟男孩子，天哪！他们什么时候才能长大？)，但通常是为钱发愁。这个地方什么东西都很贵！人人都想从我身上赚点钱：税务局要收个人所得税，银行经理要我偿清学生贷款，房东催我交房租、燃气费、水费、电费，手机账单也不断地寄来。所有这些还没算上吃饭的钱。更可气的是，不知从哪里冒出一个自作聪明的家伙给我打电话，问我要不要买养老金。照这样下去，我甚至都支撑不到年底，更别提活到60 岁领养老金了。
2. 我认为，选修第二专业并不合适每一位本科生。我大学本科主修英语专业，大一时就开始辅修经济学了。无疑，我是
班里最用功的学生。我竭尽全力想同时达到两个不同专业的要求，但还是有不及格的时候。因为经济学需要良好的数学基础，我不得不花大量时间钻研数学，因而忽略了英语学习。
第二学期，《英国文学》及《宏观经济学》两门课不及格给我敲响了警种，这可是我一生中第一次考试不及格，这大大打击了我的自信心。虽然我不是一个容易向命运低头的人，在暑假结束的时候，我还是决定放弃经济学，以免两个
专业都难以完成。当我只需修一个专业的时候，一切似乎又回到了正轨。(if you ask me; odds; try as …might; sap one ' s confideniv e ngthat; bow to fate; come to a
close; for fear that; now that)
If you ask me, taking a second major isn ' t good for every undergraduate. In my freshman year as an English major, I took economics as my minor. By all odds, I was the most hardworking student in my class. But try as I might to meet the requirements of the two different subjects, I still couldn do well enough to pass all the exams.Given that the study of economics required a good command of mathematics, I had to spend so much time on math that I neglected my English major.
Failing English Literature and Macro-economics in the second semester sounded the alarm for me. This was the first time I did not pass a course in my life, which had greatly sapped my confidence.Although I was not a man who would easily bow to fate, as the summer break came to a close, I decided to give up economics for fear that I would fail in both subjects. Now that I had only one subject to attend to, everything seemed to be on the right track again.
1，Indubitably the vast majority of books overlap one another. Few indeed are those which give the impression of originality, either in style or in content. Rare are the unique books —less than 50, perhaps, out of the whole storehouse of literature. In one of his recent autobiographical novels,
