As another class of college seniors prepares to finish their final semester of school, they might focus on finals and job interviews – but they should also think about what awaits them once they get those jobs. There's plenty that will be new to them about the work world, some of it pleasant (paid vacation!) and some of it less so.

對于又一屆即將結束大學最后一學期的大四學生來說，他們最關注的問題可能是畢業考試和工作面試。但是他們同樣要考慮到工作后的情形。工作領域中有很多新事物，有些令人愉悅（比如帶薪休假！），但有些卻不是這樣。

Here are 10 things that entry-level workers don't always realize in their first jobs – but will hopefully figure out quickly.

這里是給職場新人的十個建議。他們在第一次工作中往往不能很快意識到這些，不過希望他們很快能弄明白。

1.The salary you accept when you take the job is the one you need to live with for at least a year. People new to the professional workforce don't always realize that and think they can negotiate a raise after, say, three or six months. Attempting that won't go over well with most employers, since the convention is that you typically can't ask for a salary increase until you've been on the job for at least a year.

你接受工作時同意的薪資水平至少會持續一年。邁入職場的新人們通常都沒有意識到一點，而且也認為他們在之后的3到6個月里就可以商議增加薪水。這種嘗試，在多數雇主那里是行不通的，因為按照慣例，至少工作滿一年以后才可以要求漲薪。

2.When you were in school, making a mistake on a test or a paper or handing in work late only affected you. But at work, mistakes can impact your boss, your co-workers and your company. People might end up staying late to fix your work, miss their own deadlines or lose important business because of you.

上學期間，你在考試、論文里犯的錯和不及時上交工作只會影響到你一個人。但是工作后，你犯的錯會影響到你的老板、同事和公司。大家可能會因為你的失誤而需要熬夜來修補你的工作漏洞，錯過了任務最后期限或者是錯失了重要業務。

3.Being smart and having potential is no longer enough; what you actually achieve is now what matters. In school, teachers often favor the smartest students and even cut them slack on things like being prepared for class or even on being respectful or working hard. But in the working world, reputations and careers are built on actual work; being smart won't give you a pass if you miss deadlines, aren't prepared for meetings or don't meet your goals.

僅僅聰明、富有潛力還不夠；你的實際工作才是現在最關鍵的。學校里，老師總是喜歡那些最聰明的學生，甚至在課前準備、品格和工作態度方面對他們放松要求。但是在工作中，聲譽和事業要基于實際的工作。聰明的特點不會在你錯過截止日期，或是沒有對會議進行充分準備，或沒有達成目標時給你特赦。

4.You have to book time off around holidays. It's not like school, where you automatically get a week or more off around Christmas and New Year's. And many offices are open the day after Thanksgiving; it's not a holiday, despite what school schedules might have led you to expect. And speaking of longer vacations …

你要在假期前后請假。不像在學校，在圣誕節和新年的時候，你會有一周以上的假期。很多公司在感恩節后的第二天還繼續營業。感恩節并不是假日，盡管學校的日程安排可能讓你覺得它是個假日。其他的長假也是類似的。。。。。。

5.Two weeks is the most time you can take off at once in many workplaces. Those days of lengthy vacations may be a thing of the past. In many workplaces, two weeks is the uppermost limit of how much time you can take off at once. In fact, two weeks might be the full amount of vacation time you're allotted per year, and if you use it all up at once, you won't be able to take any time off the rest of the year. (But this does vary by workplace; some offer double or even triple that, particularly as you move into more senior roles.)

兩周是很多工作場合允許的最長休假時間。過去悠長假期的日子已經一去不復返了。在很多地方，2周是一次性請假允許的最長時間。事實上，2周可能是你每年可休假時間的總數。如果你一次性把假都請完的話，1年里剩余的時間里就沒有任何假期了。（不過各個公司情況有所不同。有些公司的假期長度是這個的兩倍甚至是3倍，特別是當你升入更高的職位之后。）

6.Unlike in school, great performance on the job isn't just about waiting for assignments and doing them. While in school it was often enough to simply do your assignments, at work you should be identifying ways to drive your department's work forward and taking initiative to do things better. If you sit around and wait for someone to tell you what to do, you might not get much done. That said, you also need to know the parameters of where you can take initiative and where you can't, which isn't always spelled out explicitly (and therefore can really confuse new workers).

不像在學校里，工作表現良好不能只是等待分配任務然后完成它們。在學校，只要完成你的作業就夠了，但是在工作場合中，你必須明白讓你所在部門的工作向前推進的方法，并且主動完善。如果你坐等別人告訴干什么，你可能不會有很大的成就。另外，你要把握好分寸。這個分寸一般都不會明說。（因此新員工可能會很困惑）。

7.You need to look politely interested in meetings, no matter how boring the topic. Yes, you might see senior folks checking their phones or looking bored – but they've usually earned the right to do that. As a junior employee, nodding off or being obviously distracted will reflect far worse on you than it does on senior colleagues; you're expected to look attentive, no matter how sleepy the meeting might make you.

出于禮貌，不管話題有多無聊，你都要表現出對會議感興趣的樣子。你可能會看到資深的同事在查看手機，看上去一副很無聊的樣子—但是他們一般已經為自己贏取足夠的權利這樣做。作為低級雇員，打瞌睡或是明顯走神的行為在你身上出現比在那些高級職員身上出現要糟得多。不管會議是不是讓你昏昏欲睡，你都看上去要很專注。

8.Your attitude really matters. You might do good work, but if you appear unfriendly, rude, disinterested in others or defensive, you'll find it hard to advance – and could even end up losing your job. Being polite and cheerful isn't optional if you want to thrive in most workplaces.

態度很重要。你可能工作完成得很好，但是你看起來很不友善、粗魯、對他人漠不關心、戒心很強，這樣你很難得到提升，甚至可能最后丟掉工作。在大部分工作場所中，如果你想要成功，必須要做到禮貌、開朗。

9.A lunch “hour” is often 30 minutes. Forget what you've seen on TV or read about in books; in many workplaces, 30 minutes is the maximum you can take for lunch, and people often don't even do that and instead grab something and eat it on the go.

午餐時間通常是30分鐘。忘記你在電視上或是書上看到過的場景，在大部分工作場所中，30分鐘是可以用來午餐的最長時間。大家通常只是隨便買些東西，匆匆忙忙地解決午餐。

10.Your boss wants you to get to the point. In school, you might have learned to delve deeply into every aspect of an issue, but most managers want to hear the upshot first and then decide whether to ask for more background. This is true in face-to-face conversations, but it's especially true in writing; few managers have the time or inclination to read multiple-page memos or lengthy emails. Short summaries with bullet points are generally preferred.

抓住重點。在學校，你可能學會了深層探究一個議題的各個方面。但是大多數管理人員首先想要聽到結果，然后再決定要不要詢問更多背景信息。這適用于面對面的交談，同時也尤其適用于筆頭文件。沒有人有時間、有心情讀上好幾頁的文件或是冗長的郵件。簡短的總結加上幾個重點更為合適。

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）