High school and college are periods of ever-expanding responsibility for students. You can get help from some practical apps. Check out these apps to get a head-start on being on top of your life!

Sleep Cycle alarm clock (free; iOS, Android)

Getting enough sleep is essential to getting a good education, but waking up rested isn’t just about how much you sleep; it’s about where you are in your sleep cycle when you wake up. Sleep Cycle uses your phone’s microphone and/or accelerometer to analyze your sleeping patterns and wake you up at the best time, when you’re in your lightest sleep state(within a window that you set, so that you’re not late). myHomework Student Planner(free; iOS, Android, Windows)

The myHomework Student Planner is available on wide variety of platforms so that you can stay organized wherever you are. You can keep track of your class schedule and homework, get reminders for upcoming tests, and sync it across all of your platforms. There’s also a premium version for $4.99 that takes away the ads, gives you more themes, lets you add file attachments, and integrates access to external calendars.

Circle of 6(free; iOS, Android)

Circle of 6 is an innovative safety app that connects you to six of your most trusted friends (your “circle”) and helps you keep track of each other. If you’re feeling scared about a situation you’re in you can send a per-programmed text to your circle with just two taps, and it will include your exact location. This could also be used by younger students to discreetly let their parents know that they’re in an uncomfortable situation and want to be picked up.

Goodbudget(free; iOS, Android)

Goodbudget can divide your money into virtual “envelopes” for things like Groceries, Transportation, Entertainment, Gas, and whatever else you need to budget for. The free version includes 10 regular envelopes plus syncing across two devices. Or you can move to a premium subscription(溢价认购)($5/month, $45/year)for more envelopes, five devices, and a five-year transaction history.

Most people love to lose themselves in a great book, maybe a classic novel, a modern storybook or a great work of history. But many people also live busy lives, and for them finding time to sit quietly and read is difficult, if not impossible. Fortunately, with the coming of the Internet and high-tech tools like the iPod, more and more people are making literature a part of their lives again.

A very special website now makes it possible for people to listen to books that they simply would not have time to read. The site is called Audible Inc., and it’s the best place to download audio (音频的) books. Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of these books have been recorded. They include nearly every classic, as well as most newly-published ones. Most of these are read by voice actors who really bring the text to life.

Audible Inc. lets you easily and quickly download a book and load it onto your iPod or other MP3 players, or onto CDs so that you can listen in your car. The site is like Amazon, com, but for audio books. It includes thousands of recommendations (推荐) and customer reviews that are extremely helpful. The site lets you listen to a free piece of each book so you can tell ahead what the narrator (讲述者) sounds like. No wonder that most people who listen to an audio book for the first time are immediately attracted.

This is the perfect opportunity to find out what so many people know about audio books. But be careful — you may become attracted to audio books for life.

Our family loves the snow and cheers at the first good storm of the season. While others may think of Florida, we dream of a cabin vacation in New York’s Allegany State Park.

One particular trip, I recall, was just a bit more memorable than the rest. What we now refer to as the snow pants incident began accidentally enough. My husband, Bernie, and our 2-year-old daughter, Faith, were building a snow fort while I sledded down a nearby slope.

On the way back up from one trip, I saw a small stone tumbling down the track I had just made. I was puzzled, since all the other rocks were buried under several feet of snow, as I stood and wondered about the stone---it jumped! This was no stone. This was a mouse.

Now, I love nature, but that doesn’t include mice. I loudly protested the invader, and Bernie, coming to my rescue, assured me that this was not a mouse but a mole, as if that mattered. A mouse or a mole I still didn’t like it.

Bernie and I stood for a few minutes watching the creature disappear from the path into the furry white and come back out again. But soon it disappeared and I headed up the hill again.

Shortly after I left, my husband screamed out, saying that the mole had gone up the leg of his snow pants. You have to understand Bernie can be quite a joker, and I smelled a rat. Not wanting to be a sucker and fall for another one of his jokes, I laughed it off. When he started running for the cabin, though, I stopped laughing and decided maybe this was for real.

“Don’t you dare take that thing into the house!” I yelled. But like a flash, Bernie was already dashing through the cabin’s front door, with his snow pants, the mole and all. If it were me, I’d have been down to my long underwear right there in the snow without a second thought.

A few minutes later Bernie appeared. We relished the rest of our winter vacation, drinking lots of hot chocolate, sitting beside the fireplace and admiring nature---from a safe distance.

Growing up can sometimes seem like a roller coaster. There are ups and downs and unexpected turns. Abuse or neglect by adult can make the ride even rougher. But being bullied(欺凌) by another child can leave especially lasting scars. That's the finding of a new study.

Bullied kids face a high risk of mental health problems as teens and as young adults. Indeed bullied kids might be worse off than those who had suffered physical abuse or neglect, the study found.

Dieter Wolke works at the University of Warwick in England. Until recently, most studies of child victims focused not on bullying but on maltreatment, this psychologist says. Maltreatment includes physical or emotional abuse, neglect or other behaviors that can harm a child.

Wolke's team wanted to better understand how bullying's long-term effects compare to those due to maltreatment. They focused on 4,026 children in the United Kingdom and 1,420 more in the United States. Information about bullying and maltreatment was collected for American children to age 13.They collected the same information for British youth up to age 16. The researchers also gathered data on each individual's mental health as a young adult.

Among the Americans, 36 percent of bullied kids had mental problems later. Those problems included anxiety, which is a state of excessive worry. They also included depression. That is a feeling of hopelessness that can last a long time. Among kids who had been maltreated by adults, 17 percent later suffered mental health problems. That was less than half the rate seen in people who had been bullied as school kids.

In the U. K. group, the difference was less spectacular. Roughly 25 percent of the bullied kids reported mental health problems later, compared with about 17 percent who had been maltreated.

But however you look at it, the finding are disturbing, Wolke says. They show that bullied children have similar or worse mental health problems later in life. And that’s why he says schools, health services and other agencies must work together to end bullying.