When I was four, I lost my sight by falling off a box car and landing on my head. Now I’m thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of sunshine and what color red is. It’d be wonderful to see again, but a disaster can do strange things to people.
It took me years to discover and strengthen this belief. It had to start with the most trivial things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. “I can’t use this,” I was hurt, thinking he was teasing me. “Take it with you,” he insisted, “and roll it around.” The words stuck in my head. By rolling the ball I could feel where it went.
The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. Had I not done that, I’d have broken down and become a chair rocker for the rest of my life. And the path to the belief is never smooth.
| A．I’d fail sometimes, but on average, I made progress |
| B．This gave me an idea on something I had thought impossible to achieve |
| C．As people always say, it takes steel and temper to make a difference |
| D．It came into my mind all of a sudden |
| E．It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do now if I hadn’t been blind |
| F．Life asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Each New Year, we wish others happiness and success.
You want to be free of such weaknesses as complaint, hatred, and anger.
As long as you are useful to people, your value will never be lost. “Any of your good actions will always come back to you. Today you have the whole world for a family. What you need to feel is that everybody is part of your own family.
There is always happiness when you focus on what you have. With this calmness, abilities appear naturally. Success comes, beauty comes, and peace comes.
| A．What are the effects of success? |
| B．What really is the sign of success? |
| C．Welcome the New Year with a smile. |
| D．Take responsibility and then there is no suffering. |
| E．Understand that negative feelings are because of the past. |
| F．Focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have. |
| G．Never quit and keep on trying, and then you will make it. |
【推荐2】Richard is a very a successful businessman. It is common for him to work hard with a non-stop. He wasn’t aware that he might wear himself out or die an early death until he overslept one morning, which was a sort of alarm. And then what happened? He had a week’s leave during which time he read novels, listened to music and walked with his wife on a beach, which has enabled Richard to return to work again.
In our modern life, we have lost the rhythm between action and rest. Amazingly, within this world there is a universal but silly saying: “I am so busy.”
We say this to one another as if our tireless efforts were a talent by nature and an ability to successfully deal with stress. The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to our friends and family, and to be unable to find time to relax — this has become the model of a successful life.
Because we do not rest, we lose our way. We miss the guide telling us where to go, the food providing us with strength, the quiet giving us wisdom.
How have we allowed this to happen? I believe it is this: we have forgotten the Sabbath, the day of the week — for followers of some religions — for rest and praying. It is a day when we are not supposed to work, a time when we devote ourselves to enjoying and celebrating what is beautiful. It is a good time to bless our children and loved ones, give thanks, share meals, walk and sleep. It is a time for us to take a rest, to put our work aside, trusting that there are larger forces at work taking care of the world.
Rest is s spiritual and biological need; however, in our strong ambition to be successful and care for our many responsibilities, we may feel terribly guilty when we take time to rest. The Sabbath gives us permission to stop work. In fact, “Remember the Sabbath” is more than simply permission to rest; it is a rule to obey and a principle to follow.
1. What’s the function of the paragraph 1?| A．To tell us that Richard lives a healthy life. |
| B．To bring up the topic of the passage. |
| C．To give us a brief introduction of Richard |
| D．To tell Richard is a successful businessman. |
| A．a signal of stress | B．a warning of danger |
| C．a sign of age | D．a spread of disease |
| A．be able to work without stress | B．be more talented than other people |
| C．be more important than anyone else | D．be busying working without time to rest |
| A．Praying for our family. | B．Taking a good break. |
| C．Only working for two hours. | D．Enjoying delicious meal. |
| A．We should balance work with rest. |
| B．The Sabbath gives us permission to rest. |
| C．It is silly for anyone to say “I am busy.” |
| D．We should be available to our family and friends. |
【推荐3】A good way to look at failure straight in the face is by writing a failure resume(简历)or CV. Like social media，there，we usually only see our friends’“highlight part”. When we look at others’resumes，we get scared and think how ours doesn’t measure up. But even the most accomplished people have plenty of failure behind them—we just don’t see it.
Stefan felt this deeply as a scientist，so she wrote a different CV which of course boasted (夸耀)about her good grades，PhD，and published papers. But the way she deals with her failure CV is a model of what we could a11 do.
“My CV does not reflect my great academic efforts—it does not mention the exams I failed，my unsuccessful PhD or scholarship applications，or the papers never accepted for publication. During the interviews，I talk about the one project that worked，not about the many that failed，”writes Stefan in a column for Nature.com.
Stefan suggests keeping a draft on which you log，casually but regularly，every unsuccessful application，refused grant proposal and rejected paper.
And that’s the point：not to consider what we got wrong，but to use that information to both look at failure and realize it’s really okay，and also to use our failures for another purpose：as learning tools.
The point is to be real—with ourselves and about how the world works. Being real means taking an honest，critical，but also kind look at what we didn’t get right，and then doing our best to change what we can. Instead of focusing on how that failure makes you feel，take the time to step back and analyze the practical，operational reasons that you failed.
So，prctice being okay with failure，and turning your failures into lessons learned. And yes，sometimes we have to learn those lessons more than once，letting go of what you can’t change. And keep moving forward to success.
1. What does the underlined word“it”in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Plenty of failure. | B．A failure resume. |
| C．Highlight part. | D．Social media. |
| A．A11 her failures in her career. |
| B．Benefits she got from her failures. |
| C．The content of her own resume. |
| D．The difference between her resume and others’. |
| A．Regard failures as part of our life. |
| B．Keep a record of our failures. |
| C．Value our achievements. |
| D．Long for failures. |
| A．No pains，no gains. |
| B．A11 roads lead to Rome. |
| C．Where there is a will，there is a way. |
| D．Failure is the mother of success. |
【推荐1】He’s saving for college 25 cents at a time.
For senior David Krichbaum of Firestone High School in Ohio, US, that means handfuls of peanut M&Ms, lots of sales pitches (推销辞令) and plenty of rejections.
This 17-year-old student bought his first gumball machine (口香糖贩卖机) about 18 months ago “just for something to do”.
He cleaned up the machine with fresh paint and placed it inside a popular Chinese restaurant in Ohio.
Since then, David has set up six more vending machines (自动售货机) in spots around Ohio.
But it wasn’t until he added a full-color “My College Fund” sign above the candy-filled globe late last year that his business skyrocketed.
“My sales doubled when I added that sign,” he said.
His goal is to expand his market to 30 gumball machine locations and generate $800 a month in profits.
He has already been accepted into the University of Akron’s business college, where the cost of tuition and books will be about $10,500 (69,000 yuan) per year.
The budding (崭露头角的) businessman doesn’t want to take out a student loan. “I just want to have some responsibility and at the same time get some experience in sales and business,” he said.
Theresa Krichbaum said her son has always had a creative mind. Aside from the vending business, he also runs his own hot dog stand at special events.
When he was recently denied a chance to sell his hot dogs at a local wrestling meet, he bought and opened his own candy stand. David hopes it will carry him through college and eventually to his own restaurant or other small business.
As with any business model, things in the candy market are not always sweet. David estimates that prospective business clients have rejected him and his vending machines about 200 times.
“It’s no big deal; it’s just part of the game,” he said.
1. What inspired David to begin his business? (no more than twelves words)2. What made his candy business greatly take off? (no more than ten words)
3. Ideally, how long does David have to run his business to cover the cost of one year in the University of Akron’s business college? (no more than 5 words)
4. What is David’s long-term goal in business? (no more than 15 words)
5. What two words can best describe David? Please give your reasons? (no more than 30 words)
【推荐2】When Lauren Schandevel arrived at the University of Michigan for her freshman year, she was struck by how wealthy all her classmates appeared to be.
“Just wealthy in ways that I couldn’t even imagine,” Schandevel recalls. Students had fashionable clothes and well-connected and powerful parents.
Schandevel had grown up in the north of Detroit. Her family was working class and she had gotten scholarships and a few loans to make attending the admirable state school a reality. When she got to campus, she didn’t think much about her status as a low-income student. Sure, when her bill came due, she’d have a bit of panic--- would this be the semester the financial aid fell through?
Then, during Schandevel’s junior year, the university’s student government put out a campus affordability guide, written with the average Michigan student in mind-but it’s worth noting that the average student at the school has a family income of about $150,000 per year.
The advice didn’t go over well with low-income students on campus. “A lot of the advice was like: fire your maid or sell your car. I was frustrated(受挫的) by this guide, and I was seeing others frustrated by it,” says Schandevel.
She decided to make her own affordability guide, and she fired up a Google doc and titled it “Being Not-Rich at UM: A Guide“. She added her own tips---the things that helped her survive and budget. But there was so much she didn’t know, so she left the sharing settings(分享设置) open for other students to jump in and edit the online document.
It took off. Hundreds of students started adding their tips about how to navigate college when you are paying your way through college. Today, Schandevel’s crowd- sourced guide stretches more than 100 pages. It includes advice about jobs, housing, teachers and financial aid---even many great tips on where to find free food on campus. The doc’s popularity helped her accept her economic status and gave her control over her life.
“Economic status is such an invisible identity, and there are no places on campus where we can really find each other,” says Schandevel. “It brought together people who had experienced this before, and students knew they were not alone.”
1. How did Schandevel probably feel in her first year of college?| A．Very excited | B．A little curious. | C．Very confident | D．A little upset. |
| A．Ways to live a happy life. | B．Tips on how to become rich |
| C．Advice on how to save money | D．Ideas about how to become creative |
| A．Ambiguous | B．cautious | C．disapproving | D．positive |
| A．The tips are well-accepted | B．The tips are from the crowd |
| C．The source of finance is abundant | D．The online document is crowded |
| A．It brings people in the same ecnomic situation together |
| B．It helps her improve her family’s living conditions. |
| C．It serves as a reminder of keeping to a strict budget |
| D．It offered financial aid to low-income students. |
Everything changed for Zoe in grade nine. At that time, she heard about a sewing (缝纫) class at her school. She signed up and couldn't wait to turn her designs into clothes. The color of the first dress she made was white-black strips. Soon the clothes she wore were all made by her. Other girls at school loved her designs too. They asked her if they could buy dresses from her. Zoe sold her first dress for $13. Unfortunately, it cost her $25 to make the dress. “I had the creativity in designs," says Zoe. “But I really had no idea about business.”
Zoe kept selling the clothes she designed. Her business was booming, and even the girls who had ever teased her became her customers. In the eleventh grade, Zoe took a business class. She learned how to price her clothes so that she could be sure to make a fair profit.
Her business teacher suggested she take part in a contest for teenaged entrepreneurs (企业家). The contest was for teens from all over the United States. Zoe sent in her business plan, which explained how she planned to make her pany grow. She won the second prize in the end. Zoe ’s success became a news item. Supermodel Tyra Banks heard about it and she invited Zoe to take part in her TV show. “Being recognized I felt really unreal,” says Zoe. Zoe has advice for teens who want to start their own business. “If you really work hard on it, you will be able to make it happen,” she says. “If I can do it, anyone else can.”
1. We can learn that_____________ when she was in grade nine.
| A．Zoe had no interest in designing clothes |
| B．Zoe seldom wore her self-made clothes |
| C．Zoe didn' t know how to make money |
| D．Zoe attended a business course |
| A．considered it a reward | B．expected to be known |
| C．was proud of her own gift | D．could hardly believe it |
| A．to make efforts to achieve their dreams |
| B．to design and make their own clothes |
| C．to try every means to bee famous |
| D．to do whatever they would like to |
