【推荐1】Even now, I have vivid memories of my last day of high school. In my mind’s eye, I’m cleaning out my locker, and then staring at the emptiness for a few extra beats before slamming it shut for the last time. I’m roaming the halls with my best friend, blissfully ignoring the bells going off every 50 minutes on schedule because, just today, we’re allowed to break the rules. I’m sitting on my desk, swinging my feet, and shooting the breeze (闲聊) with my English teacher, Mr. Carr, in a way that makes me feel almost grown up.

It was maybe my favorite day of the whole year. Like the final layer of watercolor, the freedom and lightness I feel seeps (渗透) into the rest of my memories of that day and turns them just a shade rosier.

If the school year hasn’t yet ended for you, consider what you can do to make the finale count. Why? Because when it comes to human memory, not all moments are created equal. Instead, our remembered experiences are disproportionately (不成比例地) influenced by peaks(the best moments as well as the worst)and endings (the last moments). Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman, who discovered this phenomenon, called this the peak-end rule. It suggests that our judgment of a past experience is largely based on its most extreme point and its endpoint.

I took advantage of the peak-end rule years ago, when my girls were young enough to want a bedtime story each night. I remember thinking that whatever strife (冲突) and stress had occurred that day, I could make the last moments count. I could end on a note of calm and act like the patient mom I hadn’t quite managed to be just hours before.

Don’t mistake all moments as equal in significance. There’s a reason why yoga classes end with savasana (挺卧式). There’s a reason we eat dessert last. Do orchestrate (精心安排) endings. As Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll might say: Finish strong. Last impressions are especially lasting.

【推荐1】Playing video interactive games, and later computer games, has been a big part of people’s lives ever since the birth of Pong and gaming consoles (游戏机) in the early 1970s. But games have progressed steadily since those early days. Now online games are being played worldwide by people of all ages.

While many people tend to think of gamers as people who sit alone on their couches and anonymous to other players, the opposite is actually true according to the BBC. With the rise in popularity of games, people, especially for those in Generation Z, have built communities and friendships with their fellow players. These connections have become a social lifeline during these times of social distancing and lockdowns (活动限制).

While TV and Netflix help people pass the time, there is no interaction between people like the ones found in gaming and the amount of time people play has seriously increased during the COVID-19 pandemic (疫情). In fact, in the US, gamers are now playing an average of 6 hours and 46 minutes weekly. And the numbers keep going up.

Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, where people can watch other people play videogames in real time webcasts and can chat with other viewers, actually clocked 5 billion hours of viewed content in the second quarter of 2020. That was an 83 percent increase from 2019 and a new record. But this increase in gaming is about much more than just entertainment. “This isn’t just out of boredom but an inner desire to be social. New gaming capabilities allow people to communicate with one another virtually,” said Nigel Burmeister, vice president of Limelight Networks. That’s because humans are naturally social and human contacts are necessary for our mental health.

Rosemary “Nekkra” Kelley, a 25-year-old gamer, told USA Today that she’s spending a lot more time playing games because her work has been curtailed due to the cancellation of live events. In her extra time, she has been playing Pokémon Sword and Animal Crossings on her Nintendo Switch.

【推荐2】Miss Marquis was my mentor (导师) when I was 12 and she’s my mentor now as a teacher.

My family moved to the UK from Saudi Arabia in 2017. When I started school there, I didn’t have a great understanding of the English language. Thankfully, I had an amazing teacher called Miss Marquis who helped me get through it. She pushed me all the way and gave me the right guidance.

During my teacher training with ARK, I was given a place at Globe Academy in London as a math teacher. When I saw the head of the English department was Miss Marquis, my jaw (下巴) dropped. It was unbelievable.

I still can’t call her by her first name. The respect I have for her is still there. In one of the lessons I observed she was reading the same book we used in our GCSEs and it took me back to the days when I was being taught by her. You knew you could go to her and share your problems. At the same time, you would never mess about in her lesson. Misbehaving was simply not done.

My aim as a teacher is affected by her. Teaching is about the mark you make on other people’s lives. I’ve worked in a few different schools during my training but I chose ARK because it gives opportunities to children who may not be from wealthy backgrounds. I am trying to have an impact on these people.

It doesn’t matter how many books you read, and nothing can prepare you for your first lesson. I have read all the theories about how to manage behavior but a lot of them just go out of my head when I walk into the classroom because they’re not robots. They’re all unique individuals and you can’t control them. You need to put the work in and build relationships with the students.

【推荐1】Alone in the wilderness. Nothing but jungle. A world of shadow with the rays of light falling like blonde hair from the crowns of the giant trees. Jungle in the midday sun. Everything motionless. Not a sound from sky or earth. Complete silence. Only some coconuts falling, at long intervals, very far away. The world reduced to the soft touch of cool grass along my naked back, and a sweet smell of rich soil and vegetation. Stretched out with closed eyes beside my heavy burden of fruit and firewood, I enjoyed the feeling of fresh blood streaming through every part of my body and fresh jungle air filling every corner of my lungs.

Resting motionless, I could see the sun through my closed eyelids, alone in the sky, as lonely as I, and as motionless and silent as everything else. The earth had surely stopped turning and somewhere on this planet there was supposed to be roaring traffic in busy streets. What a crazy, unbelievable thought!

Another coconut fell, to make the world come to a complete standstill. I had to roll over onto my stomach to feel that at least I could move and make noises. Then I found company. A little brown ant was struggling to find its way with a bit of dry straw through the jungle of leaves and grass below my nose. I wondered if I could give the little fellow a lift with its burden, but it showed not the slightest sign of tiredness and struggled on with all six legs, head first or head last, waving its feelers energetically as if the trip had just started. Who ever saw a tired ant? Tiredness, disagreeable tiredness, is restricted to hunted animals, slaves and modern man. It is as great an effort for an office clerk to walk five blocks with a loaded brief-case as it is for a jungle-dweller to cross a valley with a goat on his back. It is as hard to get up and climb or run when you have been seated for years as it is to get up and walk when you have been in bed for months. The body is strange. Spare it, and you get really tired for almost nothing; use it, and almost nothing makes you really tired.

I rose to my feet. I had heard a horse neighing down in the valley. Above me, on the open highland plains, there were wild horses. But down in the valley there was never a horse unless there was a man on it. Somebody was making his way up the valley and my wife was alone.