【推荐3】“I really want to, but I can’t because...”

It hurts every time I hear it. I see it for what it is—an excuse. Every one of us has hopes, dreams and goals. We talk about how we will achieve them, but when it’s time to do them, we use that sentence.

When I was a teen girl, I felt stuck. I wanted to learn so many things and achieve my wildest dreams, yet I couldn’t. Living in an underdeveloped country, we suffer from a lack of water, electricity and other resources (资源). And, we don’t have training courses, libraries or clubs, and the Internet is slow.

One day, I decided to create the future I dreamed of. I set my mind on getting the Japanese Monbusho Scholarship (奖学金). I found articles and books online to become fluent in Japanese. In a few months, I was able to hold a simple conversation in Japanese.

I realized that I would need money. I set out to build a hedgehog (刺猬) care website. Every day, after school, I would research hedgehogs and write detailed articles about them. I studied Japanese and wrote about hedgehogs for three years.

I’m sure you’re expecting a happy ending where I travel to Japan and live off my website. That’s not how this story ends. The fact is, I didn’t even get the chance to apply for the scholarship. I failed, Unwilling to accept the facts, I started an online university the next year. And the hedgehog website made me a total of $60.

I can tell you that I tried, but it didn’t work out. It did—just not the way I expected.

I’m not in Japan, but I know how to speak Japanese and have met many interesting people along the way. My hedgehog website didn’t succeed, but I created a new one that s even better with the experience I gained.

I didn’t let my difficulties stand in my way, and I created my own opportunities. Anyone can embrace (欣然接受) the cards they’ve been given and create their own way to make them into a winning hand.

【推荐2】Throughout my 41 years at General Electric, I’ve experienced a lot. In the media, I’ve gone from prince to pig and back again. And I’ve been called many things.

In the early days, some called me a crazy, wild man. When I became CEO two decades ago, Wall Street asked, “Jack who?”

When I tried to make GE more competitive by cutting back our workforce in the early 1980s, the media called me “Neutron Jack.” When they learned we were focused on values and culture at GE, people asked if “Jack has gone soft. ” I’ve been No. 1 or No. 2 Jack, Services Jack, Global Jack, and, in more recent years. Six Sigma Jack and e-Business Jack.

When we made an effort to acquire Honeywell in October 2000, and I agreed to stay on through the transition (过渡期), some thought of me as the Long-in-the-Tooth Jack hanging on by his fingertips to his CEO job.

Those characterizations said less about me and a lot more about the stage our company went through. Truth is, down deep, I’ve never really changed much from the boy my mother raised in Salem, Massachusetts.

When I started on this journey in 1981, standing before Wall Street analysts for the first time at New York’s Pierre Hotel, I said I wanted GE to become “the most competitive enterprise on earth.” My objective was to put a small-company spirit in a big-company body, to build an organization out of an old-line industrial company that would be more high-spirited, more adaptable, and more flexible than companies that are one-fiftieth our size. I said then that I wanted to create a company “where people dare to try new things, where people know that only the limits of their creativity and drive, their own standards of personal excellence, will be the ceiling on how far and how fast they move. ”

I’ve put my mind, my heart, and my courage into that journey every day of the 40-plus years I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of GE.

【推荐3】Ken Campbell had last attempted running at high school. When his wife, Susan, injured her foot, she needed support to rejoin her running group, so Campbell went along to keep her company and share in the recovery. “We were just walking at the beginning,” he says. “And I was heavy. I weighed over 90kg.” But as the weeks and months passed, the weight fell away, Susan recovered — and Campbell’s abilities grew. At the age of 63, he ran 50km, and at 70, he ran through the night to complete a 100km ultramarathon.

So how does someone with no sporting precedent (先例) become an ultradistance runner in his 60s and 70s? Susan had run marathons before her injury. But for Campbell, the turning point came when Susan’s Fleet Feet running group took to the trails in the Sierra Nevada foothills near their home in Citrus Heights, California.

Campbell went out to visit Susan’s group, and “the trails were a terrible mess. It had been raining. And I was running in my road shoes. Slipping and sliding and falling. And I was struggling. I thought, well, I like this a lot but I could do better.”

What he liked above all was the feeling of “being enveloped by the trail, being embraced by the closeness of the vegetation and the nearness of the river. I was walking where Native people had walked for thousands of years and where miners had walked on their way to gold.”

Running the 100km ultramarathon took Campbell 16 hours. When Campbell crossed the finish line at 3am, Susan handed him a 100km sticker to display on the back of his truck. He already had a 50km one on there. “It is a public proclamation (声明) that you are part of this community,” he says. “Wherever we park, I see a line of vehicles with their various stickers and I feel that we area tribe (部落).”

Campbell suffered arthritis before he started running, and is “a candidate for knee replacement”. But for now, he is holding off on surgery. It could put an end to the running — but the “sense of wellbeing and accomplishment will carry me on forever”, he says. “If I can’t run, I will walk.”

【推荐1】I was driving 80 miles per hour along the road Wednesday. I knew I was going too fast, but it was the only hope I had. My dog, Jett, was dying in the backseat.

About half an hour earlier I received a call from my daughter. A ball got stuck in Jett's throat. He was struggling to breathe. I raced home to see if I could help, but the dog's mouth water had made the ball too slippery to pull out by hand. So my daughter and I began our race to the vet's(兽医诊所).

About halfway there, we got caught in traffic jams due to construction. I began wildly sounding my horn(喇叭), hoping to attract help, and ended up catching the eye of several construction workers. In an anxious voice, I told them what had happened to my dog. By then Jett was lying in the backseat, not moving. Cavaja Holt was one of the workers standing there. He stuck his hand down the dog's throat and pulled out the ball, but Jett still wasn't breathing.

And the guy behind Holt shouted out, “Breathe into his mouth! Breathe into his mouth!” And Holt did. It worked! Jett soon began breathing again. After may dog was saved, I continued my trip to the vet's to make sure Jett was OK, and by the time I arrived the dog seemed to be doing much better. The staff there checked the dog over and said Jett was in good health.

Later on, I realized I was so anxious that I forgot to ask the man's name and thank him on the spot. My daughter posted the story on the Internet, asking to locate him. Meanwhile, Holt posted the story too, hoping to find out how the dog was doing. Within minutes, someone connected the two. On Thursday morning, I drove back to the construction site and thanked Holt in person. He is truly a hero.

【推荐3】Two enterprising graduates are selling advertising space on their faces to pay off a combined student debt of almost ￡50,000. Faced with a challenging job market, former Cambridge students Ed Moyse and Ross Harper are painting different company logos on to their faces.

Anyone can buy the advertising space, from businesses to individuals or groups, on a day-to-day basis. The logos — which can be viewed at www.buymyface.co.uk — are then seen by everyone they pass as they go about their daily business.

The graduates, who met on their first day at Selwyn College, Cambridge, started the business on October 1 and said they made ￡3,500 in the first 10 days. The boys said they are “armed only with massive student debt and a firm grasp of the principles of viral advertising” as they attempt to survive for a year merely on income earned by transforming themselves into walking advertisements.

Mr. Harper, 21, from Greenwich, south London, who studied neuroscience, said, “It’s our untraditional way of paying off our student debt. The graduate job market is incredibly unfriendly, and so we thought we’d try and go through it altogether. We’ve seen so many students unsuccessfully applying for jobs, only to eventually settle in a career that they never really wanted. It’s just something a bit different and has taken off quite nicely.”

Mr. Moyse, 22, from Poole, Dorset, said, “It is well beyond our expectations, but we always knew it had value and is novel and crazy.”

“So far, one of the main contributors has been online betting agency, Paddy Power,” Mr. Harper said.

Mr. Moyse, who studied economics, and Mr. Harper came up with the idea after graduating in the summer as a scheme that would not require much investment.