【推荐1】A new study suggests a simple getting-to-know-you exercise might improve classroom relationships. The teacher-student relationship affects every aspect of the educational experience. When students don’t feel safe and respected by their teacher, they are less likely to devote themselves to their education. And when teachers feel distanced from their students, it is nearly impossible to walk into the classroom each day actively, let alone encourage motivation or investment in students.

Hunter Gehlbach, a professor, explained that his research is primarily concerned with social perspective-taking (换位思考), or the ability to understand what drives the people around us. As he explained, “My focus is classrooms and social perspective-taking-figuring out the thoughts and feelings of others seems important. We want teachers to be able to engage in this process and figure out the thought process of students as much as possible, in order to understand where and why they are making mistakes.”

Gehlbach and his colleagues gave 315 students and 25 teachers a “getting-to-know -you” survey of 30 items at the beginning of a school year. The researchers matched similarities between the teacher and the student, and then showed those similarities to the teachers and students. Five weeks later, the researchers returned to start a more in-depth survey of both students and teachers, and to measure their opinions of their relationships and the classroom experience as a whole. The second survey showed that when teachers and students know they have five things in common, relationships and educational outcomes both improve.

Gehlbach explained that the similarities he and his colleagues established were not based on personal information, but on shared preferences. Gehlbach explained: one of the biggest surprises in reading the similarity research was how little some of the similarities were that caused positive feelings towards others.

Though Gehlbach’s study has limitations, he is encouraged by the results and eager to explore the phenomenon further.

【推荐2】What kind of relationship do you think will provide you with more life satisfaction, better health and overall well-being? A romantic relationship? A familial (家庭的) one? Surprisingly, the answer is friendship.

However, it’s not possible to have true friends without first making regular friends. Have you ever thought about how long it takes to turn an acquaintance (认识的人) into a true friend?

Well, a study published in the April issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships might have the answer to that question. According to lead study author Jeffrey Hall, a communications professor at the University of Kansas in the US, we need to spend at least 80 hours with another person to create a true friendship with them.

Hall surveyed two groups as they began new chapters in their lives. One group consisted of 429 adults who had recently relocated (搬家), while the other was made up of 112 freshmen from the University of Kansas.

The results showed that the more time each person spent together, the faster friendship formed in both groups. But it seemed that Hall wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to find out exactly how many hours it takes to form a friendship.

According to the survey, “casual” friends are generally formed after spending about 30 hours together. And people will go from casual friends to regular friends after another 50 hours.

However, it takes a lot longer to get really close to someone: A “close” friendship takes about 140 hours to create and “best friends” need about 300 hours.

But spending time together isn’t the only factor (元素) when it comes to making friends. “It’s not enough to just be in the company of someone… it matters how you spend the time,” Hall told the Daily Mail.

For one thing, as Hall noted, the way we communicate matters. “Catching up, joking around and having meaningful conversation promote intimacy (亲密) and closeness, while small talk actually decreases closeness in the relationship,” he said.

And since time is precious, Hall suggested taking advantage of our school years by making as many friends as we can.

Hall’s relationship tips:

·Watch a TV series together

·Share jokes and laughter

·Have long, meaningful conversations

·Watch a movie together

·Engage (参与) in friendly competition by playing video games

【推荐2】It’s a common belief that the roles actors play might somehow reflect their true personalities. It’s usually not true, but British actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 34, is an exception.

In September,2019 Waller-Bridge took home three Emmy awards for her work on Fleabag–--- best writing in a comedy series, best lead actress, and best comedy series.

Her success is partly because of her family. Descended（遗传） from British nobility, Waller-Bridge was brought up in a free environment. Her mother always told her, “You can be whatever you want if you imagine it.” So Waller-Bridge broke all the rules about what a “good” girl should do. “Our laws and moral codes don’t apply – she lives ... without fear of consequence,” The Sun noted.

That fearlessness extends to being authentic（真实的） in her writing and acting. Unlike the can-do heroines and strong, successful women in many TV dramas, Waller-Bridge shows an imperfect but real character. Just like the character Fleabag, who always found a way to say or do the wrong thing, Waller-Bridge feels her life is a mess. “It resonated（共鸣） with the lives of stressed-out women everywhere in reality – doing their best to find balance in their lives,” a viewer wrote on US movie website IMDb. Variety magazine even calls her an “all-around icon”.

Villanelle in Killing Eve, another hit TV series developed by Waller-Bridge, was a little bit violent but showed no interest for the rules others created, which made many people see themselves in her.

“People have been scared to write characters like these. But I think, now, women are so relieved to have this new template（样板，人设）. And, aren’t we all a bit of everything?”Waller-Bridge said in an interview with Indian Express.

With such courage and sincerity, Waller-Bridge is, without a doubt, a “golden girl” in Hollywood, Australian news website The New Daily commented.

【推荐3】Most people will experience at least one wrong medical diagnosis in their lifetime, resulting in health problems, psychological suffering and financial cost, according to a new report. Because diagnostic errors are generally discovered in retrospect(回顾), researchers said more work needs to be done to improve medical teams and find ways to avoid errors that can change people’s life in the distant future.

“Diagnosis is a collective effort that often involves a team of health care professionals---from primary care physicians to nurses.” said John Ball, chair of the committee which wrote the report. “The type of a single physician observing a patient case and deciding a diagnosis is not always accurate, and a diagnostic errors, we have to look more broadly at the entire process of how a diagnosis is made.”

The researcher, said there are not enough data on diagnostic errors, and efforts to improve diagnosis and reduce errors have not been frequent. The medical culture discourages transparency and makes it more difficult to correct them. The blame lies in cooperation and communication between members of medical teams treating patients, patients themselves, and their families. Besides this, researchers found the healthcare system is not designed for the collaboration needed in the diagnostic process and that diagnosis will continue to worsen if new ideas are not put forward.

The committee recommended more information, from electronic health records to test results, be made more easily available to families and caregivers, to help them better learn and understand what is going on with their health. Creating an environment for patients to question a diagnosis or add information about their condition could also help better influence diagnosis.

Most significantly, the researchers said methods need to be established to make communication between doctors and patients easier. Doctors are not encouraged or paid to communicate with patients as much as they should be.