【推荐1】For those who seek a graduate degree overseas, it is recommended to understand some basic requirements before applying for.     1     .

Develop Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to form your unique opinions on something after analyzing rather than totally accepting another person's point of view. It requires knowledge and vision.     2    , and look at things from a different perspective.

    3    

Doing academic research is an important skill to study overseas. This requires not only passive receptivity but also an active spirit of exploration. High school students should be able to find problems, review literature and have the basic hands-on ability to research topics. So it's better to attend academic conferences or programs.

Perform Social Mission

    4    . A majority of their funds come from social donations. American universities aim to cultivate people with a strong social responsibility. Caring about the disadvantaged, doing volunteer work, participating in animal or environmental protection. These activities will serve as proofs for your social responsibility.

Improve Leadership Ability

Those who show leadership in teams seem to have more potential to be successful in the future.    5    , organizing a student association or calling on others to solve practical problems can be good ways to train for becoming a leader.

【推荐2】How to Get the Sleep Your Body Needs

Boil three to four large lettuce leaves in a cup of water for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, add two mints (薄荷), and drink just before you go to bed. Lettuce contains a sleep-inducing matter, which affects the brain similarly to drugs.     1    

◆ Give yourself a massage (按摩). Slowly move the tips of your fingers around your eyes in a slow, circular motion. After minute, move down to your mouth, then to your neck and the back of your head.     2    

◆ Take hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. A research study found that women with sleeplessness who took a hot bath during this period of time (water temperature approximately 105 (℉), slept much better that night.     3     And then it immediately dropped once they got out of the bath, readying them for sleep.

◆     4     Then, if you wake in the middle of the night and your mind starts going, you can quickly write what you dream about on the page, returning to sleep quickly by knowing you “caught” those thoughts.

Maybe you’re tired of feeling like you’re not at your best or like you’re not getting the sleep you need.     5     Sign up for the National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep Challenge today!

【推荐2】When I was 17, I read a magazine article about a museum called the McNay, once the home of a watercolorist named Marian McNay. She had requested the community to turn it into a museum upon her death. On a sunny Saturday, Sally and I drove over to the museum. She asked, “Do you have the address?” “No, but I’ll recognize it, there was a picture in the magazine.”

“Oh, stop. There it is!”

The museum was free. We entered, excited. A group of people sitting in the hall stopped talking and stared at us.

“May I help you?” a man asked. “No,” I said. “We’re fine.” Tour guides got on my nerves. What if they talked a long time about a painting you weren’t that interested in? Sally had gone upstairs. The people in the hall seemed very nosy (爱窥探的), keeping their eyes on me with curiosity. What was their problem? I saw some nice sculptures in one room. Suddenly I sensed a man standing behind me. “Where do you think you are?” he asked. I turned sharply. “The McNay Art Museum!” He smiled, shaking his head. “Sorry, the McNay is on New Braunfels Street.” “What’s this place?” I asked, still confused. “Well, it’s our home.” My heart jolted (震颤). I raced to the staircase and called out, “Sally! Come down immediately!”

“There’s some really good stuff (艺术作品) up there.” She stepped down, looking confused. I pushed her toward the front door, waving at the family, saying, “Sorry, please forgive us, you have a really nice place.” Outside, when I told Sally what happened, she covered her mouth, laughing. She couldn’t believe how long they let us look around without saying anything.

The real McNay was splendid, but we felt nervous the whole time we were there. Van Gogh, Picasso. This time, we stayed together, in case anything else unusual happened.

Thirty years later, a woman approached me in a public place. “Excuse me, did you ever enter a residence, long ago, thinking it was the McNay Museum?”

“Yes. But how do you know? We never told anyone.”

“That was my home. I was a teenager sitting in the hall. Before you came over, I never realized what a beautiful place I lived in. I never felt lucky before. You thought it was a museum. My feelings about my home changed after that. I’ve always wanted to thank you.”

【推荐3】We took a rare family road trip to the Adirondacks in late August,and it was as refreshing and exhausting as family vacations tend to be.Toward the end of our long drive home, even the kids were leaning forward in their seats urging my lead foot on.At that point in a road trip, even sixty-five miles per hour feels slow. We have become numb to our speed and numb to the road signs flashing by.

My family lives on the edge of Lancaster County. Only thirty miles from home,I hit the brakes, and we began to roll, slowly, behind a horse-drawn carriage.We began to open our eyes again. We saw familiar green hills and the farm with the best watermelons. I rolled down the windows, and we breathed again. Just-cut hay and a barn full of dairy cattle.

At five miles per hour,you remember what you forget at sixty-five.You are thinking about a place,even when you are moving from place to place.

I am a placemaker. A homemaker, too. I am a mother of a young kid at home, and also a writer and a gardener. But, for me, those roles are wrapped up with the one big thing I want to do with the rest of my life: I want to cultivate a place and share it with others.

The place I make with my family is a red-brick farmhouse built in l880. It has quite a few nineteenth-century bedrooms and a few acres of land, and we love nothing more than to fill them with neighbors and friends. We grow vegetables and flowers,keep a baker’s dozen of egg—laying chickens, and, since we moved in three years ago, we have planted many, many trees.

Living with my life’s purpose does not allow for much travel. I need to be here,feeding the chickens and watering the tomatoes. Any extra in the budget,and we spend it on trees.

But I learned something at the end of our family road trip.Travel can help me in the task of caring for my own place.When I slow down and pay attention to the road between here and there,travel tells me the connections between my place and all the other places.