2 . Three Things to Do Before You Are 18

Are you bored with your daily life? Here are some things you should try before you are 18.

★Learn to swim

Seriously, this is so important that it can save your life. If you can’t swim well, you won’t be able to do water sports like waterskiing, surfing and diving. Even taking a boat trip will be dangerous for you. Make sure you do it.

★Try at least one kind of team sports

Being a good team player is an important skill in life. You can’t just think of yourself, but have to work well with other people. Other advantages of team sports like basketball, football and baseball are that they keep you fit and healthy, and they are also great fun. Teams usually have a good social life too—you’ll go to lots of parties and make many friends.

★Collect something

One of the best hobbies for under-18s is collecting things. You could collect kinds of stamps, or you could collect things that make you remember what you have done, like cinema tickets for films you have seen or letters from friends. The best way to collect is to have a special album to put your collection in and to write what each thing means to you. That way you won’t forget.

4 . To most of us, school means classes, teachers, schedules, grades and tests. But for the children at Sudbury Valley School, Massachusetts, school is very different.

Firstly, there are no lessons. All the children, aged between 4 and 19, do whatever they want to do. There are no teachers—only “staff members”. The idea behind this is that you do not need to make children learn, because children want to learn anyway. “You do not need to say to a three-year-old, ‘Go to explore your environment.’ You can’t stop them!” says Daniel Greenberg, a founder of the school. “But if you make children do what you want all day, they will lose all taste for learning.”

At Sudbury Valley School, you will permit children to talk, read, paint, cook, work on computers, study French, play the piano, climb trees, or just run around. Two boys spent three years just fishing!

The other way that Sudbury Valley School is different is that the children can decide the rules. Every week, there is a school meeting where both children and staff have one vote each—even the four-year-olds. They decide the school rules, how to spend the school budget, and even which staff they want and do not want any more.

When the school first opened in 1968, people said it would never work. But today, the school has 200 students, and 80% of its students go on to college. Even the two boys who went fishing all the time have successful careers today. One of them is a musician and the other is a computer scientist.

5 . People know the dangers of fires. It’s good for a family to learn how to prepare for a fire. Here are some suggestions:

Put a smoke alarm(警报器)in the house. Smoke from a fire causes the alarm to go off. The alarm makes a loud sound. The sound tells everyone to leave the house at once.

Make escape(逃脱) plans. They should know all the ways out of the house. If there is a fire, everyone follows the plan to get out. Part of the plan is to check all the windows to make sure they can be opened easily.

Buy fire extinguishers(灭火器). Everyone in the family should know how to use them.

Practice for a fire. Everyone in the family should know the following fire safety rules:

1. Don’t open a hot door! The fire can grow more quickly if you open the door.

2. Stay close to the floor! Smoke can be more dangerous than fire; the best air is near the floor because smoke rises.

3. What will you do if your hair or clothes start to burn? First, stop! The fire burns faster if you run. Second, drop! Fall to the floor. Then roll! Turning over and over will make the fire go out. Put a blanket around you to keep air away from the fire that may still be on you.

There are many possible causes for fires. A wise family is ready all the time. If there is a fire, don’t forget to call 119 for help.

6 . My school appeared on the news last week because we had made an important change in our local area. Our class had planted a large garden where there was once only a vacant lot. It was a lot of work but it was all worth it. I got blisters(水疱)from digging, and we all got insect bites, too.

I learned a lot about gardening and teamwork, and then I learned about the media. Our teacher telephoned the TV station and informed them of what we had done. She spoke with the producer. The producer checked with the directors, but they said there were plenty of stories similar to ours. They wanted to know what was special about our garden, because many schools planted gardens.

The teacher explained that, after going on the Internet to learn about the prairie(北美草原), we had made a prairie garden. We had been to a prairie and gotten seeds from the plants, and then we planted them. We did not water the garden, but we did weed it. We decided to let nature water it with rain, because that was how prairies grew in the past. We sent a picture of the garden to the news station. In the picture, the grass was so high that it stood taller than the fourth grade students.

As a result, the producer sent a reporter to our school. The reporter interviewed the headmaster and asked him many questions about the garden. After that, the headmaster interviewed us, and we explained to him what we had learned through this project.

That night, we watched the news, and there we were. The news reporter told our story. It was only two minutes long, but it was us. We were famous. All that work, all those blisters, it was worth it. We knew that when we saw the garden every day, but now we knew that the whole city thought so, too.

7 . After university in 2011, Samuel went to a rural primary school for native children, where, on his first day, another teacher told him, "Samuel, you don't have to do much, they're just Orang Asli-native children." This was what Samuel would spend years fighting against.

The Orang Asli community has struggled with poverty, melting into society, and losing their own identity and culture due to others' disregard (漠视，不尊重) of it. Samuel saw that the main barrier in teaching these children was the attitude on the part of many teachers that the native children were not worth their efforts. It was thought that whatever was taught would make no difference, so nobody bothered to try. The children themselves ended up believing these stigmas (污名), often doubting what they can achieve. Teachers skipped or slept in classes, and little effort was made to create an appropriate learning environment. Consequently, the school was one of the worst-performing in the district.

Samuel bonded with his native students and accepted their culture, leading him to see their potential. However, he also came to see that they did not have equal opportunities compared to urban schools, due to the lack of facilities. So he set up a crowdfunding project to create a fully equipped 21st-century English classroom with tablets and computers. The Orang Asli children now learn technology, experience English and communicate in English with volunteers all over Malaysia and overseas.

Consequently, the students have improved in national standardized examinations, from a pass rate of 30% in English (2008-2012) to an average of 80% (2013-2017). These efforts have resulted in a shift of what local children are considered capable of academically.

8 . Eating a diet high in processed food(加工食品) increases the risk of depression, research suggests. What's more, people who ate plenty of vegetables, fruit and fish actually had a lower risk of depression, the University College London team found.

Data on diet among 3,500 middle-aged civil servants(公务员) were compared with their emotional state five years later, a British journal reported. They split the participants into two types of diet—those who ate a diet largely based on wholefood, which includes lots of fruit, vegetables and fish, and those who ate a mainly processed food diet, such as sweetened desserts, fried food, processed meat, refined grains and high-fat dairy products. After accounting for factors such as gender, age, education, physical activity, smoking habits and chronic(慢性的) diseases, they found a significant difference in the future depression risk with the different diets.

Those who ate the most wholefood had a 26% lower risk of future depression than those who ate the least wholefood. By contrast, people with a diet high in processed food had a 58% higher risk of depression than those who ate a diet low in processed food.

Study author Dr. Archana Singh-Manoux pointed out there was a chance that the finding could be explained by a lifestyle factor they had not accounted for.

He also pointed in a paper that a Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower risk of depression, but the problem with that is if you live in Britain, the possibility of you eating a Mediterranean diet is not very high.

Dr. Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation, said, "This study adds to an existing body of solid research that shows the strong links between what we eat and our mental health."

He added peopled diets were becoming increasingly unhealthy. The UK population is consuming less nutritious, fresh produce and more saturated(饱和的) fats and sugars.