1 . Whenever I talk about personality in relation to choosing a career, some people complain like this: Those tests are so stupid. When I was in sixth grade, I took one of them and it said that I should be a farmer. While I don’t think I would be a very good farmer, the results are probably a lot more accurate than I’d like to admit. At the time, it seemed unreasonable—I hated the outdoors and physical activities. Now, I think it might have had some points that fit my personality: I like planning (good for planning how to grow crops), working by myself (for those long days on an agricultural machine), and sometimes working on a team(for harvest time).

Watch out for any personality test that claims to be able to tell you what your dream job is by the type of animal you’d like to be, or from your favorite breakfast food as a child. While there are many personality assessments(评估) that are accurate, I’d like to say that they are a second step. The best choice is self-assessments.

Before finding ways to know your work preferences, it’s important to make a clear difference between liking a topic and liking the work. I once met a third-year marine(海洋的)biology student at a large state school in Ohio. He was placed into the Whale Watch program, where he found out that he became violently sea sick on any kind of boat—a big disadvantage for a student who thought he wanted to study whales in the wild.

The best match is a career in which the major tasks of the work are the tasks you most enjoy doing and the topic is one of interest. If that career doesn’t exist, my advice would be to take the job where there is a skill match. In this way, you will succeed at the basic tasks of your job and perhaps become interested in it.

2 . It was a hot day in late summer. I was a young dad working in a local lumber mill(伐木场).It was dangerous, back-breaking work that paid very little. In the year I had worked there, only four other people hadn’t been replaced with new faces. Those of us who stayed did so only because there was no other work to find to support our families.

One day, we were working hard. Suddenly, a voice called out, “Hey! A deer!” A lost little deer had wandered through the open doors and was now cowering(畏缩) in between the huge piles of lumber. All of us stopped working and went to look for her as she ran about crazily looking for a way out.

Now most people in the town where I live hunt deer in the fall but also treat them with great kindness the rest of the year. Some will even buy many bags of corn to help feed them during the tough winter months. It was no surprise then all of us were soon quickly working together to free this little deer. By blocking off all the other routes we were able to guide her desperate search back to the open doors. We watched as she ran out of the building and back into the woods. Then we walked back to work. I noticed something, though. On every face there was a joyful smile. It was as if this one single act of kindness had energized us again and reminded us of what life is all about.

Committing acts of kindness shows us the power that we have. They also bring us closer to love. Fill your day and your life with acts of kindness then Let them light up your life Let them lead you to love.

3 . A farmer owned an old mule(骡子) One day the mule _________ into the farmer’s well(井)unluckily   The farmer heard the mule _________ He tried every possible way to save the mule, but _________ .

After carefully thinking about the situation, the farmer _________ that neither the mule nor the well was worth greater efforts _________ , he called his neighbors together, told them what had happened, and asked them to help carry dirt to cover the old mule in the _________ and put him out of his _________ .

At first, the old mule was mad! But as the farmer and the neighbors _________ shoveling(铲土) and the dirt hit his back, an idea _________ to him.   Every time a shovelful of ____________ landed on his back, he would shake it off and step up!

This he did, blow after blow. “Shake it off and step up…shake it off and step up…shake it off and step up!” He repeated to ____________ himself.   No matter how painful the blows, or how ____________ the situation seemed, the old mule overcame his fear and just kept right on shaking it off and stepping up!

It wasn’t long before the old mule, tired out, stepped ____________ over the wall of that well! What seemed to have destroyed him actually ____________ him all because of the way in which he dealt with his adversity(逆境)

That’s life! We should face our problems and respond to them ____________ , and refuse to give in to fear, bitterness, or self-pity.

4 . We say that technology is a double-edged sword—while it brings convenience, it also brings new problems. The sword of “social media” even has a gender preference in its damage. It cuts deeper into girls than boys.

Earlier studies have shown that spending too much time on social media is bad for teenagers’mental health. Constantly watching their friends show off “perfect” lives can hurt their own self-esteem. That’s not to mention the problems caused by online shaming and bullying.

Jean Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University in the US, recently discovered an alarming trend: Since 2010, the number of teenage girls who suffer from major depression—showing signs like self-harm and suicide—has increased much faster than that of boys. In an article she wrote at The Conversation, Twenge said social media, again, was to blame.

For starters, girls use social media more than boys. Boys tend to spend their screen time on games, where they talk to their teammates through headphones. This counts as real human contact. Girls, however, simply type and browse through posts, which is a much isolated experience. “They’re not having a real-time conversation with someone,” Mary Fristad, psychologist at The Ohio State University, told NPR.

And when it comes to online shaming, girls are also more vulnerable than boys. “Girls face more pressure about their appearance, which could be exacerbated (加重) by social media,” wrote Twenge.

Shannon McLaughlin, for example, is an 18-year-old from Blackburn College in the US. She shared with the Guardian how social media made her feel depressed. “I was constantly confronted by women with skinny bodies who were praised for the way they looked. This was only made worse by the diet fixes and skinny culture,” she said. But McLaughlin found a solution. She started volunteering with the National Citizen Service, where she made face-to-face contact with people. “It's so easy to forget the importance of real connections when we have hundreds of people that we’re trying to impress at our fingertips,” she told the Guardian. And she hopes that others “look up from their phones and focus more on the world around them”.

5 . I had not hugged a friend or a family member for more than two years until recently when my sister-in-law flew in for a brief visit. For everyone’s safety, we met outside. Despite the wintry weather, her hug warmed me from the inside out. It’s strange, but only now do I truly realize how much I’ve missed embracing loved ones—the warmth that remains long after our arms have untwined (松开).

Growing up through war in my hometown of Sarajevo, Bosnia, every moment was full of danger. On one peaceful morning, I had begged my mom to let me go outside after spending weeks wilting (蔫) indoors. She finally agreed. I was outside for only 10 minutes when I was caught in an explosion. I ran to my neighbor’s house for safety and draped (悬挂) my arms around her neck just as my legs collapsed (瘫倒) underneath me. She hugged me with both arms and dragged me into her house. I was still in her arms when the ambulance arrived.

Thankfully, I made a full physical recovery, but the emotional scars never left me. Years later there was another explosion near my house. I was safely inside, but my father had left to buy a loaf of bread. He had only just missed the blast. When he came back inside, I gave him the biggest hug imaginable. I was caked in tears as I held him tight.

That same night my parents managed to arrange my escape from our war-torn city. They desperately wanted at least some of my childhood to be normal. I was 16 and came to America on my own. A generous host family took me in and I began learning English and going to school. They had a large dog called Oscar. Over the next several months, I secretly struggled with feeling homesick and worried about my family back home. Despite managing quite well at school, I couldn’t express my feelings. The only way I shared how I felt was by giving Oscar a big hug.

It is yet another sad aspect of our pandemic lives that hugging a stranger is the last thing on our minds. For many of us, even hugging a relative or a friend comes with stress and anxiety over risks and precautions (防范). Perhaps we have undervalued the impact of a simple hug. As I look back on my past, I count myself truly lucky to have been held, shielded and encouraged at some of the most key moments of my life by the almost otherworldly (超世俗的) power of a hug. I pray that in the not-so-distant future we can safely hold one another again -a friend, relative, or even a stranger.

6 . When Jasmine Benton was just 9 years old, she realized that her love for creating art was more than just a _______ . Each night in her diary she wrote about the _______ she dreamed of starting, bringing it to her mother Jennifer Gormer one Sunday morning to _______ the important news.

“I want to start my own company.” Jasmine told Jennifer. When Jennifer looked at Jasmine’s _______ she was astonished to see the outline of a real, practical business _______ . “She had the name of her business, the _______ she was going to sell, and who her customers were,” said Jennifer. “She had the vision (远见). It was all there.”

Jasmine comes from a long line of _______. Her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother all started their own businesses. And with her family’s _______ , Jasmine started Precious Designs, a company that changes trash into treasure. She spent her adolescence and teen years creating artwork and _______ it at trade shows and art shows. Unfortunately, her friends were not very ________ , and she went through a ________ period when her work wasn’t selling. ________, she just kept trying and never ________ . Jennifer comforted and encouraged Jasmine and told her that sticking to her vision was ________ and asked her to ________ the naysayers (否定者).

Now Jasmine is 18 years old and her company is truly ________. After working part-time at the “Steve Harvev Show ”, Jasmine was tasked with redesigning Steve’s nursery. She recently ________ the Youth Entrepreneurship Shark Tank Challenge and won. Besides, she has also ________ her first bit of investor seed money.

Jasmine continues to excel in her career thanks to her innate business sense and ________ to succeed. We could all take a(an) ________ from this young lady’s vision and hard work! She has proved that if you can dream it, you can do it.

8 . In the first half of 2022, scientists studying animal communication discovered that some dogs connect objects with words at a similar level to babies. Then what about cats, which are commonly believed to be unconcerned about human affairs?

Saho Takagi, a researcher at Azabu University, doubted cats’ seeming unconcern. “Cats don’t appear to listen to people’s conversations, but in fact, they do.” According to a past research, cats understand human communication better than expected. Like dogs, they can use human pointing and stares to find food. They even can tell the difference between human facial expressions and attentional states, according to a 2021 study. However, cats can do more than that.

Another study showed that cats can discriminate their human-given name from the names of their cat friends (those that live in the same house). The researchers believed that cats learned to connect names with other cats by observing communication between their owners and their cat friends.

In a recently published study, Takagi and her colleagues compared two groups of cats: one group was made up of house cats and lived with at least two other cats; the other was made up of cats that lived in “cat cafés”, which had up to 30 cats. They used a simple, two-phase(阶段) test. During the name phase, the study participant(参与者) was softly placed in front of a laptop computer. Then the researcher played a recording of its owner saying the name of its cat companions(同伴).

Immediately after the name phase came the face phase. A cat’s face appeared on the monitor. Sometimes, the cat that appeared on the screen matched the name spoken; other times the name and the picture did not match. If cats knew the names of their cat friends, they would investigate by staring doubtfully at the monitor when the name and the picture did not match. House cats had a significantly longer stare than café cats, indicating that house cats generally expected an exact cat’s face upon hearing the cat’s name.

“This is the first to show that house cats link human words and their social companions through daily experiences,” the researchers wrote, “However, we could not recognize the mechanism(机制) for learning. But with more and more scientists becoming interested in cats who are much smarter than we praise them, this question is sure to be solved.”