1 . Were it not for my mask’s rubber covering over my nose, no doubt his warm, fishy breath would have made the experience complete, as an adult male Atlantic grey seal (海豹) inspected me to the waters that bathe Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. This was a close and magical swimming-with-seals encounter filmed for BBC Two’s Springwatch four years ago.

My job is to get people to love and connect with nature, but the experience still left me feeling both excited and conflicted. Is it possible that we get a little too close, and love nature a little too much? Certainly, for anyone working in wildlife media and tourism, the reality is that habitats and many species often can’t handle longtime close contact with humans.

Marine mammals they may be, but seals must regularly return to dry land, hauling (牵引) themselves out of the water to rest, digest, and reproduce. Haul-out sites are typically inaccessible beaches or rocky tiny islands after the tide falls away. These safe places become a terrifying drop when disturbed, particularly by walkers, dogs and boats full of wildlife tourists. When frightened, seals prefer escaping into shallow seas or, worse still, hard rocks, risking broken jaws or bones.

In Scotland in February 2021, a ban came into force that stopped the fisheries industry from shooting seals. Prior to this, seals in Scotland could be shot under licence. Seal groups and charities are revising their policies to no longer encourage people to seek out encounters with seals either in or out of the water, especially during the winter months when the grey seal pupping (产崽) season is in full swing.

No matter how much we love seals, remember they are terrified of us, so we really need to enjoy them from a distance. But that is not to say there can’t be a connection. Joining organised surveys helps monitor seals as well as the health of our waters. The marine mammals have much to deal with, including climate change, and we have a lot to learn from these envoys (使者) from the sea.

3 . Even now, I have vivid memories of my last day of high school. In my mind’s eye, I’m cleaning out my locker, and then staring at the emptiness for a few extra beats before slamming it shut for the last time. I’m roaming the halls with my best friend, blissfully ignoring the bells going off every 50 minutes on schedule because, just today, we’re allowed to break the rules. I’m sitting on my desk, swinging my feet, and shooting the breeze (闲聊) with my English teacher, Mr. Carr, in a way that makes me feel almost grown up.

It was maybe my favorite day of the whole year. Like the final layer of watercolor, the freedom and lightness I feel seeps (渗透) into the rest of my memories of that day and turns them just a shade rosier.

If the school year hasn’t yet ended for you, consider what you can do to make the finale count. Why? Because when it comes to human memory, not all moments are created equal. Instead, our remembered experiences are disproportionately (不成比例地) influenced by peaks(the best moments as well as the worst)and endings (the last moments). Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman, who discovered this phenomenon, called this the peak-end rule. It suggests that our judgment of a past experience is largely based on its most extreme point and its endpoint.

I took advantage of the peak-end rule years ago, when my girls were young enough to want a bedtime story each night. I remember thinking that whatever strife (冲突) and stress had occurred that day, I could make the last moments count. I could end on a note of calm and act like the patient mom I hadn’t quite managed to be just hours before.

Don’t mistake all moments as equal in significance. There’s a reason why yoga classes end with savasana (挺卧式). There’s a reason we eat dessert last. Do orchestrate (精心安排) endings. As Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll might say: Finish strong. Last impressions are especially lasting.

5 . The hens look up at me from their nesting boxes. They seem slightly annoyed but unsurprised. A child runs up, pushes one of the chickens aside, and snatches two eggs. Around me, a half-dozen more children and adults collect eggs while a half-dozen others hand-feed dried mealworms to birds flocking around our ankles. I reach for an egg from an empty nest. There is something perfect about the way it fits warmly in the palm of my hand before I transfer it into a pretty wire basket provided to me by my hosts.

The egg harvest is a brief, carefully designed agritourism experience offering an experience of the labor rather than just having a bite of food. Snatching a few eggs and uprooting a few vegetables on the farm tour don’t constitute a full day’s work, but it is also a useful reminder that food doesn’t just magically appear on restaurant plates and grocery store shelves. Of course, visitors can take those eggs home or bring them to the on-farm restaurant, Clay, where a chef will use them to prepare breakfast.

A few centuries of industrialization, urbanization, and globalization have collected people into cities, but the attraction of the countryside has always remained. In the new urban-centered world, enterprising farmers have found plenty of opportunities to sell their rural lifestyle along with their crops. Italy promoted the modern model for combining agriculture and tourism in the wake of World War II, when the national government encouraged rural populations to continue producing food rather than move to urban areas in search of more profitable jobs.

Agritourism acts as an umbrella term for a wide variety of activities that take place on farms, including farmstays, where guests sleep on-site. For varying investments of time, energy, and money, anyone can engage in our farming system, giving consumers a peek behind the farm-to-table world.

6 . Have you ever been in a position where you were required to participate in music lessons, although you had absolutely no interest?

The _________ was this: My father was a professional music teacher _________ in teaching Hawaiian and Spanish guitar. My mother was an accomplished piano player and, _________, the whole family was very musical. I was the only one who had not been involved, yet, in learning to play a(n) _________.

And, as a lot of _________ do, I was enrolled (注册) in piano lessons _________ I had absolutely no interest in learning how to play it. So, it _________. Lesson after lesson I attended but didn’t play carefully at the time I was meant to practice. Finally, I just quit practicing and my piano teacher told my parents that I was hopeless. Great-no more piano lessons. However, the music _________ didn’t end here. It went on to where I decided what I wanted to learn and that ended up being the drums. I _________ playing the drums and went on to play in several bands for many years after that.

The point here is this: We all make __________ sooner or later but those cannot be forced on you. The other __________ is that you will make your own choices on whatever basis and for whatever reasons when you are __________. Some people take longer than others to __________. This can be annoying to some people but that is the way of life.

Now, that doesn’t mean you just have to sit on your hands. It means, instead, that you __________ to exchange ideas. After all, whether you know it or not, what you say does have a(n) __________. You can influence but you cannot force.

8 . A few months ago, I became attracted by a podcast (播客) series but I hesitate to recommend it to you. Every day on the way to and from work, Root of Evil filled my car with the voices of two sisters, Rasha and Yvette, as they uncovered four generations of terrifying secrets within their clan(宗族), the Hodels.

I’ll spare you the details here. But I won’t hold back on my own secret: I can’t get enough of well-told stories about unfathomable (深不可测的) evil like this.

I was absorbed when my class turned to the first Biblical murder of Abel by Cain. In college, I devoted my senior essay to In Cold Blood, Truman Capote’s attempt to make sense of the random murder of the Clutter family in their home on the Kansas plains. Perhaps my favorite film character is FBI trainee Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, the very woman who hunts for one serial murderer with clues offered by another.

I may be defending myself, but I believe I am interested in these kinds of stories for a legal reason: They concern the search for the hardest truths imaginable. What kept me listening to the Hodel story, for instance, wasn’t just uncommon fascination. It was admiration. The voices of the family members taking into account the horrors caused by their loved ones carried a strong honesty that can’t be faked.

If you, too, are drawn to stories of ordinary people experiencing the worst their fellow humans have to offer and somehow coming out stronger, I do unhesitatingly recommend one recent source. As I read the 41 tales in our new True Crime collection, I felt each bringing me closer not only to crime fighters, survivors, and witnesses, but to humanity. The books are available at shop and I think you’ll find them thrilling reading.

9 . Miriam Glassman, a top image consultant, is standing in front of her client, Lucy. ‘Can you give me an idea of what you are looking for?’ she asks. ‘Something cool,’ says nine-year-old Lucy. Glassman gets some jackets and marches off to the changing room with Lucy. This is a growing trend and the _________ for it are obvious: we encourage our youth to be successful and success, as everyone knows, is partly down to having the right _________. But when nine-year-olds hi re image consultants, you have to wonder: could things have gone too far?

Some of those caring most about image are _________. They know that everything — clothes, posture, voice—influences what people think of you and _________ , has to be carefully managed. In the 1960 US presidential debate, those listening on the radio believed that Nixon won, while those watching on TV believed Kennedy was the _________. The difference was that Kennedy was wearing make-up but Nixon wasn’t, and the viewers were _________ by his appearance.

Celebrities seek help from wardrobe, hair stylists, make-up artists and more just to manage their profile, and these professionals don’t come _________. Mari a Moriati, stylist to some of Hollywood’s A-listers, is said to be paid $10,000-20,000 a time to choose the clothes for a celebrity on a press tour. She will pack each outfit including detailed _________(‘roll up the sleeves twice and undo the top button of the shirt’).

It’s not just them that need an image boost. The cities, too, try to give themselves the marketing _________ of a style makeover. They know that most of the tourists don’t have the time to think in detail about where they want to go on holiday and instead __________ a few simple preconceptions of what a place is like. Those preconceptions are easy to __________ on people with an advertising campaign or a catchy slogan.

So, perhaps we should step back from our __________ in image and focus on what is important. Ignore the gossip and the websites telling us to manage our online profile and instead depend on __________ rather than image to reach decisions. All these suggestions sound sensible, but are they __________? How much research will we really do before deciding which celebrity we like or where to go on our next holiday?

And going back to our image consultant, surely Glassman must have reservations about taking on such young clients? Apparently not. ‘I get so many calls from teens,’ she says. ‘School is a(n) __________ place and image is important. Lucy is just taking control of hers.’

10 . When I was in third grade, my family and I took on an unforgettable trip across the country. It turned out to be more than just a/an _______ journey; it was a journey of discovery into our _______. Every day, Dad _______ us with his trusty road map. Mom, the heart of our family, shared folk tales and painted pictures about the upcoming _______. We went through diverse _______from the thick forests to the vast deserts of the West.

One day, while hiking through the Grand Canyon, I _______   a particularly rough path. Frightened, I _______, not knowing how to proceed. That’s when my parents _______ .

As Dad showed me footholds, Mom coached me with calming _______and reminded me of the breathtaking views that lay ahead. Then, I________the confidence as my feet ________ solid ground again. When I finally overcame my fear, I felt we became ________ as a family.

From then on, every evening, we’d gather around a campfire for what we________called “Family Reflection Time”. During these sessions, we’d share laughs, ________, and insights from the day’s experiences.

The trip taught me that the true meaning of travel isn’t merely about reaching the destination but about the personal growth that happens on the route, and the family bonds formed when facing ________ together.