3 . My students frequently ask me how I planned out my career to become president of Fidelity Investments. I always tell them, “There was no grand plan; I backed into my career one step at a time.” In this tough economy and ever-changing world, it is more important than ever to smartly evaluate each step in your career. To prepare for whatever surprises lie ahead, try to make choices today that will maximize your options in the future.     1    

Gaining transferable (可转移的) knowledge begins with the choices you make at school. You want your education to provide you with the necessary skills and expertise to succeed in a wide variety of jobs.     2     I favor those that involve extensive writing, rigorous analysis, or quantitative skills.

Once you have finished your formal education, search for jobs that will allow you to further expand your transferable knowledge—to help you find your next job. Let’s say you take a job putting together airplane leases. Within a few years, you could become the world’s expert on the subject.     3     By contrast, if you take a job that will expand your computer programming skills, you can greatly boost your options for later steps in your career.

Remember gaining transferable knowledge is only one piece of the puzzle.     4     As a saying goes, “Organizations don’t hire people. People hire people.” The more people you know, the more people will think of you when a job pops open—even when it is not publicly advertised.

Of course, you can build your network to some degree without changing jobs.     5     But this sort of event-driven networking pales in comparison with the deep bonds you can develop with your colleagues by working, communicating, and traveling with them.

4 . Jobs that use both technical and creative thinking are among the fastest-growing and highest-paying ones, according to a new report from Burning Glass Technologies, a job market analytics (分析) company in Boston.

It studied millions of job postings to better understand the skills companies require. What they discovered was that many want workers with experience in such new abilities as big-data (数据) gathering and analytics, or design using digital technology.

Burning Glass came up with the term “hybrid jobs” to describe these kinds of positions, which require skills not normally found together. For example, these hybrid jobs might require people with skills in data science and advertising, or engineering and sales. “The jobs of the future don’t involve just one skill,” says Matt Sigelman, chief manager of Burning Glass.

The company expects general job growth of about 10% between 2018 and 2028, but the hybrid jobs by 21%. What’s more, hybrid jobs pay more than positions that call for a traditional set of skills. For example, a marketing manager mastering a database program gets paid 41% more than a traditional one, with an average yearly salary of $100, 000. Moreover, an engineer who improves her sales skills and becomes a consulting engineer for a software company can more than double her pay from $180, 000 to $400, 000.

While data shows that workers who fail to update their skills will be able to find fewer jobs, people in hybrid jobs are less likely to become out of date, with only 12% possibility of being replaced by machine, compared with 42% for general jobs, says Burning Glass. Hybrid jobs are mostly not beginner roles, so they mainly go to workers with years of experience and, most importantly, more training after leaving college. That means workers, bosses and educators will have to think about how to better prepare people for these roles.

5 . It seemed interesting that on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s departure for France, the Indian and French governments issued similar statements on the prospects of an agreement on the purchase of the Rafale aircraft: that no single deal should be allowed to overshadow the Prime Minister’s visit. Indeed, India-France relations are much bigger than any one contract; they represent the cultural affinityl (密切关系) and historic relations between two vibrant (醒目的) democracies. The items on the Prime Minister’s agenda reflected the range of commonalities — from the preservation of ancient architecture to the development of Puducherry and Chandigarh as smart cities; from the construction of semi-high-speed railway lines to cooperation on a space mission to Mars; from discussing anti-terror training to tackling climate change through renewable technologies and a robust nuclear partnership. The economic aspect of the relationship has been ignored for too long. Although more than a thousand French companies have a total investment of about $20 billion in India, bilateral trade is worth just $8 billion. While all this deserved attention, it was disappointing that the Prime Minister put the spotlight back on defence ties by making a surprise announcement on the purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft as the highlight of his talks with President Francois Hollande. If the outright purchase was a crucial military necessity, it could have been discussed a few weeks before or after the visit, as a political push for the deal was secondary to the technical specifications and delivery requirements. Moreover, the deal, which involves purchasing products off the shelf abroad, detracts from Mr. Modi’s “Make in India” initiative (主动性).

The breakthrough on the Areva nuclear equipment deal, on the other hand, shows the positive outcome of Mr. Modi’s and Mr. Hollande’s political push, combined with a “Make in India” twist. As in the case of Indo-U.S. nuclear negotiations, Mr. Modi and Mr. Hollande decided to clear the logjam by splitting the problem into different silos — allowing for separate mechanisms for the pricing issues and for the technical and legal aspects. The supplementary deal involving Areva and L&T producing heavy forging metal casing for nuclear reactors is an important step in localising some of the expensive parts. During his visit to Canada, where he hopes to sign a deal for uranium supplies, Mr. Modi means to take forward his plan to increase nuclear energy production. Given this objective, it may be useful for him to round off the visit by discussing his nuclear energy plans in Germany as well, which is now winding down on nuclear power but is at the cutting edge of nuclear safety research for the European Pressurised Reactors that are being considered for India.

A long time ago, there was a country where the people would change a king every year. The person who would become the king had to sign a contract that he would be sent to an island after one year.

One king finished his term and it was time for him to go to the island. The people dressed him up in expensive clothes and put him on an elephant and took him around the cities to say goodbye to all the people. This was the moment of sadness for all the kings who ruled for one year. Then the people took the king in a boat to the remote island and left him there.

On their way back, the people discovered a ship that had sunk just recently and a young man who survived by holding on to a floating piece of wood. As they needed a new king, they picked up the young man and took him to their country. They requested him to be a king and told him about all the rules and regulations. At first, he refused but later he agreed to be a king.

After three days of being a king, he asked the ministers if they could show him the island where all the other kings were sent. They agreed and took him to the island. The island was covered with thick jungles and sounds of dangerous animals were heard coming out of them. The king discovered the dead bodies of all the past kings. It was clear that as soon as they were left in the island, the animals came and killed them.

On returning to his country, the young king asked the people to provide him with 100 strong workers. He took them to the island and told them to remove all the deadly animals and to cut down some trees. He often visited the island to see how the work was progressing.

After a month, the whole island was cleaned out. The king then told the workers to plant gardens and raise useful animals like chickens, ducks, birds, goats and cows.

7 . Some documents have been making the rounds lately — where people who work various positions in different industries share how much they’re paid.

Bravo! It’s about time we blew up that old belief that salaries have to stay secret. This is not just a matter of curiosity. Having information about salaries can help narrow the gender wage gap, which has barely changed for more than a decade. Recently released date from the US Census Bureau shows that, on average, women working full time still are paid only 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man. And the gap is even wider for many women of color: Black women make 62 cents, and Latinas just 54 cents. What’s more, the pay gap even extends into her retirement. Because she earned less and therefore paid less to the social security system, she receives less in social security benefits.

Having greater access to salary information is helping to speed things up. A new research report by the American Association of University Women shows that the wage gap tends to be smaller in job sectors where pay transparency (透明) is a must. For example, among federal government workers, there’s just a 13 percent pay difference between men and women, and in state government, the gap is about 17 percent. But in private, for-profit companies, where salaries are generally kept under wraps, the gender wage gap jumps to 29 percent.

Fortunately, salary information is increasingly available on some websites. Certain companies and many human resources departments are pushing ahead with this practice. Of course, it’s going to take more than salary transparency to equalize earnings between women and men. But sharing salaries can and must be part of the solution. The more information women have about how jobs are valued — and what different people earn — the better they will understand their value in the labor market and be able to push for the pay they deserve.

A third-grade class knows exactly what will brighten an older neighbor’s holiday meal-and it isn’t a roast turkey. In October, I told the eight-year-olds I taught in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, about my plan. “I’d like all of you to do extra jobs around the house to earn some money, ”I said. “Then we’ll buy food for a Thanksgiving dinner for someone who might not have a nice dinner otherwise.”

I wanted the children to experience that it’s more blessed to give than to receive. I wanted them to understand that religion is more than nice theological (神学的) ideas; that people somehow have to make it come alive.

Early in Thanksgiving week, the boys and girls arrived in class with their hard-earned money and couldn’t wait to go shopping. After pacing up and down in the supermarket, we put a turkey and decorations in the shopping cart (购物车). At last we headed toward the checkout, and then someone spotted a “necessity” that sent them racing. “Flowers!”

“We have Kristine cried. The group rushed toward the holiday plants. I pronounced, limited money and after all, you can’t eat flowers.”“But Mrs. Sherlock, ” the group replied, looking at me eagerly, “we want flowers.”Defeated, sighed as the children put a bunch of pink roses into the cart.

An organization had given us the name and address of Maria, a needy grandmother who had lived alone for many years. Soon we were bouncing along a rough road to her house. We finally pulled up in front of a small house in the woods. A thin woman with a tired face came to the door to welcome us.

My little group hurried to get the food. As each box was carried in, the old woman kept saying “Thanks”一much to the visitors’ pleasure. When Amy put the pink roses on the table, the woman seemed surprised. She was wishing it was a bag of flour, I thought. Having talked for a while, we returned to the car.

Winter break was approaching, and all Scott wanted to do was go snowboarding. Unfortunately, Scott's parents had different plans. They had booked a weeklong tropical cruise (热带船游). Scott hated warm weather and asked if he could just stay at his best friend's house so he could snowboard every day at the local mountain. His parents didn't want to hear anything of it. He kept debating them about the topic, but they would not change their minds. Family time was important to them, and it was tradition that they spend winter break together.

The week of the cruise arrived, and Scott continued to mumble (咕哝) his complaints as he and his family left their house to head south. Scott's dad told him that he would only make the vacation worse for himself if he didn't change his attitude and open his mind to a new experience. Scott still couldn't stop thinking about all of the snow he was leaving behind.

When they arrived at the port to board the ship, Scott had a hard time admitting that he was actually impressed with the size of the ship. He had seen the brochures but seeing the ship in person was a whole different animal. Then he remembered that the brochure said something about a surfing pool. Maybe surfing would be somewhat like snowboarding. After all, it involved riding a board.

Scott climbed aboard the ship with his parents, and then they walked around to check everything out. He couldn't believe how fancy the accommodations were. The dining room looked like a royal hall; the game room had all of his favorite games; the ship's deck (甲板) had several different swimming pools for different purposes. Then Scott saw the surfing pool. It was incredible. It wasn't a big pool, but it had big waves, and the young man who was demonstrating how to ride the waves made it look like a ton of fun.

Scott asked his parents if he could try surfing.

Gradually, Scott began to love the cruise.