1 . At the age of 41, I still stutter (口吃). I am fine with it now but that wasn’t always the _________. It wasn’t too difficult for the first couple of years of school. In fact, I don’t recall being _________ at all, though there was a great deal of curiosity about my _________ speech.

A few years later, I began to dislike being different. I felt that I _________ for all the wrong reasons. Just _________the pain of not even being able to say your own name, I would often give _________ names when meeting new people, because it was easier. It was _________ for me to be Jason or Mike, Chris or Kevin or just whatever sounds I was confident I could make at that particular moment.

Sometime in eighth grade, my _________ changed. I turned what I’d always thought of as a negative into a positive. I finally _________ that difference and ran with it. __________ waiting in fear for the teacher to __________ my name, I raised my hand when I knew the answer to a question. I always volunteered to read and even used oral presentations as an opportunity to show my comedic talents. I went from a stuttering kid who seldom spoke a word to a stuttering man who now speaks for a (n) __________. Self-acceptance continues to be essential in the success I’ve experienced as a speaker, comedian, writer and soldier. My only __________ is that it didn’t happen sooner.

It’s never easy to be a kid. It’s especially __________ when you’re different, but it doesn’t have to be. The time to accept your __________ is now.

3 . My daughter Emma complained I always got mad at her. I had to admit I’ve been ________ to every little problem. I couldn’t help looking on the dark side. The doctor said I was ________. I had to find some way to get out of this ________ of negativity.

Soon after, a friend showed me his macro lens (微距镜头), which he ________ to his smartphone to take extremely close-up photographs. His photos made very small subjects look larger than life. I was attracted to it immediately

I got one for myself. I headed out into the yard. I spotted a butterfly. Through my new lens, I could see how it changed its color, depending on the ________ of light. Every day I went to the yard to look for something interesting to photograph. Some insects flew away as soon as I ________ them, so I trained myself to slow my breathing and relax my body. Anything bothering me would ________. Looking through my macro lens took me to amazing things I had walked past without ________ I’d capture a leaf, and a spider. Focusing my energy and lens on something so small brought me the ________ I’d never felt.

Macrophotography became my ________ . It also went into other parts of my life. One day when Emma displeased me, I took deep breaths. Then I ________ explained why her behavior ________ me.

I’ve made peace with depression after I discovered macrophotography. I can ________ darker days now. I can feel my anger or sadness, and then find a way out. It takes ________ and shadow to make an interesting photograph. I think the same is ________ of life.

4 . Mrs. Jones was over eighty, but she still drove her old car like a woman half her age. She loved driving very fast, and was proud of the fact that she had never, in her thirty-five years of driving, been punished______a driving offence (犯规，犯法).

Then one day she nearly______her record. A police car______her, and the policemen in it saw her______a red light without stopping. Of course, she was stopped. It seemed certain that she would be punished.

______Mrs. Jones came up to the judge, he looked at her seriously and said that she was______old to drive a car, and that the______why she had not stopped at the red ______was most probably that her eyes had become weak with old age, so that she had simply not seen it.

When the judge had finished what he was______, Mrs. Jones opened the big handbag she was______and took out her sewing. Without saying a word, she______a needle with a very small eye, and threaded (穿针) it at her first attempt.

When she had______done this, she took the thread out of the needle again and handed______ the needle and the thread to the judge, saying, “Now it is your______I suppose you drive a car, and that you are quite sure about your own eyesight.”

The judge took the______and tried to thread it. After half a dozen tries, he had still not succeeded. The case (案例) against. Mrs. Jones was dismissed and her record remained unbroken.

5 . Adventure is in my blood. And I had been considering how I was going to celebrate my high school graduation. I didn’t just want a small ________ in the backyard, I started thinking about doing a solo (独自的)________ somewhere out of the ordinary. I took out the ________ and drew a 1, 500-mile route along which I would be ________ from the northernmost point in Norway to the southernmost section of Sweden. When I ________ my plan with my dad, he ________ as I thought he would. Because I got my adventurous ________ from him, he was all for it.

I had only been away from my home for three days, but there was an inner ________ going on. Part of me was homesick and doubting whether I really could ________. The other part of me was ready to ________ to myself and my family that I could do it by myself.

On the road, I met another bicyclist who was quite a bit older than I was. He started his journey alone by bike at the southern part of Norway and just finished. I could tell he had a great sense of ________. It encouraged me not to ________.

As I listened to my favourite artists on my MP4 player, I pedaled with my feet. There was nobody around me for miles. ________, that wasn’t entirely true. There were millions of mosquitoes (蚊子). My arms were so dotted (布满) with ________ that they looked like a topographical (地形的) map. But however ________ it would be, nothing could stop my advance on the destination. As you know, adventure is in my blood.

6 . We live in a world increasingly controlled by science. Since elementary school, I have always_______ subjects like science and math. To me, these subjects, full of discoveries and _______, seem to play more important role in human progress than humanities(人文学科). And I always _______ thought of these subjects as more reliable and serious than classes like English. If there was no right_______, I thought, why bother? But   recently I had an _______ that taught me my interests in learning are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy(哲学) class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was _______. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve. I _______ getting into pretty long and boring conversations intended to reflect on the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite_______.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones — “but you can call me Rob” — was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had _______. Rather than pulling us into boring arguments about difficult-to-understand philosophical points, Rob ________ us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own challenges. To talk morals(道德), we reviewed the ________ we had made. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most ________ones.

It ________ me that if I let go of my prejudice(偏见), I can actually get a lot out of the subjects I once ________. The class taught me — in more ways than one — to look at things with a(n) ________mind.

8 . Gulnara Tolmacheva is from Russia, who has always wanted to be a tutor. She has _______ and realized her dream in Karamay, a Chinese city in Xinjiang far away from her home in Novosibirsk. Now, she lives in Xinjiang and _______ Russian in a local university.

_______ having interest in the Chinese culture during her childhood, Tolmacheva didn’t _______ China until 2009. “In Urumqi, I saw different ethnic groups and busy night markets,” she said. She was especially surprised at the way people of different ethnic groups were getting along in Xinjiang. _______ by the energetic and culturally _______ city, she chose to study Chinese in Urumqi in 2013. Tolmacheva and her family _______ to Karamay in 2019 after getting a job offer there. Little did she know about the city _______, but now she considers Karamay as her second _______. “The friendship and __________ of my students and colleagues made me feel at home,” she __________. She added that her work was going well, and her son was healthy and happy.

Tolmacheva was __________ by the kindness and warmth of those around her, and she decided to work even harder to motivate her students. “The __________ environment is very important. So I tried my best to teach them Russian songs and organize short plays during courses,” she said. Having realized her dream of learning Chinese in Xinjiang, Tolmacheva is now __________ about finishing her doctoral degree and is planning to write some Russian textbooks. She does have a great __________ for her job.

10 . I wrote my first novel when I was 22. It was a mess. I didn’t know how to properly organize dialogues and structure a plot (情节). Those were all ______. I planned to work out later. I gave the book to my father to read, and he left me a voice mail in a few days saying that it was ______ and that I was going to sell it for $300,000.

______, I didn’t ______ an offer from any publisher in New York. If there were a literary prize for Most Rejections (拒绝), I would have won it. I was ______: of course, but I knew better than to give up—writing wasn’t an easy job, and if this book wasn’t my ______ in, maybe the next one would be. I got back to work.

But this scenario (剧情) happened again: I wrote books...and then the books wouldn’t ______. Still, my father’s faith in me never wavered (动摇), even if I worked a lot of other jobs. Some of the jobs, like being a bookseller, were great and ______ to my writing life. Some, like selling overpriced jeans to 12-year-olds, were only insofar as they were material for future ______. And they were—because it finally ______. I sold a book! I was going to make it big!

I completely agree with the motivation speaker and author John Maxwell’s words: “Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities but in their strong ______ to reach their goal.” Life’s not_______. It never was, it isn’t now, and it won’t ever be. But do not fall into the trap of feeling you are a(n) ______. You are not. Get over it and ______ with it. And yes, most things are more ______ when you break a sweat to get them.