Complaining: The Happiness Killer
In 15th-century Germany, there was an expression: Greiner, Zanner, which can be translated as “a chronic (长期的) complainer.” Are you a bit of a Greiner, Zanner? If so, you’re not alone. Survey data show that customers today are more than twice as likely to complain about a product or service as they were in 1976. A U. K.-based survey also observed a rise in job dissatisfaction over a two-year period before autumn 2022.
Complaints can be grouped into different categories. As is reported, 45 percent of complaints concern the behavior of others. For instance, parents repeatedly criticize their children for small issues like messy bedrooms or dirty clothes. Another 29 percent focus on personal discomfort. A common complaint in this category might be about feeling too hot in a room without air conditioner. The remaining 26 percent involve unpleasant obligations like unnecessary work meetings people are forced to attend.
The problem with all of these complaints is that it can feel helpful — but it typically isn’t . Although complaining might offer temporary relief, it’s bad for your happiness in the long run. Researchers who measured people’s mood before and after they complained found that those complainers’ mood was significantly worsening. Besides, complaining can also lower the happiness of the people around you. In some relationships, the negative effect can pass like a virus to those exposed. In other words, when people see others’ complaints expressing anger, disgust and sadness, they can, in turn, feel similar emotions.
As the 20th-century Bulgarian philosopher Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev observed, “Complaining is like the winter frost which, when it falls, destroys all the labors of the gardeners.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________文中应包含以下内容：
1.你是否支持动物表演；
2.你支持或反对的理由。
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How to Be a Better Boss
Workplaces have changed dramatically over the past few years. Teams have become more isolated owing to remote work. Technology has brought great benefits but also constant interruptions, from endless Zoom calls to message flows on Slack. With each shift, the job of the manager has become harder. Many report feeling burnt-out, overloaded and confused.
Yet in real life everyone suffers when management is bad and benefits when it is good Research based on a long-running survey of management techniques has found that well-managed firms tend to be more productive, export more and spend more on research and development.
So the prize for better management is big. But how to obtain it? Read enough management books and you might conclude that managers need to change their personality thoroughly, becoming either Machiavelli’s prince or a Marvel superhero. However, study successful managers, and more practical lessons can be drawn.
One is to be clear about a firm’s processes. Managers should make clear the purpose of a team, what a meeting should achieve and who will take a decision. Meeting agendas at GSK, a British drugs firm, clearly say whether an item is for awareness, to gather participants’ input or intended to make a decision. Such clarity means that everyone knows what they are doing, and why.
Management isn’t all about piling up tasks, meetings or processes. A second lesson is that managers can add value by deleting. Sparing workers from pointless meetings, emails and projects frees them to concentrate on the work that fattens the bottom line. At the start of the year, Shopify, an e-commerce firm, deleted 12,000 repeated meetings from its employees’ calendars. The useful ones were eventually added back. But the firm says that meetings are down by 14% since the mass deletion while productivity has gone up by a similar amount.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________How your unique story can get you hired?
You’re sitting at your computer to apply for your dream job, but suddenly you’re not confident enough to get it. So you don’t even submit the application. It is natural for you to experience self-doubt at such a crucial moment, especially if you’re people of color, first generation college student, or you don’t have a traditional background. The secret is to transform how you perceive your own story.
Ask yourself two questions. The first one: why do you want to do this work? Maybe you already know the kind of job or work environment that makes you happy, or maybe you haven’t quite figured that out yet. Usually, your personal experiences can help give you clues. For example, your brother had to overcome his dyslexia (诵读困难症), and you helped him with his reading. Gradually, you became interested in education. That motivated you to work as a teacher.
The second question you have to ask yourself: how can you tell your story to exhibit the unique qualities you have? For example, you undertook multiple jobs unrelated to your major while you were in college. When you’re in an interview, go ahead and talk about them, because it will show the employer that you have time management skills and a strong passion for work. Employers are looking for well-rounded individuals that are capable of accomplishing various job tasks.
Go back and reflect on those tough questions that you need to answer. The answers are what makes you you. Reframing your story can remake your confidence over and over again, but it takes time. It’s like running a marathon. You have to train and practice. When you learn to practice your story, tell it with assurance. You’re sure to stand out among all the candidates.
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6 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Multicultural Education
The changing populations of students in American schools has brought come changes in what is taught in the schools as well.
One in three students in U.S. schools is a member of a racial or ethnic minority group, and one in five lives with a parent who was born outside the United States. Ethnic and racial minorities have criticized schools and textbooks for focusing too much on the literature and historical events of Anglo-Europeans or white males. They believe that schools have almost ignored the contributions of African Americans, Latinos, or Native Americans. Some have charged that American history has been told from the perspective of Anglo-Europeans, rather than exploring historical events from the various perspectives of those involved.
For example, the frontier movement west has been presented more from the perspective of descendants of white settlers than from the perspectives of the descendants oi the Native Americans who were moved in the process.
During the 1990s. schools began to seriously examine their curricula and to try to incorporate more varied cultural information and perspectives into education. These attempts to provide multicultural education have ranged from simply adding information and literature to the current textbooks and curricula, to more sweeping attempts to transform the basic curriculum into one which is more reflective of the diversity of the students who will study it.
At the most basic level, many schools celebrate African-American History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month, or they have international festivals which include dancing, singing, and foods from the native countries of their students. At a deeper level, many schools have adopted history or social studies textbooks which include more information about African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other minorities, or American literature texts that include poetry and fiction written by Americans of all ethnic backgrounds.
In some colleges, the traditional set of Western great books, sometimes called “the canon,” has been replaced by a much broader set of literary texts, reflecting the experiences and backgrounds of the students who will be reading them.
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There is no denying that it is a critical decision to make as to which subject to choose in the upcoming semester.
From my point of view,
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Long Journey
The majority of the world’s clothes, bags and shoes are manufactured in Asia. But the region’s brands have made little headway in the West. Of the ten most valuable global apparel (服装) labels ranked by Millward Brown, a market-research firm, only Uniqlo is Asian. Li-Ning, one of China’s best-selling sportswear brands, tried to enter America in 2010. It opened a flagship store in Portland, Oregon and later launched an English-language online store. Both failed.
What makes the journey so hard? Adjusting to Western tastes takes time. Although Uniqlo became the largest Japanese apparel brand by selling US-style clothing, it still encountered cultural barriers in America itself. For example, vests (背心) are one of Uniqlo’s most popular products at home, but relatively few Americans and Europeans wear an additional layer beneath their shirts, says Dairo Murata, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase, a bank. It was only two years ago the firm also realized that XL was not big enough in America; it now duly provides XXXL.
Another problem, at least outside the big cities, is price. Uniqlo takes pride in the use of high-tech, comfortable fabrics (布料)，an attempt to differentiate itself from other basic clothing brands like Gap and Old Navy. But at Danbury Fair, a Connecticut shopping mall that is a barometer for retail trends in the suburbs, people prefer Primark, a super-cheap Irish retailer (零售商) which recently opened, to Uniqlo, which shut up shop in June. Mall visitors are conservative about fashion and about spending, explains F.K. Grunert, its manager.
What still seems to work better is concentrating on urban centres, even though that means a smaller potential market. This month Uniqlo opened a stand-alone store in Manhattan’s Soho; such shops tend to do well. In 2002 it had 21 stores in Britain, dotted around the north-west, Midlands and south-east; now eight of the ten it still has are in London.
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Once it was possible to define male and female roles easily by the division of labor. Men worked outside the home and earned the income to support their families, while women cooked the meals and took care of the home and the children. These roles were firmly fixed for most people, and there was not much opportunity for women to exchange their roles. But by the middle of this century, men’s and women’s roles were becoming less firmly fixed.
In the 1950s, economic and social success was the goal of the typical American. But in the 1960s a new force developed called the counterculture. The people involved in this movement did not value the middle-class American goals. The counterculture presented men and women with new role choices. Taking more interest in childcare, men began to share child-raising tasks with their wives. In fact, some young men and women moved to communal homes or farms where the economic and childcare responsibilities were shared equally by both sexes. In addition, many Americans did not value the traditional male role of soldier. Some young men refused to be drafted as soldiers to fight in the war in Vietnam.
In terms of numbers, the counterculture was not a very large group of people. But its influence spread to many parts of American society. Working men of all classes began to change their economic and social patterns. Industrial workers and business executives alike cut down on “overtime” work so that they could spend more leisure time with their families. Some doctors, lawyers, and teachers turned away from high paying situations to practice their professions in poorer neighborhoods.
In the 1970s, the feminist movement, or women’s liberation, produced additional economic and social changes. Women of all ages and at all levels of society were entering the work force in greater numbers. Most of them still took traditional women’s jobs as public school teaching, nursing, and secretarial work. But some women began to enter traditionally male occupations: police work, banking, dentistry, and construction work. Women were asking for equal work, and equal opportunities for promotion.
Today the experts generally agree that important changes are taking place in the roles of men and women. Naturally, there are difficulties in adjusting to these transformations.
Preparing for Your First Job Interview
You’ve just graduated from school. Now comes the scary part: interviewing for your first job. For many recent graduates, this is an anxiety-provoking time. However, there are some simple ways to prepare for this challenging experience.
First, you should make a list of the questions you might be asked. In many job interviews, you have to answer questions about your academic experience and how it has prepared you for the job. For example, you might be asked to discuss how your participation in student union or sports has given you experience working on a team. You will, of course, also be asked how your experience and talents fit with the company’s goals.
Once you’ve got your question, you should then think about possible answers and practice responding to them. Employers will expect you to talk in detail about your experience and use examples. Make sure that your answers describe particular situations you faced, the actions you took and the results you achieved. Once you’ve got your responses, try practicing on your friends or family members. This will make you feel comfortable speaking in front of a person.
Finally don’t get discouraged if you aren’t hired the first, second, or third time you are interviewed. Think of every interview as practice for the most important one: the interview that will get you a job.
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