Last summer, Hilda worked as a volunteer with dolphin trainers at a sea life park. Her job was to make sure the tanks were free of any items so that the trainers could train the dolphins to fetch specific items. However, one day after cleaning, one of the dolphins, Maya, presented Hilda with a candy wrapper from the tank. When Katherine, the trainer, saw this, she blamed Hilda for her carelessness. Upset but not discouraged by this event, Hilda decided to do some spying on Maya.

The next morning, Hilda arrived at the park early. She put on her scuba gear (水下呼吸器) and jumped into the tank for her usual, underwater sweep. Finding nothing in the tank, she climbed out of the water just in time to see Katherine jumping in on the other side. After what happened yesterday, Hilda knew what she was doing. She watched as Katherine performed her underwater search, but Hilda wasn’t surprised when she surfaced empty-handed.

During the tank sweeps, Maya had been swimming playfully, but now the dolphin stopped suddenly and swam to the back part of the tank where the filter (过滤) box was located. She stuck her nose down behind the box and then swam away. What was Maya doing back there? Hilda wondered. She jumped back into the water and swam over to take a look behind the box, and her question was answered. Hilda then swam across the tank following Maya’s path and emerged from the water to find Katherine removing her scuba gear. As Katherine turned around, her mouth dropped open. There was Maya at the edge of the tank with a comb (梳子) in her mouth waiting for her treat.

“Maya! Where did you get that?” demanded Katherine, taking the comb and throwing her a fish. “I know where she got it,” declared Hilda climbing out of the tank with a handful of items still wet from their watery, resting place. “What’s all this?” Katherine asked, obviously confused.

“This is Maya’s secret,” Hilda said with a big smile.

Now Katherine realized what had been going on.

Wearing Helmet

Some kids ride through city bicycle lanes like a professional, and others set out alone down quiet country lanes. However, every day, an average of more than 500 children with bike-related injuries are treated in U.S. emergency departments, according to an analysis of injury data from 2006 to 2015. Those wearing helmets were significantly less likely to have head and neck injuries, the study found. And although children tend to wear helmets more consistently than adults, many still ride without one.

Along with calling for safer, more bike-friendly streets, it’s important to choose a helmet that will help protect your child from injury in a fall or a crash. When you’re choosing a helmet, focus primarily on ensuring the correct fit. “A poor fit will impact the protection a helmet can provide,” says Angela Lumba-Brown, an emergency medicine physician at Stanford Health Care.

The best way to find the right size is to take your child into a bike shop and have them try on helmets with a sales associate who’s familiar with the options, says Brad Bowman, product manager at Gregg’s Cycle. If you choose to buy online, Bowman suggests measuring your child’s head with flexible measuring tape about an inch above the eyebrows before choosing a size.

Helmet sizes are measured by head circumference (圆周), and helmets usually come with adjustable dials to accommodate a range of circumferences. For example, a 3-to-5-year-old child might wear a helmet with a 50-to-52-centimeter circumference. Bowman suggests choosing one that fits comfortably but also allows for a bit of growth. Once a sales associate helps you identify the right-sized helmet, adjust the dial until the helmet feels tight but isn’t causing the child discomfort. “After you dial in the fit, if you pull up lightly on top of the helmet, it shouldn’t come off their head,” he says.

If you’ve ever sent an email that started with the words ”Just sending a friendly reminder to please...“ we have some bad news for you: It probably backfired. Not only are “friendly reminder” emails one of the annoying email habits you have, but everyone also secretly hates them.

To you, reminder email could simply be “a friendly way to ask for something that’s late,” Fast Company writes. But unfortunately, that might not be the message coming across to your coworkers. You need to quit this bad email habit and stop sending them immediately, and here’s why.

For one, if you use “hedge words” such as “kind of,” “maybe,” “probably.” etc., they will decrease your credibility with your coworkers. Although you might insert those phrases for a softer tone, they also make you sound insecure and not confident. Be clear with your choice of words, choosing the straightforward “sending a reminder,“ instead. Trust you’re your employees will appreciate the directness.

But that’s not even the worst part. It’s also easy for those reminder emails to get lost in people’s inboxes, if not ignored immediately. With countless emails flooding in per day, yours could easily get lost in the shuffle. Very likely, your coworkers will hit the ”delete“ button.

Still, you need to get their attention somehow, right? After all, you have a job to do! Once you send the classic reminder email, try scheduling a meeting with the person via calendar invite. Even re-sending the classic reminder email with a red “urgent” flag could do the trick. Doing so is practically guaranteed to get the message across - and still save face with your coworkers.

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.

Public speaking is the act of speaking to a large group of people in a highly organized manner. Knowing the art of public speaking is very important. The ability to speak confidently and convincingly in public not only will make you stand out while in college, but also will enable you to play an active role in your workplace and community in the future. There are many occasions where you will likely be asked to give a speech, such as in a classroom presentation, at school meetings, graduation ceremonies, awards ceremonies, receptions, or wedding parties.

Public speaking often involves two major stages of work: preparation and delivering. As for the preparation, you should start with an audience analysis and decide on a speech topic and purpose. The more you know and understand about your audience, the better you will choose a topic and prepare the speech. After you analyze your audience and set a speech objective, you need to gather materials to support your idea. Examples, stories, statistics, and testimony (证明) are four major types of supporting materials. You can gather these materials from the Internet, journals, magazines, books, newspapers, or your personal experience. After you gather enough materials about the topic, you then need to organize them clearly and logically.

The language of a speech tends to be different from that of writing. In a speech, shorter and simpler words and sentences are preferred to long and complex ones so that the listening audience will understand well. Besides, in order to bring emotional responses in the audience, various kinds of rhetorical devices (修辞手法) are often employed to add power to the speech language.

To successfully deliver a speech, you need to do a lot of work as well. For example, you need to make effective use of your voice and body so as to convey your message clearly and vividly. Maybe you also need to prepare some visual (视觉的) aids such as PowerPoint to help your audience understand you well.

Wednesday night, it was the closing time of the mall. But there was an hour’s work, at least, to get everything cleaned up. It would be 11 :00 pm before I finally got home. I hadn’t even had time to have dinner. I was starving. My feet ached. My whole body, from head to foot, was filled with tiredness. I couldn’t wait to go to bed. But it would be only 6 hours before the alarm went off at 5 :00 am for my day job.

Things had been tight for over a year. My husband Paul’s business had taken a huge hit. I had a full-time job at a day care centre and somehow did my homework for my college class too. Then I had to work nights at the mall. Without me taking my second job, there wouldn’t be enough money to pay the bills, let alone buy any New Year presents for my 15-year-old daughter, Marie. No one wanted to wake up on New Year’s morning to no presents.

I barely even saw Paul and Marie anymore. Marie was growing up, but a teenage girl still needed her mom. I worried about her. Was she eating enough? Keeping up with her school work? I wasn’t afraid of hard work. Everyone was having to dig deeper these days, putting in extra hours. I knew I was lucky to have two jobs, when millions of people couldn’t find one.

How I hoped to quit my job at the day care centre and obtain a full-time degree. I’d dropped down to one class a semester. If I quit that, there was no way I’d find the willpower to try again. Besides, wasn’t I always telling Marie to never give up?

My mind went back to the conversation I’d had with Marie earlier. Paul had dropped her off at the mall, where she was getting picked up for a babysitting job. “Remember we’re going shopping this night,” she said, “I’ll even have my own money. See you later.”

The floor was nearly done. The manager asked me to leave.