1 . If you have a hobby or idea that currently does not fit into an existing club in your school, starting one may be a great idea.     1     Here are some ways to help you start a club.

Think

The first step of starting anything is to think.     2     It allows you to see all of your possible ideas for the club. This leads us to the next step: sharing the results of your brainstorming with people.

Judge interest

The next step of starting a club is judging interest of others. It is important to talk to friends and other students at school, because they will be the ones who finally will choose to join or stay away from your club. If they have no interest, you have no club.     3    

Think about details

    4     It probably wouldn’t be that smart to rush into a club without having thought about what you wish to achieve, how you are going to do so, the meeting times and locations and finally what you need to do to start your club.

Make it official

Then you can head to the teacher’s office and tell this teacher what your club is about, along with all details. Once he or she agrees, you will likely have to fill out some paperwork to make the club official.     5     Starting a club can be very rewarding and benefit you in ways you could not have imagined. Be patient and stick with it once you start.

2 . Quantum ( 量子 ) computers have been on my mind a lot lately. A friend has been sending me articles on how quantum computers might help solve some of the biggest challenges we face as humans. I’ve also had exchanges with two quantum-computing experts. One is computer scientist Chris Johnson who I see as someone who helps keep the field honest. The other is physicist Philip Taylor.

For decades, quantum computing has been little more than a laboratory curiosity. Now, big tech companies have invested in quantum computing, as have many smaller ones. According to Business Weekly, quantum machines could help us “cure cancer, and even take steps to turn climate change in the opposite direction.” This is the sort of hype ( 炒作 ) that annoys Johnson. He worries that researchers are making promises they can’t keep. “What’s new,” Johnson wrote, “is that millions of dollars are now potentially available to quantum computing researchers.”

As quantum computing attracts more attention and funding, researchers may mislead investors, journalists, the public and, worst of all, themselves about their work’s potential. If researchers can’t keep their promises, excitement might give way to doubt, disappointment and anger, Johnson warns. Lots of other technologies have gone through stages of excitement. But something about quantum computing makes it especially prone to hype, Johnson suggests, perhaps because “‘quantum’ stands for something cool you shouldn’t be able to understand.” And that brings me back to Taylor, who suggested that I read his book Q for Quantum.

After I read the book, Taylor patiently answered my questions about it. He also answered my questions about PyQuantum, the firm he co-founded in 2016. Taylor shares Johnson’s concerns about hype, but he says those concerns do not apply to PyQuantum.

The company, he says, is closer than any other firm “by a very large margin ( 幅度 )” to building a “useful” quantum computer, one that “solves an impactful problem that we would not have been able to solve otherwise.” He adds, “People will naturally discount my opinions, but I have spent a lot of time quantitatively comparing what we are doing with others.”

Could PyQuantum really be leading all the competition “by a wide margin”, as Taylor claims? I don’t know. I’m certainly not going to advise my friend or anyone else to invest in quantum computers. But I trust Taylor, just as I trust Johnson.

3 . It seems as if social media platforms have taken over our lives. According to a study, there were over 3.6 billion social media users in 2021. And that number is only expected to grow.

Although social media platforms have helped to keep friends and family connected, there is also a dark side to social media. To put it simply, it is a money making machine. This is partially because of social media influencers. A social media influencer is someone “who can shape audience’s attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media”. You may be asking yourself, “Why would they want to do this, though?” The answer is simple: to make money. Social media influencers make money by promoting brands among their followers. In fact, influencer marketing is so profitable that the study reported that the industry is expected to reach $15 billion in value in 2022.

Social media influencers are now being called out because some of their actions have started to negatively impact the environment. One man in particular, who goes by Steve to remain anonymous (匿名的), noticed that some online influencers failed to follow rules when they went to national parks or public places. This included things like leaving garbage behind, or using drones (无人机) to take pictures from the sky.

Because of this, Steve made it his mission to stop social media influencers from hurting the environment with their bad behavior in order to get the “perfect shot”. In 2018, he made the account “Public Lands Hate You” to name and shame influencers who failed to follow the rules made to protect the environment. The account now has over 85 thousand followers.

He hoped that it could help some influencers find the light and right their wrongs. Steve said, “If everybody thought just a little bit more about their small actions and the impact those actions have on the environment and the people around them, I think that a lot of our bigger problems would be much more easily solved.”

6 . A small recording studio in Communication University of China (CUC) is a movie production center, which creates movie audio descriptions to serve the visually disabled. From the landscape in the background to the movements of the characters, and even emotional changes of the roles, these creators describe every detail in the movies, so visually disabled people can “watch” them like every other normal moviegoer.

However, as there are over 10 million people living with visual disability in China, the number of theaters providing the service falls short of demand. At the same time, challenges still exist. The first issue that movies are now facing is the varying levels of quality, which has resulted in the failure of some projects. Copyright can be another huge problem. To expand the range of movies that can add audio descriptions, China has applied for entry to the Marrakesh Treaty, an international treaty about copyright permission for specially adapted literature works for people with visual disability.

“Soon we can make more movies for the disabled. Our next goal is to make these audio descriptions of films available at the same time as their main cinemas release, so people with visual disability can walk into the cinemas with their families and friends to cry and laugh together. They also enjoy art, life and movies equally like the rest of the world,” Fu Haizheng, project dean from CUC, told Global Times on Wednesday.

7 . Some of Hawaii’s most popular musical artists have appeared before an unlikely audience, who are from a small elementary school on Oahu’s coast.

They all come with a purpose: The headmaster dreamed up the virtual concerts, presenting artists like internationally famous ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro, as a way of bringing together a community struggling with the pandemic. “We have probably the best ukulele player — one of the best ukulele musicians in the entire world — come and play for you guys tonight,” said Headmaster Keoki Fraser as children and parents tuned in from home computers. Fraser is trying to organize concerts every several weeks as his school, like most public schools in Hawaii, continues to educate its students remotely.

Tabitha Persaud, mom of three students, remembers Fraser coming to the parent-teacher association with the idea of approaching big names. “Can we do that?” she wondered. “Will they do that for us?”

“They’re in the same situation as we are. So, I mean, they don’t have to go anywhere or leave their home. We just hit them up,” said Fraser, who graduated from the local high school. “We love to get people that are influential and the kids look up to.”

During a recent Friday concert, Fraser invited former student Dylan Kunz, now a seventh grader, to play ukulele as one of the student performers to open for Shimabukuro. Kunz, who likes Shimabukuro, was excited. “He’s the reason I started playing,” he said. “It keeps me motivated to keep playing.”

The concerts are open to all. For one performance, about 1,200 viewers tuned in. “I think it’s so much fun to see the smiling, happy faces of all the kids,” said Amy Kunz, Dylan’s mom. “I think Headmaster Fraser, in doing this, is really hitting home from social and emotional aspects. Even though we’re not in school, we can still make these connections and have fun.”

8 . Though the COVID - 19 pandemic has forced museums worldwide to close for some time, Ke Tao, a 26-year-old product manager in Shenzhen, visits a number of these institutions three to four times a week, thanks to digital technology. The digital technology not only helps people continue their “cultural trips” but also revitalizes (使恢复生机) museums in the pandemic.

“Many museums have held livestreamed shows, allowing audiences to appreciate exhibitions by following virtual guides and interacting online with other visitors, which has been a novel experience for me,” said Ke Tao.

According to a report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, museums have been badly affected by the pandemic, with nearly 90 percent of them, more than 85, 000 worldwide, having to close temporarily due to measures taken to combat COVID-19. More than 10 percent of them may never reopen.

But when these museums develop their internet presence to maintain links with the public, they have seen a substantial rise in the number of visitors to their websites during lockdowns. For example, the Louvre Museum in Paris saw visits to its website rise tenfold in the first few days of the lockdown in France. Visitor numbers were later reported to have reached a level three times higher than average, the report said.

Han Bing, chief researcher of culture and entertainment, said going digital is an unavoidable process for the development of museums, even in the post-pandemic era. “Compared with offline museums, virtual institutions are not limited by space, can be more expressive by using technologies, and have a stronger interaction with users,” she said.

“Moreover, virtual museums can experiment with new ideas to offer more flexible, interesting and entertaining forms of education for their audiences.”

Han added that while the pandemic will not totally change people’s habit of visiting museums, it may bring a certain degree of change. “In the post pandemic era, the positioning of offline and virtual museums will be different. Both online and offline models have their advantages and disadvantages with a relatively clear division of functions and features.”

9 . I’m Jack. I live on Renmin Road in Shanghai.There are six pay phone booths in my neighborhood. Many people like to visit the booths.They don’t make phone calls.They go there to read books.The booths are now small libraries.

There are three kinds of booth libraries.One is Library Booth. People can take the books in the booth.When they finish reading,they need to bring the books back.One is Celebrity (名流) Exhibition Hall. In the booth, people can learn about some great people, like Ba Jin and Ke Ling. The last one is One Book Booth. There is always a new book in it.

Now there are over 200 booth libraries in Shanghai. People love them very much. “They are fantastic places to enjoy reading and have a rest,” they say. Can people use the phones in the booths？Sure! And they can make emergency (紧急的) calls, like 110 and 120 for free.

10 . We’ll finally grow up someday, leaving our parents and facing the challenges in life. Parents may not be able to solve every problem for us. Instead, we should have enough life skills to deal with the problems that come our way.

This is what our country tries to do now: Helping more students gain working spirit.To stress the importance of hardworking spirit education among students of different ages, the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council released a guideline recently.The guideline calls for students to respect work.Students should learn basic life skills and form good working habits through such education.

The government has been trying to stress the importance of hardworking spirit education. But this has been overlooked in recent years.Many teens do not value the importance of working hard and are uninterested in doing so. According to a study of nearly 3,000 students that was done by Ningbo Evening News in March, only 22 percent of primary and middle school students help with everyday chores around the house.

Schools and families play an important role in teaching students about the value of working hard, the guideline says. Primary and middle schools should provide students with hardworking spirit classes every week, according to the guideline. Schools can also hold activities to give students real- world work experiences.For example , schools can teach children how to plant trees on Tree-Planting Day.

As children’s first teachers, parents should also encourage children to learn how to do chores at home. Students should master one or two life skills every year.