1 . Ten years ago when I was diagnosed with a serious illness, my first thought was, “Why me?” And this thought _______ me throughout my journey. It wasn’t until I was _______ enough to look back that I realized how much of my life was _______ by my illness not in a bad way.

Being _______ for our past experiences and _______ can be a hard thing to do. We sometimes wish events in our past could be _______ so we could start a new life. But without these events, we wouldn’t learn, change and grow.

The day I _______ this was volunteering with my boyfriend. A friend’s wife came up to me and asked me how school was, _______ I said I didn’t like it that much. She then _______ by saying, “Well, if you hadn’t gone, you wouldn’t have met him.” and pointed at my ________.

This really opened my eyes, and after I left I started seeing everything in my life in this ________. If I hadn’t gone to that school, I would never have met my future husband. If I hadn’t battled ________ the illness, I wouldn’t have found my true ________. At first I didn’t see how my illness could have ever been a blessing. But when I looked at it as an experience for me, I started to see that I had a lot to be thankful for.

I grew closer to my mother while ________. I gained knowledge about myself that I could ________ gain through struggle, and learned how to take care of my wants and needs in a way that made me happy.

2 . I Still Look for Patches

Aren’t we lucky, when we had a childhood friend willing to be our everlasting, faithful companion(同伴)？I can still remember the day I met my special _________ .

One spring evening, my mother and I patiently waited for my father to come home. His_________ in the doorway made no clear impression on my mind. Suddenly, I heard a_________ “Yip”. “Did I hear something? Daddy, please tell me. What was that?”

As he_________ his pocket he answered, “Nothing. It was only my pocket.” The look on my face must have been a sign of_________.

“Amy!” Softly, daddy called.

I slowly turned around to look at daddy’s_________. There, crawled in his palm was a little dog. _________ several brown spots on her white fur, I named her, “Patches(斑点).”

Patches became a_________ and blame taker. If I was troubled, I could depend on her two ears to listen_________ to everything I had to say. If unfortunately I broke a glass, my trusting companion would willingly__________ responsibility. Her__________ devotion(奉献) only made it hard to separate from her.

When I was about 10, my family moved into a house which wasn’t__________ enough to contain a dog. Sadly, we had to__________ her. My auntie, owning a house with vast pieces of land, __________ her.

I can still remember her eyes__________ at me forlornly(可怜地) as she left. The__________ in her eyes will be with me forever.

I saw her once or twice before she__________. Until my dying day, I shall always expect to see her. I believe that, to this very day, she is still trying to find her way back to her true home. Because I have no__________ that she died, I continue to have faith. The picture is__________ in my mind: a thin white dog comes jumping up, __________ me in loving dog kisses.

5 . Once a highly successful businessman, _________ a health insurance company, was getting ready to go to his office. When he _________ the car door and tried to reach into his car, a dog sleeping under his car suddenly came out and _________ on bis leg! The businessman got very angry and quickly _________ a few rocks and threw at the dog but none hit the dog. The dog ran away.

Upon reaching his office, the businessman _________ a meeting of his managers and during the meeting he put the anger of dog on them. The managers also got upset by the anger of their _________ and they put their anger to the employees working under them. The chain of this reaction kept going _________ the lower level of employees and _________, the anger reached to the office peon (苦力；苦工).

After the of office time was _________ the peon reached his home, and his wife opened the door. She asked him, “Why are you so late today?” The peon __________ and upset, gave one slap (用手掌打，拍，捆) to his wife! And he said, “I didn’t go to the office to play football. I went to work so don’t irritate me with your stupid questions!”

So now the wife got upset, for she got a slap for no __________. She put her anger on his son who was watching TV and gave him a slap, “This is all you do, and you have no interest in studying! __________ the TV now!”

The son got upset now! He walked out of his house and saw a dog passing by looking at him. He picked up a rock and hit the dog in anger and frustration. The dog, getting hit by a rock, ran away barking, __________.

This was the same dog that bit the businessman early morning.

What we can learn from this story is that we should be mindful of our __________, because good actions will bring you good things and black deeds will lead to __________ results.

6 . I came to work in New York about three years ago. Not long after I came to the city I learnt a good lesson.

I'm good at making friends. Soon after I came to New York, I made some very good friends. Loving parties, I often invited my colleagues and friends over. We often had fun together till late night. But people in the building disliked it. I was considered as a black sheep in the building.

One night, when I was throwing a big party for some Chinese students in New York, a neighbor could no longer stand the noise and he called the police. The police came, and many of my neighbors came, too. It was an unhappy night.

However, some days later, I found something very unbelievable. My neighbor Sam threw a big birthday party in his apartment. They sang and danced till midnight. But nobody went to ask them to stop the party. Feeling confused (疑惑的), I went to Sam the next morning and asked him why he could throw a party for his friends while I couldn't. He didn't say anything. Instead, he took me to a notice board in the hall of the building. It said, “My dear neighbors, Sam living on the sixth floor will throw a party tonight. About twenty people will come. We’ll sing and dance. The party will be over around midnight. We may make some noise tonight. Please accept my apology.”

He apologized even before the party began. People felt respected in this way. And that was why nobody bothered them that night.

8 . As the Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Jessica Pels is responsible for managing the content of one of the world’s largest young women’s media brands. Pels has ambitiously navigated her career to the top role relatively quickly, but the path she took wasn’t traditional.

Pels learnt ballet as a child and found her way to New York City dancing for a summer, but eventually gave up dance when she knew she “wasn’t good enough to be a star”. She didn’t give up her dream of working in the big city, though. Pels attended a film school at New York University and as a sophomore (大学二年级), got her first internship at The New Yorker. After graduation in 2008, many brands were in a hiring freeze. But Pels was not affected. She got a job doing communications for a charity.

Six months into her first job, Pels got a job at Glamour Magazine to work for the Editor-in-Chief Cindy Levy. She would turn this first assistant role into her career, and finally found her way to Cosmopolitan, where she became the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history.

Reflecting on her career and the worst advice she’s ever received, Pels said it was “to say yes to everything”. It was a habit she had to learn to break. And while she acknowledges the importance of seizing opportunities, she doesn’t think that strategically saying “no” would have been a damage to her career.

She remembers the conversation with her boss Kate Lewis that changed her perspective on over-committing. “I had just started at Marie Claire as the digital director, and she said, ‘I worry you’re going to burn out because you’re saying yes to everything and you are acting in such an aggressive way, and you need to take a step back and prioritize.’ And that really changed my life. I thought that was an incredible career moment.”