2 . My name is Pablo. I think I’m a lucky guy. I have a good family, and we live in a nice neighborhood in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. People travel here from many countries for their vacations. We have beautiful beaches, hotels, restaurants, shopping and sports.

However, in my beautiful hometown, there are also very poor neighborhoods. These areas are crowded and have a lot of crime (犯罪). Life is terrible for many of the children in these areas. Some don’t really have a childhood because they’re homeless and live on the streets. They don’t have education. They don’t have enough food. Many use drugs or have illnesses or other problems.

Last year, I came back to Puerto Vallarta from my university in Mexico City, I spent one year as a volunteer with an organization called Outreach International. They have several programs. I volunteered for one program to help street children.

I worked in a home for street children (all boys, at this one). At this home, the boys have a place to sleep and three meals daily. The home keeps the boys off the streets. It shows them another way of life. As a volunteer, I helped to prepare meals. I taught games—such as basketball, football and art. I helped the kids with their homework. These kids can be fun. They have a lot of energy, but they’re also really tough (坚韧的). Their long and difficult time on the streets make them strong and not always “sweet little children”.

At this boys’ home, I met two other volunteers—Brian from Canada and Greg from Australia. In many ways, we were very similar. We were the same age, came from good homes and had a good education. They were both college students, like me. We became very good friends. Now, we email each other.

It was the best—and most difficult—year of my life. I learned a lot that year.

3 . As I drove along the road, small car flew across the center divider from the opposite direction and crashed into my car head-on. I fell unconscious and was awakened by the ringing of my mobile phone.

I was brought to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital bleeding on from my nose, mouth and legs. But the hospital staff was too busy to attend to me, so I called a friend to tell him about the accident. Some friends arrived very soon and sent me to a private hospital nearby. I saw my injured feet hanging from my body, blue and lifeless, and I begged the doctors to save them at all cost. They calmly promised to do their best.

The doctors made it. After I was discharged, I was given ten months medical leave. My heart sank, knowing that it meant I, a big man, couldn't work. How was I going to support my 65-year-old mother and other family members? I felt completely helpless, but a la of unexpected blessings came my way. When I was recovering at home, friends and relatives helped me with my banking, insurance or simply came to cheer me up.

When the casts（石膏）were removed, I did not let the sight of my weak legs discourage me. I worked hard at my physiotherapy（物理疗法）with only one aim. After eight months, I was walking without the aid of a walking stick. Oh February the following year, I returned to my job again. Today, after eight years, I have travelled to many counties as a tour leader.

The accident makes me realize how lives can change in a second. I value life more, not only of my own but also of everyone I know, and I will always try to help when I know of someone in trouble.

4 . In May 1987 the Golden Gate Bridge had a 50th birthday party. The bridge was closed to motor traffic so people could enjoy a walk across it. Organizers expected perhaps 50,000 people to show up. Instead, as many as 800, 000 crowded the roads to the bridge. By the time 250,000 were on the bridge, engineers noticed something terrible：the roadway was flattening under what turned out to be the heaviest load it had ever been asked to carry. Worse, it was beginning to sway（晃动）. The authorities closed access to the bridge and tens of thousands of people made their way back to land. A disaster was avoided.

The story is one of scores in To Forgive Design：Understanding Failure, a book that is at once a love letter to engineering and a paean（赞歌）to its breakdowns. Its author, Dr. Henry Petroski, has long been writing about disasters. In this book, he includes the loss of the space shuttles（航天飞机）Challenger and Columbia, and the sinking of the Titanic.

Though he acknowledges that engineering works can fail because the person who thought them up or engineered them simply got things wrong, in this book Dr. Petroski widens his view to consider the larger context in which such failures occur. Sometimes devices fail because a good design is constructed with low quality materials incompetently applied. Or perhaps a design works so well it is adopted elsewhere again and again, with seemingly harmless improvements, until, suddenly, it does not work at all anymore.

Readers will encounter not only stories they have heard before, but some new stories and a moving discussion of the responsibility of the engineer to the public and the ways young engineers can be helped to grasp them.

"Success is success but that is all that it is," Dr. Petroski writes. It is failure that brings improvement.

5 . The end of the school year was in sight and spirits were high. I was back teaching after an absence of 15 years, dealing with the various kinds of "forbidden fruit" that come out of book bags. Now was the spring of the water pistol.

I decided to think up a method of dealing with forbidden fruit.

"Please bring that pistol to me," I said. "I'm going to put it in my Grandma's Box."

"What's that?" they asked.

"It's a large wooden chest full of toys for my grandchildren," I replied,

"You don't have grandchildren," someone said.

"I don't now." I replied. "But someday I will. When I do, my box will be full of wonderful things for them."

My imaginary Grandma's Box worked like magic that spring, and later. Sometimes. students would ask me to describe all the things I had in it. Then I would try to remember the different possessions I supposedly had taken away—since I seldom actually kept them. Usually the offender would appear at the end of the day, and I would return the belonging.

The-years went by, and my first grandchild Gordon was born. I shared my joy with that year's class. Then someone said, "Now you can use your Grandma's Box." From then on instead of coming to ask their possessions back, the students would say, "That's okay. Put it in your Grandma's Box for Gordon."

I loved talking about the imaginary box, not only with my students but also with my own children. They enjoyed hearing about all the forbidden fruit I had collected. Then one Christmas I received a surprise gift—a large, beautifully made wooden chest. My son Bruce had made my Grandma's Box a reality.

6 . Jean is a bright young woman who comes from a rich and famous family. She goes to a good university and has everything that money can buy. Well, almost everything. The problem is that the people in Jean's family are so busy that they can hardly find time to be with her. In fact, Jean is quite lonely.

So Jean spends a lot of time on her QQ. She likes being anonymous(匿名), talking to people who do not know about her famous family and her rich life. She uses the name Linda on QQ and has made a lot of friends who she keeps in touch with quite often.

Last year Jean made a very special friend on QQ. His name was David and lived in San Francisco. David was full of stories and jokes. He and Jean had a common(共同的) interest in rock music and modern dance. So it always took them hours to talk happily on QQ and sometimes they even forgot their time. Of course, they wanted to know more about each other. David sent a picture of himself: He was a tall, good-looking young man with a big, happy smile. As time went by, they became good friends and often sent cards and small things to each other. When Jean's father told her that he was going on a business trip to San Francisco, she asked him to let her go with him so that she could give David a surprise for his birthday. She would take him the latest DVD of their favorite rock singer. But when she knocked on David's door in San Francisco, she found that her special friend was a twelve-year-old boy named Jim!

7 . There was a man playing the piano in a bar. He was a good piano player and always performed in this bar. People came in just to hear him play. But one night, a customer told him that he didn't want to hear him just play the piano any more. He wanted him to sing a song.

The man said, "I don't sing." But the customer was persistent(执着的). He told the bar manager, "I'm tired of listening to the piano. I want that man to sing!" The manager shouted across the room, "If you want to get paid, sing a song. Our customers are asking you to sing!" So he did. He sang a song. A piano player who had never sung in public did so for the first time. And everyone was surprised by his song Mona Lisa. He got lots of applause that night. He had such a talent for singing, but he just had been sitting on his talent for the past years! If without such a chance, he may have lived the rest of his life as a no-name piano player in a no-name bar. However, now he has become one of the best-known singers in America.

You, too, have skills and abilities. Maybe your "talent" is not as great as the singer above, but it may be better than you think! And with effort, most skills can be improved. So, in your life, you should be brave enough to try doing different things and find out what talents you really have!

8 . As a first-aid responder, you never know what type of situation you might walk into, or who you’ll meet along the way. That’s definitely been the case for Jeffrey Lanenberg, a 51-year-old first-aid responder since 1984.

Ten years into the job, Jeffrey received a call that reported that a man in his early 30s had fallen down in the Mall of America. When Jeffrey and his partner arrived at the scene, they found the young male face down on the ground. He had gone unconscious, making weak attempts to breathe. His wife stood beside him holding their small son in horror. They quickly rushed to calm the man to keep him under control and offer necessary first aid. After Jeffrey dropped the patient off at the neighboring hospital, he thought about the man and his family for a long time.

Jeffrey thought he had experienced everything under the sun until one random visit to Office Max three years ago, where he met a man repeatedly walk back and forth while staring at him. As it turned out, the man was the patient he had saved 20 years earlier.

“You gave me 20 years more than I ever thought I’d have,” the man said. He thanked Jeffrey repeatedly and told him he had someone he wanted him to meet. He stepped around the corner and reappeared with a 20-something-year-old man. Jeffrey instantly knew that it was the son he had seen standing by his mother all those years ago.

“That day changed my life,” Jeffrey said. “Before that, everything was about work…When I talk to my beginner-training class, I tell them you never know the impact you can have on someone’s life.”

9 . Tabichi’s father,uncle,and cousins have all worked as teachers. He could see that his relatives were making a real difference to people’s lives and wanted to do the same. So for the past 12 years, Tabichi has worked as a math and science teacher in the hope that his lessons will give students a chance to improve their situations.

However,working at a remote village school in Kenya hasn’t been easy. The unique challenges and obstacles have forced Tabichi to find unique solutions for his students. The school only has one computer and unreliable Internet access. The school also has no library or laboratory. To make matters worse,there are not enough books for all the students and the school is desperately in need of more teachers. Most of the students are not able to concentrate, because they haven’t had enough meals at home.

One of the other major challenges that Tabichi faces is keeping kids in school as long as possible. So Tabichi spends most of his time outside of the classroom working on ways to keep kids in school. When the 36-year-old gets the feeling that a student is at risk of dropping out, he works to persuade families to put more value in education. To help those in poverty afford food,uniforms,and books, Tabichi also gives away 80 percent of his salary. Despite all the obstacles he faces, Tabichi is credited for improving the school and keeping much of the village’s youth in school. He has also managed to set up science clubs and addressed food insecurity issues.

Thanks to his tireless work,his students have excelled. In recent years,students have won national and international science competitions. In March of 2019, Tabichi was voted the best teacher in the world and won the prize of $1 million.

10 . I was 16 when my father finally decided he would send me to wilderness camp for several months. He had threatened to do it many times before, but my mother had always managed to prevent him from doing so. This time he insisted on doing it.

The latest incident was the last straw. Impulsively (冲动地), I had pushed Mr. Ford, my math teacher, down a flight of steps at school. He broke his arm in two places. Anyway, he had agreed not to accuse me as a favor to my dad, who was in the middle of a tight race for sheriff (执法官) in our town. But my reckless behavior had my dad's closest advisor talking.

"John, he's your son and he's a kid, but he is dragging you down," I heard Jake Hutch tell my dad through his closed office door the night after I pushed Mr. Ford. "If you can't make your son obey the rules, how can you make the law obeyed in this town?"

So, off to Pisgah National Forest I went. I imagined hours of untold abuse at the hands of some strong sergeants (军士). I was determined not to be broken. I was who I was,

Nearly every day for six months, a small group of other troubled teens and I carried our 30-pound backpacks on a difficult journey covering about 10 miles. We hiked in a rough wilderness that seemed untouched by civilization.

Our sergeants were firm but kind, not frightening as I had imagined. We learned how to make a fire without matches and create a shelter with branches and grass. We learned which plants were safe to eat out in the wild. I felt myself change. I was calm and often reflective. My old, impulsive self was gone.

One morning, six months later, my dad came to pick me up. I ran to hug him and saw happiness and love in his eyes.

"So what's it like being sheriff?." I asked on the ride home.

"I lost the race, Danny," he said.

"I'm sorry, Dad." I knew my behavior probably had a lot to do with the defeat.

Dad squeezed my shoulder and brought me close. "As long as I don't ever lose you, I'm okay."