1 . As I walked onto the soccer field I had a knot(结) in my stomach. I was too shy to _________ the year before but decided to go for it this year.

When the coaches came, I felt as if I was going to pass out. With no _________ ability I began to wonder why I was _________ here. Everyone immediately took a ball and began to _________. I stood there, not knowing what to do. My friends came over to _________ me a few quick moves and drills. I had fun and _________ enjoyed playing. Every other girl on the team was far more skilled than I. The moment I _________ that to myself, I was fine.

This _________ has stuck with me all through high school. Without _________ it, I learned a valuable lesson about myself. __________ I tried out for the soccer team, I always wanted to be __________ at everything. Previously(以前), I would do anything to achieve the high __________ I set for myself. I was so stressed out over schoolwork that I never had fun. I decided it was time for a (n) __________.

Like most high school students, my __________ with more responsibilities and worries, began to change as I got older. Balancing school and sports has not been easy. But through it all, I have become a __________ person. No longer do I __________ that I have to be perfect. Although my athletic ability doesn’t __________ a ticket to universities, I have other good __________ that make me important. Knowing that I have put 100% __________ into everything I do and am honest with myself, I am completely __________ with the person I am.

2 . As a PhD student, I went through many difficulties in my research. When I graduated, I wasn’t willing to _________so many hours away from my young children with so _________ to show for it. Instead, I accepted my love of teaching by working as a _________.

A decade later and with my kids in school, my scientific _________ came out of hibernation (冬眠) and I _________ a position at a new arts college. In my undergraduate classes, I asked my students to complete controlled experiments that were _________ guaranteed to produce reasonable data. But after a few years, I grew _________ with the gap between those _________ experiments and my own research projects.

I decided to _________ a new course that would give our students experience performing __________ experiments, ones that had the __________ to fail. Then after a solid hour of __________ and some leading questions on my part, one student finally __________, “It doesn’t make __________.” Hallelujah! One of them had stepped back from seeing what they __________ to see and described what the data __________ showed. The breakthrough helped the classmates start to look at the results with more __________ eyes. Within minutes, they were overflowing with questions and __________ about what could have gone wrong. My students were thinking like scientists.

Research is __________ and full of failed attempts. Trying to protect students from that reality does harm to them. I hope my students will bring an __________ with them that success doesn’t always come easy.

3 . A friend of mine recently said something nice to me.

“Those sunglasses just don’t _________ you,” she told me.

What was nice wasn’t the _________into my sunglasses, but my friend’s honesty. She wasn’t being _________. She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She really wanted what was best for me, and so she _________causing offense to tell me what I needed to hear.

It is rare, this kind of honesty. And it’s getting rarer.

We live in an age when social media is changing our _________communications. We post highly considered status updates on Facebook. We “like” the pictures of people we may not like _________, and leave comments on other people’s posts that are _________ and meaningless.

We are _________how to be real with each other.

We chat with a (an) _________ who has lipstick on her teeth and we pretend not to notice. We see our friend wearing an awful outfit and reassure her it’s fine. We ignore phone calls, or pretend to be busy, __________telling someone we don’t want to see them. And when we get our feelings hurt, we __________it down, because it’s far less difficult than facing the person who hurts us.

And we also refrain (避免) from being honest about ourselves when we are with friends. Sure, we might write about our emotional problems later, once the __________ is over.

We don’t talk about these problems __________ we’re deep in them, because they’re scary and make us weak. We keep the facade (假象) up and the smiles wide and the Instagram photos nice. And then when things __________-when we end up in hospital, or unemployed-our friends are shocked, because they didn’t see it coming.

We didn’t let them see it coming.

Honesty is difficult, but without it, we can’t connect with each other.

Start small. Let someone know if they have lipstick on their teeth. Tell your friend that no, the outfit isn’t the best, maybe consider something else. Tell your friend __________ that you won’t be at her party, but you wish her all the best. Let your loved ones know when they’ve hurt you, and be prepared to hear the same from them. Be a little more real on social media, for your sake as much as for everyone else’s.

4 . I don’t own a camera anymore. I know my computer has one and my daughter is ________ taking photos with her smart phone. However, I rally miss those ________ cameras. I can remember taking a roll of film, mailing it out, and then ________ for two weeks to get the pictures back. And half of them were either overexposed by the sunlight or all of us had red eyes in them from the flash on the ________.

I can also remember the ________ when we finally saved up enough money to get a Polaroid (一次成像的) camera. It was more exciting to ________ the camera and have a photo ________ in only a minute. Even then, though, we only used it for special ________, such as birthdays and family gatherings.

Nowadays everything seems to be ________, saved and posted online. I wonder ________. Maybe a part of it is that we all want to stop, freeze and ________ these moments in time that fly by so fast. I have to ________ that sometimes I do. Just the other day I ________ some dusty photo albums about my ________. In one there was a picture of me just a few years old, laughing in my front yard. How I longed to go back to that ________, see my mother’s smiling face and be held in my grandmother’s ________ arms once more. Still, I know that does live on in my heart, and one day we will all be ________ again.

The truth is that hard as we try we can’t ________ time. All the photos can’t keep it in place, either. Perhaps we should really ________ our lives instead of just filming them. Perhaps it is best to smile with joy instead of smiling for a ________.