My friend Maria and I got our degrees at the same time — hers in Engineering, mine in Mathematics. These subjects, in case you aren’t aware, are tough! There were classes we really had to struggle with, fight to get through, and survived only by digging our fingers in with everything we had. Along the way, many of the people who started at the same time dropped out, changed majors, etc. They quit. Maria and I didn’t and we have degrees to show for it.

Maria and I came up with a saying, ＂We’re not quitters. We’re failures！＂ We’d rather fail a class three times and eventually pass it than quit and resign ourselves to the idea that we ＂just can’t get it＂. That kind of sob story defeatism has to be removed from your mind. While there are things that you can’t do — like flying via pixie dust — you can have most of the things you want in life, but only if you treat failure as a part of the learning process. If you see failure as an end, that makes you a quitter.

3 . Beauty lies everywhere. One famous person once said, ＂It’s not the lack of beauty in life, but the lack of the eyes to find the beauty.＂

Jim: I have a deep understanding of the sentence. The eyes stand for our attitude towards life. If we hold an optimistic attitude towards life, we are more willing and active to find everything more attractive around us. As a matter of fact, an optimistic person will find daily things more beautiful than a pessimistic person.

Linda: People may be easily affected by the surroundings. Whatever we see every day has a real effect on our mindset. Therefore, I think we should learn to change our attitude towards life, and try our best to keep motivated and encouraged. If we keep an eye open for things around us intentionally, we can find there is much more beauty waiting for us.

【写作内容】

1. 用约30个单词写出上文概要；

2. 用约120个单词谈谈你对＂保持积极向上的心态＂的看法，并用2~3个理由或论据支撑你的看法。

【写作要求】

1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；

2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；

3. 不必写标题。

【评分标准】

内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。

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