1 . To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say “I will take an interest in this or that.” Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do.

Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those whoare toiledto death, those who are worried to death and those who are bored to death. It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the weekend. As for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, who can gratify every caprice and lay their hands on almost every object of desire — for them a new pleasure, a new excitement is only an additional satiation. In vain they rush frantically round from place to place, trying to escape from the avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion. For them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path.

It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are divided into two classes: first, those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, those whose work and pleasure are one. Of these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. The long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. But Fortune’s favoured children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural harmony. For them the working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vacation. Yet to both classes the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, it may well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their mind.

3 . A year after graduation, I was offered a position teaching a writing class. Teaching was a profession I had never seriously considered, though several of my stories had been published. I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name of Mr. Davis. My father went by the same name, and I liked to imagine people getting the two of us confused. “Wait a minute” someone might say, “are you talking about Mr. Davis the retired man, or Mr. Davis the respectable scholar?”

The position was offered at the last minute, and I was given two weeks to prepare, a period I spent searching for briefcase(公文包) and standing before my full-length mirror, repeating the words, “Hello, class. I’m Mr. Davis.” Sometimes I would give myself an aggressive voice. Sometimes I would sound experienced. But when the day eventually came, my nerves kicked in and the true Mr. Davis was there. I sounded not like a thoughtful professor, but rather a 12-year-old boy.

I arrived in the classroom with paper cards designed in the shape of maple leaves. I had cut them myself out of orange construction paper. I saw nine students along a long table. I handed out the cards, and the students wrote down their names and fastened them to their breast pockets as I required.

“All right then,” I said. “Okay, here we go.” Then I opened my briefcase and realized that I had never thought beyond this moment. I had been thinking that the students would be the first to talk, offering their thoughts and opinions on the events of the day. I had imagined that I would sit at the edge of the desk, overlooking a forest of hands. Every student would yell. “Calm down, you’ll all get your turn. One at a time, one at a time!”

A terrible silence ruled the room, and seeing no other opinions, I inspected the students to pull out their notebooks and write a brief essay related to the topic of deep disappointment.

4 . Have you ever heard of Big Data or are you familiar with Data Scientists and Data Engineers? They are probably new job titles, but the core job roles have been around for a while. Traditionally, anyone who analyzed data would be called a “data analyst” and anyone who created backend platforms to support data analysis would be a “Business intelligence (BI) Developer”.     1    

Here’s an overview of the roles of the Data Analyst, BI Developer, Data Scientist and Data Engineer.

Data Analysts are experienced data professionals in their organization who can question and process data, provide reports, summarize and visualize data. They have a strong understanding of how to influence existing tools and methods to solve a problem.     2    . However, they are not expected to deal with analyzing big data, nor are they typically expected to have the mathematical or research background to develop new algorithms for specific problems.

Skills: Data Analysts need to have a baseline understanding of some core skills: statistics, data munging, data visualization, exploratory data analysis, Tools: Microsoft Excel, SPSS, SPSS Modeler, SAS, SAS Miner, SQL, Microsoft Access, Tableau, SSAS.

    3    . And then they collect requirements, design, and build BI and reporting solutions for the company. They have to design, develop and support new and existing data warehouses, ETL packages, dashboards and analytical reports.

Additionally, they work with databases, both relational and multidimensional, and should have great SQL development skills to integrate data from different resources. They use all of these skills to meet the enterprise-wide self-service needs. BI Developers are typically not expected to perform data analyses.

Data Engineers are the data professionals who prepare the “big data” infrastructure to be analyzed by Data Scientists.     4    . Then, they write complex queries on that, make sure it is easily accessible, works smoothly, and their goal is optimizing（优化）the performance of their company’s big data ecosystem.

They might also run some ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) on top of big datasets and create big data warehouses that can be used for reporting or analysis by data scientists.

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony（痛苦） and sweat of the human spirit. But I would like to use this moment as a climax from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same agony and sweat, among whom is already that one who will someday stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He, the writer, must learn them again. He must teach himself that the worst of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is short-lived and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and sympathy and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse（诅咒）. He writes not of love but of desire, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or sympathy. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands（腺体）.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of sympathy and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and sympathy and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

7 . The goings-on in the consulting room have become more transparent(透明的）recently. Thank goodness. We know more than the lines supplied by the movies in which the therapist knows all and gives wisdom to those who, sitting on a couch, consult with them. Therapists are interested in how the individual, the couple or the family experiences and understands their difficulties. That has to be a starting place. We can be of value if our first port of call is to listen, to gradually feel ourselves into the shoes of the other, to absorb the feelings that are being conveyed and to think and then to say some words.

The thinking and talking that I do inside the consulting room is at odds with many features of ordinary conversation. Not that it is mysterious, but it isn't concerned with traditional ways of sharing or identifying. The therapist makes patterns and theories, but they are also reflecting on the words that are spoken, how they are delivered and how the words, once spoken, affect the speaker and the therapist themselves.

Words can give voice to previously unknown feelings and thoughts. That’s why it’s called the talking cure. But just as words reveal so, too, can they obscure, and this gets us to the listening and feeling part of the therapy. Whatever and however the words are delivered, they will have an impact on me as a therapist. I might feel hopeless, I might feel energized, I might feel pushed away, I might feel demanded of, I might feel pulled to find solutions.

The influence of the other is what makes any relationship possible or impossible. A therapist is trained to reflect on how those who consult with them affect them. As I try to step into the shoes of the other and then out again, my effort is to hold both those experiences, plus an awareness of my ease or discomfort with what I encounter in the relationship.

Feelings are the bread and butter of our work in the consulting room. They inform or modify our ideas and they enable us to find an emotional bridge to what can so hurt for the people we are working with. Along with the more commonly thought-about theories and ideas we have about the psyche, they are an essential part of the therapist's   toolkit, certainly for me. The talking cure means talking, yes. It also means the therapist is listening, thinking and feeling.

8 . Much discussed and rarely achieved in full, work-life balance is an elusive prize in modern professional culture. While it can depend greatly on the priorities and values of an individual and their manager, some jobs provide strong opportunities for those looking to combine a fulfilling career with a thriving personal life.

“Work-life balance is not a situation anymore where you’re at work and then you’re at home, it’s more this balancing between the two,” said Lauren Griffin, senior vice president of Adecco Staffing U.S.

Topping the list of jobs that provide strong work-life balance is data scientist. According to IBM, “A data scientist represents an evolution from the business or data analyst role.” IBM notes that while the formal training in computer science and applications, modeling, statistics, analytics and math for these jobs is similar, “What sets the data scientist apart is strong business acumen, coupled with the ability to communicate findings to both business and IT leaders in a way that can influence how an organization approaches a business challenge.”

Stan Ahalt, director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at UNC Chapel Hill, said that the strong demand for data scientists, coupled with the anemic supply of these professionals currently available in talent pipelines, is likely creating a situation where companies will go above and beyond to attract the right talent.

“The demand for people who are able to analyze massive amounts of data and extract actionable decisions has really blossomed,” said Ahalt. “The people who are being hired are being highly sought-after, so I suspect they’re getting relatively good offers, and offers that include flexibility in their hours and locations simply because there are many more jobs than there are people.”

The list is also diverse and representative of a broad spectrum of occupations, with part-time and seasonal jobs like lifeguard and substitute teacher holding spots, as well as corporate jobs and skilled trades.

And for job-seekers or those planning a career change who want to prioritize work-life balance in their next role, Griffin said the most important step is identifying your greatest personal commitment so you can target a job that’s accommodating by nature, or an employer that will work with you to reach a solution.

“You need to define what’s non-negotiable for you,” said Griffin. “What’s that specific thing that you know you need some balance for, is it dropping your kids off, or taking your mother to a doctor’s appointment twice a month? What are those key points for you? Because then you can have a more open conversation with your employer.”