2 . At age 10, McCullough got a glimpse of her dream job. It sparkled in the eyes of the Packard Children’s nurses who cared for her brother Matthew, who had brain cancer. As a child, McCullough spent hours at her brother’s bedside. “I looked up to the nurses. I found their unconditional commitment to my brother’s care remarkable,” McCullough says.

As a young girl, McCullough practiced nursing by caring for her brother, a desire born out of her intense love for him. She would rub his back, bring him drinks, and even help adjust his lines. She was a natural. Her parents said that she was very caring and always put people first from a young age.

When Matthew passed away, McCullough became even more committed to becoming a nurse. She took steps through the years to make her dream come true. In high school, she volunteered at cancer centers and hospitals. “My becoming a nurse is 100% in honor of Matt. I felt the need to channel my grief and turn that tragic moment into something positive,” McCullough says.

Over time, McCullough realized that she didn’t just want to be a nurse. She wanted to be a pediatric oncology (儿科肿瘤) nurse at Packard Children’s. McCullough wanted to give back to the hospital that had done so much for her brother.

Despite feeling like school never came easy, McCullough persisted (坚持) and got into a respected nursing school. She feels like she worked 10 times harder than other nursing students at the university. She traded going out and spending time with friends for the library.

In college, each step brought McCullough closer to her dream. She worked as a nursing assistant at Stanford Health Care for adults with cancer. Then, she transferred to Packard Children’s and worked as a nursing assistant in the Pediatric Transplant Center.

Today, She’s a nurse on the same unit that cared for her brother years ago. She is one of those nurses she admired so much as a child. She finds the time, even on very busy days, to truly be there for patients and families to make them feel loved and welcomed.

3 . For high schoolers, a career goal can help them choose a major and college. They may find a career that fits for the first try. Therefore, do encourage the career exploration below. It describes a few new ones that will be available when your teen reaches adulthood.

Unfortunately, psychological health issues are unlikely to decrease soon. The existing research is far from a cure-all. Psychological help will likely be an ever more interesting and in-demand profession.

The U. S. is facing an overburdened health care system. So, an ever-higher percentage of health care will be provided by intermediate-care providers such as physician assistant, dental assistant, etc. The good news for career-seekers is that the training is much shorter.

Experts in database architecture, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will stay in demand. New applications may include AI-assisted diagnosis (诊断) and treatment recommendations, individualized education, and advanced embryo (胚胎) selection to ensure absence of genetically influenced diseases and so on.

In your teen’s lifetime, major diseases will likely be prevented and/or treated with molecules custom-matched (定制) to the very specific disease. Your math-centric teen who can picture getting a PhD could help make that happen.

It’s great when teens are able to explore careers on their own. You might want to sit alongside, but let your teen sit in the driver’s seat. Only help as much as needed.

4 . With a name like The Daily Orange in America, you will think the Syracuse University student-run newspaper prints a new issue every day. The newspaper began operating at the Syracuse, New York-based school in 1903. But it only prints a new issue three times a week.

Editor in chief Haley Robertson worries about where she will find companies willing to pay for advertising space. She also worries about having to fire friends. And, she searches out former students willing to donate money so the newspaper can send reporters on the road to cover the university’s sports teams. Media executives many years older than Robertson are facing similar problems. The news industry’s financial difficulties have spread to colleges and universities across the US, which brought challenges to these young journalists. Student reporters train for the future in two main ways. They receive a traditional classroom education from professors. They also put what they learn to use in student-run newsrooms.

Chris Evans is president of the College Media Association, or the CMA. He notes that few college newspapers have shut down the way local newspapers in towns and cities across the country have, considering the central role they are playing. But some have had to cut the number of times they publish each week. Some would find a former student for donation or sell enough advertising to cover it.

The University of North Carolina reports that newspaper newsroom jobs across the country dropped from 52,000 in 2008 to 24,000 today. There are other kinds of jobs in the field, of course, but not a very high number of them. Many journalism educators have wondered whether their students can deal with that. Journalism schools should do more than just equip students for possible media jobs, said Marie Hardin, head of Penn State’s Donald Bellisario College of Communications. She said journalism educators need to teach students communication, critical thinking and writing. Such skills are highly sought in many different fields.

5 . From unexpected colour to making clever environmental choices, Joanna Plant, an interiors specialist and tastemaker, shares her design intentions for the year ahead.

·What is your New Year design resolution?

I’d like to get out and look at things. The aim is to visit lots of houses and gardens for inspiration and see more exhibitions abroad. I love a house tour and try to find somewhere to go and look about whenever I travel outside London or abroad. I really appreciate seeing things first-hand these days.

·What was a highlight of 2023?

Selling my house of 22 years and having the improvement of a new property — very exciting to be doing a project for myself! What’s fantastic is to work with suppliers who have amazing collections to discover and those who allow us to change the colours or make changes to existing designs.

·What design ideas do you have that you hope to bring to fruition?

Happily, clients seem to be more responsive to having bolder paint plans and using more colours. We have been asking them to see how layering pattern can make a room more quiet and relaxing. I think that we are making our rooms look very nice by using a lot of decorative trims and accessories.

7 . Throughout my 41 years at General Electric, I’ve experienced a lot. In the media, I’ve gone from prince to pig and back again. And I’ve been called many things.

In the early days, some called me a crazy, wild man. When I became CEO two decades ago, Wall Street asked, “Jack who?”

When I tried to make GE more competitive by cutting back our workforce in the early 1980s, the media called me “Neutron Jack.” When they learned we were focused on values and culture at GE, people asked if “Jack has gone soft. ” I’ve been No. 1 or No. 2 Jack, Services Jack, Global Jack, and, in more recent years. Six Sigma Jack and e-Business Jack.

When we made an effort to acquire Honeywell in October 2000, and I agreed to stay on through the transition (过渡期), some thought of me as the Long-in-the-Tooth Jack hanging on by his fingertips to his CEO job.

Those characterizations said less about me and a lot more about the stage our company went through. Truth is, down deep, I’ve never really changed much from the boy my mother raised in Salem, Massachusetts.

When I started on this journey in 1981, standing before Wall Street analysts for the first time at New York’s Pierre Hotel, I said I wanted GE to become “the most competitive enterprise on earth.” My objective was to put a small-company spirit in a big-company body, to build an organization out of an old-line industrial company that would be more high-spirited, more adaptable, and more flexible than companies that are one-fiftieth our size. I said then that I wanted to create a company “where people dare to try new things, where people know that only the limits of their creativity and drive, their own standards of personal excellence, will be the ceiling on how far and how fast they move. ”

I’ve put my mind, my heart, and my courage into that journey every day of the 40-plus years I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of GE.

10 . When Jenny Streete began caring for older people more than 50 years ago, prejudice was part of her everyday working life. Streete, who grew up in Jamaica and came to England in 1967, had a way of dealing with it: “Just put a smile on your face,” she says. “If you let bad words into your brain, it will only cause you more harm.”

The 81-year-old remembers one instance of abuse.

Streete says: “The sister who was managing the ward (病房) tried to calm a woman down. But I told the sister to let her say what she has to say. I don’t mind.”

The next night, Streete noticed the woman’s blanket had fallen off. She replaced it, telling the patient in a low voice exactly what she was doing and why. The same thing happened the next night, and the next. “But then, the night that I was off duty, that same woman asked the sister: ‘Where is that black lady? I don’t want anyone else to look after me while she is on duty. She was so kind.’”

Brought up by her grandparents, Streete found her vocation after a mystery illness that nearly killed her, and left her with permanently damaged vision. She got better, she says, because of “loving care and tenderness”. When she came to England, she was determined to give that care to others.

And Streete hopes to carry on caring for older people as long as possible — although, she says, her children are urging her to retire. She currently works two nights a week in an end-of-life ward which provides specialist nursing. Many of the people she looks after are now a similar age to her.

Her preference for night shifts hasn’t changed, either. She frequently stays on after her shift is finished, to spend time with residents.

She urges those considering a career in care to think hard about why they’re choosing it. “Sometimes, people are not happy because they don’t want to do the job — they have to do it, because there is no other way. Wanting to do it is very different from having to do it.”

But the key quality a care worker needs, she says, is patience, “Some people like to do everything quick-quick-quick, but you have to take your time with residents. I just try to treat everybody the way I would like to be treated.”