2 . As children, we are well-trained to find the right answer. We are rewarded for A’s,the honor roll and acing the test. Our education trains us to follow the rules and deliver the expected answers. When we do, awards and congratulations follow. Yet when we grow up, it gets a little harder. Life and careers don’t have tests with an A if we get the “right answer”.

I recently had coffee with a college student who will graduate.She is struggling with what she wants for her career. She wants her parents to be proud of her and to continue the success she has had in school. She also talked about other students in her graduating class who are set to do“some big things”, like working for impressive companies. Yet she wasn’t sure of the right answer for using her degree. She said that deep down she was hoping that someone might give her the answer.

We both agreed that it comes down to not looking for the right answer, but her answer. The grown-up definition of the “right answer” is different from that in school. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? It takes time to know these answers. And they can change over time and at any point in your career. My encouragement is to get valued advice and input, of course, but finally to look within yourself for the answers.

It helps to come back to: What do I want to be known for?What is my definition of success? What am I best at? If I had no fears, what would I do? What is one step I can take today to move me towards my goal (even if it’s not perfectly clear)?

I find these types of questions are more helpful at getting to our unique answer rather than “ right answer“questions,such as:What will my parents want? What degree or job will mark me as accomplished to the world? What is my best option based on where I work today?

5 . Online educational learning games is an effective way with endless option for teaching kids of all age groups, and children are also able to operate the computer without much help. Parents who become familiar with operating the computer find it easier to teach kids through these programs.

Children are not willing to learn math tables or difficult words at school. They find it fun to sit in front of a computer and learn language and solve mathematical problems. In this age of computers, computers are becoming an important part of the child’s daily curriculum (全部课程) with parents opting to teach these children new things each day with the help of online educational games.

Computers are also known to improve the motor skills in children. In addition, the level of these games can be adjusted according to the level and learning ability of the kids. The makers of the games keep the kid’s interest in mind while designing them so that their interest is maintained. Another advantage of these games is that you can find free online games and do not have to invest (投资) in these expensive products. Other activities that are available on the Internet include online coloring games. This is also a constructive way that children can use to pass their leisure time.

Moreover, the children can stay in the comfort of their homes. Kids who are fond of playing on the computer can spend their time learning educational material instead on video games that teach violence.

Parents have to keep an eye on their kids and make sure that they do not spend their time on the computer playing games that could be harmful for them. It is essential to direct the kids to educational sites that have beneficial games and are known to help the progress of these children.

8 . Every year around August, millions of teens take their parents to stores to buy new clothes for the start of the school year. Not every parent can afford this, and some teens are forced to go to school in the same clothes they wore last year. The obvious differences in clothes cause differences among students. There is a simple solution to this problem; school uniforms (校服).

I know from personal experience and surveys that wearing uniforms creates a sense of equality among peers (同龄人).

From sixth grade until I graduated from senior high school, I attended a school that required students to wear uniforms. The uniform was very simple: dark brown shoes, green-brown pants, and a white shirt. The uniform left little room for any kind of self-expression, especially through clothes.

However, I learned how to stand out by expressing myself through my personality, art, and sports. I did not know I could draw until the sixth grade. I also would never have learned of my musical abilities if it hadn’t been for my desire to find ways to express myself. Uniforms taught me that I was myself, except what I wore.

Uniforms also contribute to a much safer learning environment. I remember a particular event that happened in my junior high school. A man ran away from prison and wanted to hide in the gym of our school. Luckily, cameras all over the school quickly found the stranger before any danger could ever happen as he was out of place. School officials kept the man locked inside our gym until the police came to take him back to prison.

Uniforms help provide a better educational experience for all students no matter what race, culture, or economic class (经济阶层). In closing, wearing uniforms is good for both schools and students.

9 . We all have a tendency to fake laugh, particularly when authority figures in our lives try to make a joke that just doesn’t land. Though it might feel rude not to laugh when your in-laws or boss try to say something funny, pretending to do so might not be much better. It turns out, even if you think that your forced laughing sounds genuine, people are usually pretty good at separating truly spirited belly laughs from fake ones. But how can they possible know the difference?

Well, when researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles studied the acoustic and perceptual differences between real and fake laughter, they found that some of the sounds associated with genuine laughter is “really hard to fake.” In their study, the researchers determined that subjects were only fooled by 37 percent of fake laughter.

The most prominent factor distinguishing real laughter from fake laughter is duration — or, more specifically, the number of breaths taken in in between sounds. Seeing as it takes more effort and concentration to fake a laugh as opposed to do it genuinely, people tend to pause more in between their “ha-ha’s” when they’re faking it. Evidently, that pausing is pretty noticeable.

“A fake laugh is basically an imitation of a real laugh, but produced with a slightly different set of vocal muscles controlled by a different part of our brain,” Greg Bryant, the lead UCLA researcher on the study, explained. “The result is that there are subtle features of the laugh that sound like speech, and ... people are unconsciously quite sensitive to them.”

People have also proven to be emotionally sensitive to laughter as well. “Our rains are very sensitive to the social and emotional significance of laughter,” said Carolyn McGettigan, a scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London.

McGettigan conducted a 2014 study that recorded participants’ brain responses as they listened to the same people produce genuine laughter by watching funny videos, as opposed to fake laughter. “During our study, when participants heard a laugh that was posed, they activated regions of the brain associated with mentalizing in an attempt to understand the other person’s emotional and mental state,” she said.

So, while we may understand that certain social situations sometimes require fake laughter, most of the time, our instincts and emotional intelligence are just too smart to buy into them.

According to McGettigan, that’s a good thing. “Evolutionarily speaking, it’s good to be able to detect if someone is authentically experiencing an emotion or if they’re not,” she said. “Because you don’t want to be fooled.”