Selena Gomez and I are scheduled to meet at a low­key coffee shop in Encino. Not wanting to keep the superstar waiting, I arrived at nine, 20 minutes early. As I was catching up on e­mails, Selena quietly scooted into the seat next to me. No bodyguard. Not even a drop of makeup. She was ten minutes early and no one else in the restaurant looked up so much. Selena was wearing Bebe shorts. She had a baby face and ordered a hot chocolate.

    After making small talk about what she wore for the shoot, she dived into the subject of her career. Selena declared 2012 the year of movies. She filmed three: Spring Breakers, a drama; The Getaway, an action flick; and Hotel Transylvania, a comedy. Each is a marked move away from the teen style that made her a household name.

    Now that her Disney days are behind her, Selena is at that unstable point in a child star's career where she is trying to grow up—both as a person(she turned 20 in July)and as an artist. “Being part of the Disney Channel was such a blessing, and I'm super happy with what my show accomplished, but acting is something I would like to take on more seriously.” She continued, “I don't necessarily feel accomplished. I want to create a whole different person when it comes to acting.”

    Selena has been working fulltime since she was seven years old and scored a role on Barney&Friends. In 2007, when she was offered the lead in Wizards of Waverly Place, Selena, her mother, and her stepfather uprooted from Texas to LA , where they are settling now.

    Do you have any problem with time? Start doing these and you will see the difference.

●Write it down

    Don't rely on your memory to keep track of every little detail. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Write down the things you need to do in a small notebook, or use online tool to create and update your “to-do” list.

●{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    Working for long periods without a break can waste your time. It is more efficient to work or study for a shorter period of time, take a break, and then go back to work. You may get more done in tow focused 45-minute sessions.

● One thing at a time

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Do one thing at a time, and do it well. As the Chinese proverb says, “One cannot manage too many affairs. Like pumpkins in the water, one pops up while you try to hold down the other.”

● Schedule email time

    On your cell phone you get a notification every time someone sends you an email. If so, you have to check your email many, many times a day. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Schedule time to check your email. It doesn't matter when.

● Choose to say “No”.

    It's easy to become overwhelmed if we say “yes” to everything. Think about the task before you commit to it. Do you need to do it? Can someone else do it? Avoid saying “yes” to every request. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

● Keep a goal journal

    Write down your goals in a journal and evaluate them regularly. Mark your progress for each goal. Be sure you take the necessary step to achieve your goals.

Money Matters

    Parents should help their children understand money. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}So you may start talking about money when your child shows an interest in buying things, candy or toys, for example.

1）The basic function of money

    Begin explaining the basic function of money by showing how people trade money for goods or services. It is important to show your child how money is traded for the things he wants to have. If he wants to have a toy, give him the money and let him hand the money to the cashier(收银员). {#blank#}2{#/blank#} When your child grows a bit older and understands the basic function of money, you can start explaining more complex (复杂的) ways of using money.

2）Money lessons

    Approach money lessons with openness and honesty. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} If you must say NO to a child's request to spend money, explain, “You have enough toy cars for now.” Or, if the request is for many different things, say, “You have to make a choice between this toy and that toy.”

3）{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Begin at the grocery store(杂货店). Pick out two similar brands（商标） of a product—a name-brand butter and a generic (无商标产品), for example. You can show your child how to make choices between different brands of a product so that you can save money. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}If he chooses the cheaper brand, allow him to buy another one with the money saved. Later, you may explain how the more expensive choice leaves less money for buying others.

A. Talk about how the money bought the thing after you leave the toy store.

B. The value of money

C. The best time to teach a child anything about money is when he shows an interest

D. Permit the child to choose between them

E. Ask yourself what things that cost money are most important to you

F. Tell your child why he can or can't have certain things

G. Wise decisions

    At heart, parents always wish the best for their children, and they work hard for that. Nowadays, we see parents deciding the schools for their little ones before the baby is even born. Once kids starts going to school, some parents want to have a time-to-time update(最新的情况) of their kid's activities. They want to come to their classroom every day, keep an eye on whom they talk to, know the friends they keep, start telling them how to do their jobs, and keep talking to them about everything under the sun. Besides, they send their kids to extra hobby classes, as they want their children to do best in every field.

    When it comes to the education, super mum and dad have all the plans made for their children, and I am sure that they have come up with the best. So, try to fight for the dreams that your parents have seen for you. However, in some cases, it may happen that the kids have some different dreams. Parents sometimes don't even consider the choices of their kids and may force them to do what they wanted to do in life. It's good to plan the future for the children, but leave at least some decisions to them.

    So what should the children do? First, hear out all the plans that your parents have made for you. If you have some different ideas, then sit down and talk to your family about it. Be patient and respect their decisions, but put your plan forth, and make them understand what you want to do and why. Many times, you don't know the difficulties that you may have to face while pursuing your dreams. Ask your parents for suggestions, which will make them feel good and involved. That way, they may support you if you are going on the right path.

    Author Avi, winner of a Newbery Award, a Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award, and several Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, may have seen his first children's book published in 1970, but that doesn't mean he's lost his talent for connecting with young fans.

    The American writer, born in 1937, agrees that getting involved with his readers is one of the key reasons he keeps writing, and that he's been fortunate enough to hear directly from readers about the impact (影响) his books have had. “I have been touched many times by readers who find some special connection between their lives and something I have written: the Danish girl who read something of mine in Danish, and struggled to communicate that in her poor English; the autistic (自闭症的) boy who somehow found something meaningful about my books that reached his own inner life; the women who have told me how important The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle was to them when growing up."

    Beyond his fans' questions about the characters he's created, the writer's most commonly heard question may be about his own use of the single name “Avi." “As a young adult, I was a reader of French literature, which has that one name tradition: Moliere, Racine, Anouilh, Gide, and so on," he explains. “Avi was given to me by my twin sister when we were very young children, and it stuck. Then my family discouraged me from taking up writing as a career because they considered my writing poor. By using Avi, I was showing my determination to them."

    Although he believes－and has the awards to show－that his writing skills have improved, writing still doesn't come easily to him, despite having over sixty books to his credit. “I never studied writing in any formal sense. I taught myself to write by reading, and by imitating what I was reading," he says.

    The writing task may be tough, but the payoff is big. “To create, share, and support the gift of reading and literature, is to give young people the gift of many worlds, within and without," Avi states.

    The values of artistic works, according to cultural relativism (相对主义), are simply reflections of local social and economic conditions. Such a view, however, fails to explain the ability of some works of art to excite the human mind across cultures and through centuries.

    History has witnessed the endless productions of Shakespearean plays in every major language of the world. It is never rare to find that Mozart packs Japanese concert halls, as Japanese painter Hiroshige does Paris galleries, Unique works of this kind are different from today's popular art, even if they began as works of popular art. They have set themselves apart in their timeless appeal and will probably be enjoyed for centuries into the future.

    In a 1757 essay, the philosopher David Hume argued that because "the general principles of taste are uniform (不变的) in human nature," the value of some works of art might be essentially permanent. He observed that Homer was still admired after two thousand years. Works of this type, he believed, spoke to deep and unvarying features of human nature and could continue to exist over centuries.

    Now researchers are applying scientific methods to the study of the universality of art. For example, evolutionary psychology is being used by literary scholars to explain the long-lasting themes and plot devices in fiction. The structures of musical pieces are now open to experimental analysis as never before. Research findings seem to indicate that the creation by a great artist is as permanent an achievement as the discovery by a great scientist.