In England and Australia， it is more common than in the United States for a student to take a gap year(间隔年). What is a gap year？ After high school， it's time for students to go to college. But some students don't go to college directly. ①They will spend one year traveling or doing some other activities before entering college. The year is called a gap year.

On the one hand， students can learn a lot during a gap year.②Before the gap year ， students who take a break from their education will come back to college. When they come back， they will have a clear opinion about what they want to do in their life. ③ may ， learning ， they ， their ， towards ， attitude(态度)， change.

On the other hand， delaying(延期) college for one year can mean increased education costs of 8% or more. Besides higher education costs， the cost of the gap year can be large. That depends on the activities the student chooses.

Taking a gap year has advantages and 　④　. After considering all the things， I might take a gap year. My dream is to be a tour guide. I will spend one year working as a travel agent. That would be a wonderful experience for me.

    A new research on students' sleeping habits says that more than 70% of students do not get enough sleep.

    Researchers found that primary school students get 9 hours and 10 minutes of sleep a night, junior high school students get 8 hours and 6 minutes, and senior high school students get 7 hours and 9 minutes. None of those hours are enough for each group. Not enough sleep can cause many kinds of problems in children and teenagers.

    In 2007, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission asked primary and middle schools in the city to adjust their timetables so that students could get more sleep. Two years later, a research found that students at schools that adjusted their timetables got more sleep than in 2005.

    The researchers hope that the government will take measures to make students have enough sleep. Students in other places may even less sleep than those in Shanghai.

    A king received a gift of two great falcons (猎鹰), and they were really beautiful. He gave the birds to his head falconer to be trained.

    One day, the falconer told the king that although one of the falcons was soaring (高飞) high in thesky, the other bird couldn't move from its branch (树枝) since the day it arrived.

    The king called on many falcon trainers to train the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly.

    After he tried everything else, the king thought to himself, "Maybe I need someone morefamiliar (熟悉的) with the countryside to work out this problem.” So he asked his men to go and get a farmer.

    In the morning, the king was surprised to find the falcon was soaring high above the gardens. The king asked the farmer, “How did you make the falcon fly?” The farmer said to the king, “It was very easy. I just cut the branch which the bird was sitting on".

    We are all made to fly. But sometimes we just sit on our branches, don't want to leave the things that are familiar to us. So sometimes our lives are boring and not exciting. Let us learn to cut the branch that we are familiar with and free ourselves to a brave soar!

    When Paul was a boy growing up in Utah, he happened to live near a copper smelter, and the chemicals that poured out had made a wasteland out of what used to be a beautiful forest. One day a young visitor looked at this wasteland and called it an awful area. Paul knocked him down. From then on, something happened inside him.

    Years later, Paul was back in the area, and he went to the smelter office. He asked if they had any plans or if they would let him try to bring the trees back. The answer from that big industry was "No".

    Paul then went to college to study the science of plants. He told the teacher about his plans. Unfortunately his teacher says, "It will be a waste of your time to try to do it." Everyone knew that, he was told. Even if he was knowledgeable as he had expected, he wouldn't get his idea accepted.

    Paul later got married and had some kids. But this dream would not die. And then one night he did what he could with what he had. Under the cover of darkness, he went to secretly into the wasteland and started planting.

Every week, he made his secret journey into the wasteland and planted trees and grass. For fifteen years he did this against the common sense. Slowly rabbits appeared. Later the company actually hired Paul to do what he was already doing.

    Now the place is covered with fourteen thousand acres of trees and grass and bushes, and Paul has received almost every environmental award Utah has. It took him so many years until his hair turned white, but he managed to keep that impossible promise he made to himself as a child.