As the new semester begins, millions of college students across the country are trying hard to remember how best to write a paper or, more likely, how best to delay that paper.

    Procrastination is the thief of time and a lot of students suffer form it. They can spend whole days in the library doing nothing but staring into space, eating snacks, surfing the Internet, watching videos and looking at other students sitting around them, who, most likely are doing nothing either.

    Paralyzed (使失去活力) by their habit to procrastinate, they write micro blogs about their fears, asking their online friends if they sometimes have the same issue. But this does nothing to break the spell (魔咒).

    According to a recent report, 95 percent of us procrastinate at some point and 20 percent of the world's population are always procrastinating. The figures are disappointing. Procrastinators are less wealthy, less healthy and less happy than those who don't delay. Procrastinators like to find excuses to justify their behavior, but BBC columnist Rowan Pelling says they are all wrong.

    Many procrastinators tell themselves they are perfectionists who work best under pressure. Pelling says this is non sense, as work done at the last minute is more likely to have mistakes than work done on time. The behavior of procrastinators often makes them feel ashamed, inconveniences others and annoys loved ones.

    Pelling also points out that procrastination feels particularly delinquent（过失的） in a society that thinks of speedy action as admirable, and, at times, even as a moral good.

    Fortunately, social scientists have thrown their weight behind efforts to understand this behavioral mistake and offer strategies to control it. Piers Steel, a Canadian social scientist and author of The Procrastination Equation, believes human is “designed” to procrastinate. Nevertheless, he suggests a couple of good ways to get through the task at hand.

    Blind imitation is self-destruction. To those who do not recognize their unique worth, imitation appears attractive: to those who know their strength, imitation is unacceptable.

In the early stages of skill or character development, imitation is helpful. When I first learned to cook, I used recipes and turned out some tasty dishes. But soon I grew bored. Why follow someone else's way of cooking when I could create my own? Imitating role models is like using training wheels on a child's bicycle; they help you get going, but once you find your own balance, you fly faster and farther without relying on them.

    In daily life, imitation can hurt us if we subconsciously(下意识地) hold poor role models. If, as a child, you observed people whose lives were bad, you may have accepted their fear and pain as normal and gone on to follow what they did. If you do not make strong choices for yourself, you will get the results of the weak choices of others.

    In the field of entertainment, our culture glorifies celebrities. Those stars look great on screen. But when they step off screen, their personal lives may be disastrous. If you are going to follow someone, focus on their talent, not their bad character or unacceptable behaviors.

    Blessed is the person willing to act on their sudden desire to create something unique. Think of the movies, books, teachers, and friends that have affected you most deeply. They touched you because their creations were motivated by inspiration, not desperation. The world is changed not by those who do what has been done before them, but by those who do what has been done inside them. Creative people have an endless resource of ideas. The problem a creator faces is not running out of material; it is what to do with the material knocking at the door of imagination.

Study your role models, accept the gifts they have given, and leave behind what does not server. Then you can say, "I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors' tragedies and stories, and know that they are cheering me on."

    Eight days for just￥12,000

    Departs: May－October 2017

    Includes:

    Return flights from 6 China's airports to Naples

    Return airport to hotel transport

    Seven nights'accommodation at the 3-star Hotel Nice

    Breakfast

    The service of guides

    Government taxes

    Join us for a wonderful holiday in one of the Europe's most wonderful－Naples in Italy if you want to have a nice time in a beautiful small quiet place. The ancient Romans called the city “happy land” with attractive coastline, colorful towns, splendid views and the warm Mediterranean Sea. Your best choice for a truly memorable holiday!

    Choose between the peaceful traditional villages of Sant' Agata, set on a hillside six miles away from Sorrento, or the more lively and well-known international resort town of Sorrento, with wonderful views over the Bay of Naples.

    Breathtaking scenery, famous sights and European restaurants everywhere. From the mysterious Isle of Capri to the hunting ruins (废墟) of Pompeii, and from the unforgettable “Amalfi Drive” to the delightful resorts (景点) of Positano, Sorrento and Ravello, the area is a feast for the eyes! Join us, and you won't be disappointed!

    Price based on two tourists sharing a double room at the Hotel Nice. A single room, another￥2,000. A group of ten college students,￥10,000 for each.

    Like to know more? Telephone Newmarket Air Holidays Ltd on: 0845-226-7788 (All calls charged at local rates).

    Hungary's capital sparkles(闪耀)in winter and it's a great place to see in the New Year. There's festive cheer on tap, with concerts, folk dancing and stalls selling wine or fruit brandy and traditional chimney cake outsides. New Year's Eve is celebrated with fireworks over the Danube(多瑙河), and it's worth booking one of the many river cruises(巡游)with dinner and DJs (free and open 24/7, but likely to be crowded).

    A four-night trip with Travel Republic costs £449 for a family (2 adults with 1 child under 6), departing Stansted on 28 December with Ryanair, with B&B accommodation at the central Atrium Budapest Hotel.

    For a slightly more cerebral(理智的)New Year's Eve, Stockholm is a smart choice. The main celebration is at Skansen, Sweden's oldest open-air museum. Enterainment starts at 8 p.m. with singing and dancing, and peaks with a recitation of the poem Ring Out. Evening tickets are £14 for adults (children under 6 go free), or there are new day and evening combination tickets (£16 adult/£5 child). On New Year's Day, early birds can try an introduction to ice skating (8 a.m. daily, £139).

    Book it Ryanair, Norwegian and SAS fly to Stockholm from several UK airports.

    The land of fire and ice lives up to its name on New Year's Eve, when about 90 bonfires(篝火)are lit across the country. Some bonfires are accompanied by Icelandic singing; most start about 8 p.m. and finish by 10 p.m., which can be a good time to see the northern lights. After the fires, everyone goes home to watch Áramótaskaup, a TV show that has been running on 31 December since 1966. But that doesn't mean the party is over just before midnight, they all come back out to let off an astonishing amount of fireworks, with profits going to Icelandic Search and Rescue Association, which does life-saving work, and is run by volunteers and is a cause close to most Icelanders' hearts.

    Book it Wow Air and Wizz Air, easyJet and Icelandair fly to Reykjavik from several UK cities.

Perhaps you have seen them, those who fall asleep on the subway and then, somehow, wake up exactly at their stop. Perhaps you are one of them. How is this possible? We spoke to two doctors, who offered their insights about it.

It is possible that your body gets used to waking up at a certain point each time during your commute, said Dr. Marc I. Leavey, a primary-care specialist in Maryland. That holds especially true if you commute at the same time every day. This suggests that if you were to get on at a different time, or if the journey were delayed, your internal clock might not wake you up at your stop. It is an interesting theory, but Dr. Ronald Chervin, director of Michigan Medicine's Sleep Disorders Centers, does not fully buy it. He is skeptical that circadian rhythms can also explain why you wake up after a brief nap.

You are also likely to wake up for your particular stop because of an oral cue, such as the conductor stating the name of the subway stop over the public-address system. Such cues alert your brain that you have arrived, explained Dr Leavey. According to a study published in the Public Library of Science, during sleep, our brain reacts differently when we hear our own name and other people's names, noted Dr Chervin. This suggests that your brain does not turn off during sleep, which makes it possible to pick up on the announcement of your stop.

Another reasonable possibility: You may wake up at each stop, check if it is yours, and go back to sleep, all without having remembered it, added Dr. Chervin. He sees this in cases where patients are suffering from sleep apnea. They may wake up as many as 200 times during a single night, without having remembered a single instance. That's because they fall right back asleep before their brain has time to process their experience into long-term memory. Similarly, you could be waking up every time you hear a new stop called. But you just don't remember such instances even after you fully come awake for your stop—leading you to believe that you have slept the whole way through and miraculously woken up at the right time.

Coco Gauff used to visit the Grand Slam tournament (大满贯锦标赛) as a kid to see her idols Serena and Venus Williams. Now she is a champion there herself. On Sept 9, the 19-year-old from the US won her first major women's singles title at the 2023 US Open (美国网球公开赛).

After an average start, Gauff surged to a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over her bigger, stronger opponent, Aryna Sabalenka, from Belarus, who became the new world No.1 the day after the tournament ended.

Unlike the Williams sisters, who have obvious force and power, Gauff is small and slim. But she moves fast on the tennis court. Forbes magazine said, "She is the quickest and perhaps already the best returner of impossible shots in tennis history."

Even though Sabalenka is a very powerful hitter, it felt like she had to finish each point four or five times, as Gauff's defense was so perfect, noted The Telegraph. This ended up frustrating Sabalenka and caused her to make 46 unforced errors.

Gauff thus became the first American teenager to win the US Open since Serena Williams, then 17, in 

1999. When asked about "taking the torch" from the 23-time Grand Slam winner and the similarity between their tennis careers, Gauff told ESPN, "Serena is Serena. She's the greatest of all time... I'd hope to do half of what she did. But I'm not going to compare myself to her. She's some one that I look up to."

Now, Gauff's big win has left tennis fans wondering: When's her next Grand Slam? That's no easy task. Two of the past four US Open women's champions were teenagers at the time, Canada's Bianca Andreescu in 2019 and the UK's Emma Raducanu in 2021, and neither has come close to repeating their success yet. But one thing about Gauff is certain — that at just 19 years old, the sky's the limit.