Not so long ago, most people didn't know who Shelly Ann FrancisPryce was going to become. She was just an average high school athlete. There was every indication that she was just another American teenager without much of a future. However, one person wants to change this. Stephen Francis observed then eighteen-year-old Shelly Ann as a track meet and was convinced that he had seen the beginnings of true greatness. Her time were not exactly impressive, but even so, he sensed there was something trying to get out, something the other coaches had overlooked when they had assessed her and found her lacking. He decided to offer Shelly Ann a place in his very strict training sessions. Their cooperation quickly produced results, and a few years later at Jamaica's Olympic trails in early 2008, Shelly-Ann, who at that time only ranked number 70 in the world, beat Jamaica's unchallenged queen of the sprint(短跑).

“Where did she come from?” asked an astonished sprinting world, before concluding that she must be one of those one-hit wonders that spring up from time to time, only to disappear again without signs. But Shelly-Ann was to prove that she was anything but a one-hit wonder. At the Beijing Olympics she swept away any doubts about her ability to perform consistently by becoming the first Jamaican woman ever to win the 100 meters Olympic gold. She did it again one year on at the World Championship in Berlin, becoming world champion with a time of 10.73— the fourth fastest time ever.

Shelly-Ann is a little woman with a big smile. She has a mental toughness that did not come about by chance. Her journey to becoming the fastest woman on earth has been anything but smooth and effortless. She grew up in one of Jamaica's toughest inner-city communities known as Waterhouse, where she lived in a one-room apartment, sleeping four in a bed with her motherand two brothers. Waterhouse, one of the poorest communities in Jamaica, is a really violent and overpopulated place. Several of Shelly-Ann's friends and family were caught up in the killings; one of her cousins was shot dead only a few streets away from where she lived. Sometimes her family didn't have enough to eat. She ran at the school championships barefooted because she couldn't afford shoes. Her mother Maxime, one of a family of fourteen, had been an athlete herself as a young girl but, like so many other girls in Waterhouse, had to stop after she had her first baby. Maxime's early entry into the adult world with its responsibilities gave her the determination to ensure that her kids wouldnot end up in Waterhouse's roundabout of poverty. One of the first things Maxime used to do with Shelly-Ann was taking her to the track, and she was ready to sacrifice everything.

        It didn't take long for Shelly-Ann to realize that sports could be her way out of Waterhouse. On a summer evening in Beijing in2008, all those long, hard hours of work and commitment finally bore fruit. The barefoot kid who just a few years previously had been living in poverty, surrounded by criminals and violence, had written a new chapter in the history of sports.

        But Shelly-Ann's victory was far greater than that. The night she won Olympic gold in Beijing, the routine murders in Waterhouse and the drug wars in the neighbouring streets stopped. The dark cloud above one of the world's toughest criminal neighbourhoods simply disappeared for a few days.“I have so much fire burning for my country,” Shellysaid. She plans to start a foundation for homeless children and wants to build acommunity centre in Waterhouse. She hopes to inspire the Jamaicans to lay down their weapons. She intends to fight to make it a woman's as well as a man's world.

        As Muhammad Ali puts it, “Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them. A desire, a dream, a vision.” One of the things Shelly-Ann can be proud of is her understanding of this truth.

    It seems that the great desire among the young is to be popular. The desire to be popular can force you into looking and acting like everyone else. You can lose yourself in a sea of identical hairstyles and thinking styles.

    I was forced to think about popularity not too long ago in a talk I had with my daughter. Margy had to change schools when my busy work schedule made it necessary for me to move houses. I suppose that, for a girl in her teens, entering a new school is like spending a season alone in the tropical jungles. At least that's how Margy found it at first. However, as the school year drew to a close, one student after another came to her. I told Margy that I would have been more concerned if she had been an instant social success in her new school. Nobody can please everyone. If you try to do so, you will find values as lasting as soap bubbles blown into the air.

    Some teenagers claim they want to dress as they please. But they all wear the same clothes. They set off in new directions in music. But somehow they all end up listening to the same record. Their reason for thinking or acting in a certain way is that the crowd is doing it. They have come out of their cocoon into a larger cocoon.

    I know that it has become harder for a young person to stand up against the popularity wave. Our way of life makes a young nonconformist stand out like a Martian. These days there's a great barrier for the young person who wants to find his or her own path. But the barrier is worth climbing over. You may want to listen to classical music instead of going to a party. Well, go to it. Be yourself. Popularity will come with the people who respect you for who you are. That's the only kind of popularity that really counts.

    On the arrival of the graduation season, a large number of students will leave their colleges and get busy finding jobs. However, it seems not all students will be in a hurry to get to work. According to a survey online in May, about 9.8 percent of the 93,420 graduates surveyed said they wouldn't begin working right after graduation. This phenomenon is called "delayed employment".

    One reason why the graduates don't start their careers immediately is that they want a job related to their personal interests, and they are unwilling to give in and take jobs they don't like. "Looking for the right career is like looking for Mr. Right. Maybe I could have found a job or two, but I don't want to just make a living or be stuck in a specific position,” said Shen Yu, who graduated in 2014 but didn't look for a job right away.

    Another reason is to avoid the fierce competition of the job market.Statistics provided by the Ministry of Education show the number of the new university graduates will reach 7.95 million this year. Meanwhile, only 26.7 percent of the new graduates have signed contracts(合同) with employers, 8.7 percent down from the previous year.

    And some Chinese college students have chosen to travel or volunteer instead of finding jobs. For example, Chen Nuan, who will graduate from the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts this summer, has planned to tour Europe immediately after graduation. "As the old Chinese saying goes,traveling thousands of miles is better than reading thousands of books,"she told China Daily.

    However, no matter what you choose after graduation, make full use of the first few years—this is when people develop soft skills such as punctuality and teamwork. The first 10 years are essential, which shapes careers in the long term.

    Recently I had a conversation in Beijing with an adult Chinese friend who was complaining how difficult it was to study English. No surprises there. It is a difficult language to master, just like Chinese. I made a few suggestions based on my experience. One involved a very valuable fact which I learned from my high school Latin and Greek teacher, Dr. Smith．He is a gifted linguist （语言学家），and has an amazing ability to remember things, like poetry, essays, speeches, etc．His advice to us students is that for memorization purposes, there is forty minutes each day in which our memory is more acceptable than it is during the other 23 hours and 20 minutes.

    This 40-minute "super memory" period is divided into two parts: the 20 minutes before we sleep, and the 20 minutes after we first awake. The theory supporting this is pretty simple. First, the last information we input into our brain before bed has a better chance of taking root than information gained during the noisy daytime; and second, our mind is free of disturbance(干扰) when we first awake in the morning一so more receptive to inputs, like a blank slate（石板）．

    I took the advice to heart and it served me well in my school years. In my university days, our Chinese teacher would assign us 200 new vocabulary words each day, on which we would be quizzed（测试）the following day. Without the "magic" 40-minute technique, there's no way I would have passed those daily quizzes.

    As far as language study goes, it's not only useful for memorizing vocabulary. It's also a very useful window of time to listen to the language we're studying even with background noise, and even if it's at a level we find difficult to understand. It might be audio（声音的）language study, aids, or just radio, TV or whatever.

    Beyond our years of formal(正式的) education, memory skills are hugely important in any career. How many times have we heard a speaker read their speech from a prepared text, or read the word-by-word content of a PowerPoint presentation as they present each slide（投影片）? These are annoying, boring, and less effective ways of communicating. They are almost guaranteed(保证) to lose the audience's close attention and interest, let alone persuade or inspire anyone to do anything. And yet lots of people still make this mistake.

    If we use the 40-minute technique, we may not succeed in memorizing our presentation content on a 100% word-by-word basis, but we'll be familiar enough so that we can spend much more time making eye contact with our audience. We will get them in the process, while looking at our text instead of staring at it. This will also free up our hands and arms to convey some extra messages through gesture．

    As you see, the technique really works, but like many things, it takes practice to perfect it. Therefore, we'd better find ways to use the language outside of the classroom, as regularly and frequently as possible. One basic rule of language learning is, "Use it, or lose it·”

Seize the forty-minute learning window and we'll bring in a rich harvest of language learning.

    Supermarket shoppers who buy lots of foods on "two for one" deals are far more likely to be obese (肥胖的), a major study suggests.

    Cancer Research UK found that those with highest consumption of discounted foods were at 50 percent greater risk of obesity, compared with those with low take-up of such deals.

    The study of more than 16,000 households found almost one in three food and drink items in UK supermarket baskets were bought on promotion. And the discounts were far more likely to be applied to unhealthy foods, with almost half of all chocolate, crisps, popcorn, and savoury snacks bought on promotion.

    Shoppers whose baskets contained between 40 and 80 percent of goods on special offer were 54 percent more likely to be obese than those with a maximum 20 percent of foods on such deals. Those with highest take-up of the deals bought 30 percent less fruit, and nearly 25 percent fewer vegetables than those shunning the deals.

    The study follows a government consultation on proposals to ban "buy one, get one free" deals on unhealthy foods and supermarket "guilt lanes" as part of its childhood obesity strategy.

    One in five children are overweight or obese when they start primary school, rising to around one in three when they leave.

    Research has found that obesity increases the risk of 13 different types of cancer including bowel and breast disease.

    Alison Cox, director of cancer prevention at Cancer Research UK, said: "The government's proposed 9 p. m. ban on junk food ads is a step forward in fighting childhood obesity. Now we want to see restrictions on price promotions for unhealthy food and drink items, as well as those strategically placed at checkouts. This will help families to make healthier choices.

    "There isn't one magic fix for the problem, but getting rid of these encouragements to buy unhealthy food is key to changing it."

    "You can use me as a last resort(选择), and if nobody else volunteers, then I will do it." This was an actual reply from a parent after I put out a request for volunteers for my kids' lacrosse(长曲棍球) club.

    I guess that there's probably some demanding work schedule, or social anxiety around stepping up to help for an unknown sport. She may just need a little persuading. So I try again and tug at the heartstrings. I mention the single parent with four kids running the show and I talk about the dad coaching a team that his kids aren't even on … At this point the unwilling parent speaks up, "Alright. Yes, I'll do it."

    I'm secretly relieved because I know there's real power in sharing volunteer responsibilities among many. The unwilling parent organizes the meal schedule, sends out emails, and collects money for end-of-season gifts. Somewhere along the way, the same parent ends up becoming an invaluable member of the team. The coach is able to focus on the kids while the other parents are relieved to be off the hook for another season. Handing out sliced oranges to bloodthirsty kids can be as exciting as watching your own kid score a goal.

    Still, most of us volunteers breathe a sigh of relief when the season comes to a close. That relief is coupled with a deep understanding of why the same people keep coming back for more: Connecting to the community(社区) as you freely give your time, money, skills, or services provides a real joy. Volunteering just feels so good.

    In that sense, I'm pretty sure volunteering is more of a selfish act than I'd freely like to admit. However, if others benefit in the process, and I get some reward too, does it really matter where my motivation lies?