Double Trouble

    When I was eight, I wanted a toy and needed $10 to buy it. But, as usual, I was broken. I decided to ask my 11-year-old sister, Kathleen, for a loan. I went to her room1her for the cash. Laughing, she agreed to2me the money, but added, “I will charge you 10 percent compound interest every 3until you pay me back.”

    “Compound interest what's that?” I asked.

    “Well, interest is what you call the4money borrowers have to pay back on a loan,” she explained. “Compound interest means that the interest payments get bigger and bigger the5you take to pay back the loan. To repay the loan, you will need to give me $11 after one month. If you wait two months to pay me back, your6will grow from $10 to $11. So I'll be charging you interest on $11. Then I will add that interest to the $11 you already owe me, for a 7of $12.10. That's what you'll owe after two months.”

    “Sure. I get it,” I said. Though truthfully, I was getting 8

Kathleen lent me the money, and I bought the toy. My birthday came a month later, and my mom gave me $10.9that was just the amount I needed to buy another toy I wanted10I put off paying my sister for a month. After another month, I11about the loan.

    Several months later, on Christmas morning, my sister and I each found a $02 bill in our stockings. I was just putting it into my pocket 12Kathleen tapped me on the shoulder.

    “Sorry, kiddo. That's mine. I'm13on your debt.”

    “Huh?” Then I remembered the loan. “Hey! How can it be that much? I 14borrowed $10.”

    “True,” she said, “but interest has been compounding for eight months. Now you 15me $21.43.” She paused, then added. “You can pay me the $1.43.”

    I 16to believe that a $10 loan could more than double so quickly. Much to my17my sister got her pencil and tablet and showed me exactly how it all added up.

    My head18as I tried to keep track of Kathleen's 19 but this time, I got the basic idea of compound interest. I 20the hard way that borrowing money can be “double trouble” in no time.

    I always come across random acts of kindness in my life. Many years ago, I was 1Costa Rica when I found myself in an 2situation: my credit cards and bank cards went out of 3 abroad, and I only had $5 to my 4.

    I had no way to get money. I didn't know anybody in this country. I only knew basic Spanish, and besides the cash the only 5I had was a return ticket to my country in almost two 6. Back then, there was no such thing as mobile phones, and7email was very limited. To find help, I decided to go to the countryside. With the only coins I had, I 8the bus terminal(终点站)and found a village, which 9almost the exact amount. About 4 hours later, I arrived at Santa Rosa Abajo at midnight.

    I knocked door to door,10in my very poor Spanish that I was a foreigner travelling in Costa Rica with no money but I 11to stay here for over ten days. I begged them for a 12－such as cooking , cleaning and looking after their kids, anything like that. Everybody 13, “oh my, but so poor are we that we have no 14 food or space. Maybe you can try the next 15.” And they'd point me to another house.

    16, I arrived at a Chinese restaurant. The owner of the restaurant was very 17. She gave me food and called the Red Cross to come to 18me. With the help of the Red Cross, I spent my19days in Costa Rica.

    This is one of the best trips I've ever had, because I realized that when you're in a position to be able to 20, it actually makes you feel happy.

    Honesty is always the best policy, especially when it comes to mental health problems. In a TV 1, one girl gets very real about dealing with anxiety and panic.

    "I was the best student in my high school. I put so much 2 on myself," she said. "I never 3 a class. But I got sick during 10th grade and I started to 4. That's when the panic attacks began." She goes on to describe what a panic attack 5 like, "One day the teacher handed me my grade 6, and I couldn't breathe. My heart was beating very 7. I felt disconnected. I saw people trying to talk to me but I couldn't hear them. Afterwards, I was sent to 8," she shared.

    It was then 9 the attacks started happening 10 daily, and they haven't stopped. "Last year I started college. And I can't be the best student here no matter how hard I try," she said. "Everyone is so 11. My panic attacks got so bad that I had to 12 my first semester."

    However, now she is facing her anxiety, and things are getting better. "I used to try to hide 13. I thought that 14 nobody know, it didn't exist," she said. "But the more I talk about my 15, the more I realize that other people experience 16 things. So I'm trying to express it more. I had a great teacher 17 told me, 'Instead of letting anxiety keep you from doing your art, let it be the thing that 18 your art."

    Recently, women all over the world took to Twitter to19 what anxiety is like. We are 20 alone.

    You never know how far a kind act can go. You don't know who it can 1, either. When Gloria Porter and Jeff Reick began 2, they had no idea how much it would 3 others to shower (大量给予) people with kindness.

    89-year-old Gloria Porter was lying in hospital. She couldn't leave her ward. So to 4 boredom, she would often stare outside her window to watch construction workers building the new front entrance to the hospital. She wasn't expecting one of the 5 to wave to her. She couldn't help but wave back at the kind 6. This was only the start of a special 7 between the two.

    Jeff Reick knew Porter was 8, so he decided to send a kind 9 to her by finding some chalk and writing "Get Well" on one of the beams (梁) facing her 10. "I just thought that was 11," Porter said. "So I should do something to 12 that."

    When Porter saw construction workers working high above the ground one cold, windy day, she grew 13. She wrote "Stay safe" on a piece of paper, which she then 14 on the window for the workers to see. "When I saw 4 Stay safe' on a piece of paper, I 15 and said to my coworkers, 'Did you see that?'" Reick said.

    The hospital staff took photos of that and 16 them on social media. The simple acts of kindness 17 and many people were employed in similar acts, including one woman who delivered 18 pizza to the construction workers.

    "I just try to lead by example and never expect so much 19," Reick said. "If everybody 20 does things like that, the world will be a better place."

The first time you make a speech is truly a special moment, and I will surely never forget the one I gave.

As a kid, I was extremely1 and seldom said anything2 to stay quiet most of the time. When I was about to graduate from3 school I remember that my teacher pulled me aside and offered to make a4 with me. She told me how I was getting As in all of my subjects5 handwriting, in which I had only managed to receive a C. She said if I were to 6 the welcome speech at graduation, I would get an A in handwriting.

My first thought was that giving a speech doesn't sound like much7 .But who was I to complain if I could get an A so8 ? The speech I wrote was9 boring. It started with something as lifeless and10 as "Good afternoon parents, teachers, and students. Welcome to the graduation ceremony."

As you can see, my speech was nothing fancy and I am sure nobody 11 it either. But the important lesson is that I12 it and I realized the earlier you can standup and speak, the better it is. The next year in junior high school, I found it had given me more13 when I started14 the student council(学生会). Giving a speech 15 its quality was an important first step that I took and hopefully you can too.

Humans act with purpose, but much is still unknown about how we become purposeful agents — that is, how we develop the ability to willfully make things happen. In a recent study to explore agency's mysterious roots, we tried to catch infants (婴儿) in the act of discovering their own agency, thereby revealing the process of agency formation.

Researchers place a baby into a cradle with a mobile suspended above. Then a scientist ties one end of a string to the mobile and the other to the infant's foot. Now if the baby moves, the toy will, too. By observing babies in this setup, scientists can watch as the infants learn and recall a simple cause-and-effect interaction: kick a foot and the mobile moves.

As predicted by the researchers, infants kicked significantly more when their foot was tethered (拴住) to the mobile than when it was not. However, when an experimenter pulled the string to make the mobile move instead, infants moved less than when the mobile was at rest. Furthermore, when we freed the babies' foot from the mobile, they kept on kicking at higher rate to make the toy respond — and were visibly frustrated when that did not happen.

Our observations also pointed to a notable pattern: The babies' initial movements consisted of twisting and pushing without clear direction. But once tethered to the mobile, the more intensely they moved, the more their attention was drawn to the effect their kicking had on it. At some point, the infants must have figured out that they had agency, thus the aimless movements became intentional action — a highly coordinated exchange between the tethered infant and the mobile.

The baby-mobile study emphasizes how understanding the relationship between an organism and its environment is essential to uncovering the origins of directed behavior. The experience of agency emerges only when an organism senses it is coupled to its environment. In this way of thinking, the interaction and relationship between the two are crucial for purpose to arise.