My high school life has been filled with many ups and downs, whether it was social or academic. Even though my current high school was not my first choice, I never regretted attending Southside High School. “Since you have chosen it, then it is the best for you,” said my parents.

    Up until the junior year I did not realize my capabilities (能力) as a student. Being in the IB Program, I was told that my junior year would be the toughest in all the years of high school. With this “little” piece of information, I walked into my junior year, scared of my grades. As weeks went by, I started to believe that the junior year was not as hard as everyone had said, but I was wrong. My grades were rapidly declining(下降) and by the end of the first term I had five Cs in seven of my classes! I could not believe it — I did not want to believe it. I tried my best to get my grades up myself without any help from anyone, but my pride just made my grades worse. And I had to miss out on one of the most important speech and debate competitions all year: States. I was heartbroken. I realized that I could not survive my junior year on my own, so I had to get help fast.

    Once I got a tutor, my grades went from Cs, Ds, and even some Fs, to nothing but As and Bs. I slowly started to gain my confidence back in all of my classes and even myself. By the time the third and fourth quarter came around, I had been on the honor roll twice, and I was receiving awards from speeches and debates, tennis and school.

    Southside has taught me to always keep my head up and never give up on myself no matter what life throws at me. I am proud to be a Southside Tiger.

    In order to increase their job chances after college, Chinese students are turning to a special practice—Eiffel Tower nose jobs (鼻整形手术). The latest trend in plastic surgery promises to create a nose that is similar to the curve of the Eiffel Tower.

    Surgeon Wang Xuming said:  “We are influenced by the beauty of the Eiffel Tower. We are not content to just add something to the nose; we reconstruct it.” The surgery costs about US$ 10,000 and involves the enlarging of the nose using tissue from the forehead.

    Hundreds of posters advertising the procedure are put up all over Chongqing city, where surgeon Xuming runs his private practice. They show a western-looking woman with an almost-to o-perfect nose, against an outline of the Eiffel Tower.

    Interestingly, many young women in China are eager to achieve a western appearance, as they believe it will give them an advantage in the highly competitive job market. “Some students face a lot of employment pressure after graduation. If their facial features are good, they'll have more chances of finding a job,” said surgeon Xuming. “We've had students getting the Eiffel Tower nose; it's helped them a lot.”

    Apparently, Chinese employers are quite particular about appearances and prefer attractive candidates. Some of them even go as far as putting height and weight requirements in their employment ads. Plastic surgeons across the country are reporting an increase in the number of students choosing beauty “improvement”.

    According to a Mr. Li, hospital manager at surgeon Xuming's clinic, most of their customers are female and the bill is taken care of by the family. “They usually come in with their mothers, and tend to be from well-off backgrounds.” he said.

    Personally, I don't think it so important to “improve” our appearance as long as we are skilled at our jobs. We can't decide how we look, but we can decide how well we live and work.

    There are some strange driving laws in different countries.

    I often dreamed about Pisa when I was a boy. I read about the famous building called the Leaning Towers of Pisa(比萨斜塔）. But when I read the word Pisa, I was thinking of pizza. I thought this tower must be the best place to buy pizza in the world.

    Many years later, I finally saw the Leaning Tower. I knew then that it was Pisa and no pizza and that the tower got its name because it really did lean to one side. Some people want to try to fix it. They are afraid that it may fall over and they don't want it to lean over the city.

    I don't think it a good idea to try to fix it. The tower probably will not fall down. It's 600 years old. Why should anything happen to it now? And, if you ask me, I like what it looks like. It seems to say nothing is perfect. Imperfect things may be more interesting. Why is it so famous? There are many other older, more beautiful towers in Italy but Pisa tower is the most famous.

    During the period from 1660 through 1800, Great Britain became the world's leader. Language itself became submitted to rules during this period. This need to fix the English language is best illustrated (描述) in the making of The Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. Guides to the English language had been in existence before Johnson began his project in 1746. These, however, were often little more than lists of hard words. When definitions of common words were supplied, they were often unhelpful. For example, a "horse" was defined in an early dictionary as "a beast well known".

    Johnson changed all that, but the task was not an easy one. Renting a house at 17 Gough Square, Johnson began working in the worst of conditions. Supported only by his publisher, Johnson worked on the Dictionary with five assistants. Compared to the French Academy's dictionary, which took forty workers fifty-five years to complete (1639-1694), Johnson's dictionary was completed by very few people very quickly.

Balanced on a chair with only three legs, Johnson sat against a wall in a room filled with books. Johnson would read widely from these books, mark passages illustrating the use of a particular word, and give the books to his assistants so that they could copy the passages on slips of paper. These slips were then stuck to eighty large notebooks under the key words that Johnson had selected. Fixing the word by this method, Johnson could record a word，s usage and its definition.

    How many passages were used? According to Johnson's modern biographer Walter Jackson Bate, the original total number could have been over 240,000. How many words were defined by the lexicographer? Over 40,000 words appeared in two large books in April of 1755. Did Johnson fully understand the huge task he was undertaking when he began? As he told his contemporary biographer James Boswell, "I knew very well what I was undertaking and very well how to do it — and have done it very well."

    When it comes to learning a foreign language, many people wonder if they will be able to memorize enough vocabulary. But this question never happens about their mother tongue, and yet, it was a foreign language once. However, among all the questions that new parents ask, no doctor has ever heard: "Will my baby be able to learn my language?" Be honest, do you know all the words of your mother tongue? The answer is: "no".

    New words, and new ways of using old words, appear every day. Twenty years ago, who could have been able to understand a sentence like this: "Click here to download your digital book."? Nobody. You never stop learning new vocabulary and you never know how long you will need it.

    Sometimes, you have the word on the tip of your tongue...and it sticks there! But you do know this phenomenon(现象) and don't think that it is because of a bad memory. You should not give this phenomenon more importance in the language you are learning than in your mother tongue.

    You need to learn only 2000 or so basic words to be able to create any phrase you need. You can't avoid some work in order to learn these necessary words and all the more if you want to learn quickly. And before you consider buying into any method, be sure it is right for you. It is not wise to depend on any method based upon mnemonics(记忆群). The first few words seem very easy to learn, so you buy the course, but then you discover quickly, though too late, that a dozen words later, it is all the more difficult to learn a new word when you have also to learn the trick to memorize it.