A 17-year-old boy, caught sending text messages in class, was recently sent to the vice principal's office at Millwood High School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The vice principal, Steve Gallagher, told the boy he needed to focus on the teacher, not his cellphone. The boy listened politely and nodded, and that's when Mr. Gallagher noticed the student's fingers moving on his lap. He was texting while being scolded for texting. “It was a subconscious act,” says Mr. Gallagher, who took the phone away. “Young people today are connected socially from the moment they open their eyes in the morning until they close their eyes at night. It's compulsive.”

    A study this year by psychology students at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga., found that the more time young people spend on Facebook, the more likely they are to have lower grades and weaker study habits. Heavy Facebook users show signs of being more sociable, but they are also more likely to be anxious, hostile or depressed. (Doctors, meanwhile, are now blaming addictions to 'night texting' for disturbing the sleep patterns of teens.)

    Almost a quarter of today's teens check Facebook more than 10 times a day, according to a 2009 survey by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group that monitors media's impact on families. Will these young people get rid of this habit once they enter the work force, or will employers come to see texting and 'social-network checking' as accepted parts of the workday?

    Think back. When today's older workers were in their 20s, they might have taken a break on the job to call friends and make after-work plans. In those earlier eras, companies discouraged non-business-related calls, and someone who made personal calls all day risked being fired. It was impossible to imagine the constant back-and-forth texting that defines interactions among young people today.

    Educators are also being asked by parents, students and educational strategists to reconsider their rules. “In past generations, students got in trouble for passing notes in class. Now students are skilled at texting with their phones still in their pockets,” says 40-year-old Mr. Gallagher, the vice principal, “and they're able to communicate with someone one floor down and three rows over. Students are just fundamentally different today. They will take suspensions rather than give up their phones.”

    I look in the mirror, and I'm not happy with what I see. I don't have a "perfect" face. I look in the magazines and all I see are girls with fair hair, blue eyes, and, of course, a pretty little nose. They're on the outside of the buses that I take home, the television programs I watch, and the billboards（广告牌） I walk under. Almost every advertisement I see shows this human physical "perfection". These billboards not only tell me what to drink, but also how to look.

    Our society place more importance on a person's physical beauty, rather than their ability, honesty and character. We have influenced women to go through painful surgeries（手术）and starve themselves to become this society built physical model. To be a beautiful woman in the 21st century doesn't mean that you are a brilliant doctor or caring mother. It means you have the perfect jaw, eyes and lips. It means that you can be six feet tall and weigh one hundred and ten pounds.

But what about the women who are starting to leave their youth? Instead of looking at aging as a sign of wisdom, we try to prevent the aging process(过程）. It's a kind of funny thing to want to look eighteen when fifty. Fifty is a relaxed age, when you can step back and look at all you've achieved (successfully complete something). It is when your hard work pays off. Unfortunately, our society just sees you as "old". To stop the aging process, women buy wrinkle（皱纹） creams, do eye lifts and face lifts. They spend thousands of dollars to win the hopeless battle against age.

    I remember when I was about thirteen years old and going through teens, I had oily hair, and a half developed body. I hated the way I looked. I used to cry to my mother all the time, but she would just laugh and tell me that "you don't want anyone to like your appearance. It's your heart that is important, because beauty fades.（消逝）" I knew that she was right. If you work on your heart enough, people will start to see the beauty in you, which lasts and remains on even after you die.

    Garbage or trash is a major kind of environmental pollution.Each person produces about 2kg of trash a day.We are making waste products faster than nature can break them down.And we are using up resources（资源）faster than they can be replaced（取代）.

    This adds up to trouble for the environment.Where does all that garbage go?What can be done to help dispose of（处理）garbage?How call we make less garbage?

    Garbage isn't just the smelly rotting fruits,vegetables or meat that we throw away in our homes.Those are only a small pan of all the stuff we throw away.We create other kinds of waste,in construction,mining and in our factories.

    Did you ever wonder what happens to your garbage?Most is burned or buried in landfills（垃圾填埋场）Less than a quarter of our waste is recycled.

    With a population of 1.3 billion（十亿）,garbage is a big problem for China.Chinese cities create around 148 million tons of garbage every year.The amount is growing at around 10 percent each year.

    Once we used about 3 billion plastic shopping bags every day in China.The result was a great waste of resources and serious pollution.So we did something about that.Now we use more cloth bags and shopping baskets when we shop.

    In the coming years China will build waste-to-energy plants in cities to clean up the garbage.But there's a lot more that needs to be done.And you can play a part.

    One of the biggest social issues in Japan is the increasingly low marriage rate among young people and the small birth rate, which led to an aging and eventually shrinking（萎缩） population. Most young Japanese women simply don't seem interested in having many children.

    Now what began in Japan is happening globally. As David Brooks wrote, birth rate is becoming smaller in much of the world, from Iran — 1.7 births rate per woman — to Russian, where low birth rates connected with high death rates mean the population is already shrinking. And this includes US, which has long had higher birth rates than most developed nations. Aging countries will face the burden of caring for large elderly populations without a larger resource of young workers.

    It's true that global aging is going to present some major challenges. Who will take care of the elderly? Will an older world be less active and slower to change and adapt? It's all true. Sometimes I worry about a coming generational war over resources, just as I worry about how I will take care of my own parents in their old age, just as I worry about who might take care of me.

    But here's the thing: an older world may have less pressure on the environment. As we all know, the environment is the real victim of overpopulation.

    So maybe a world that grows slower and grows older will put less pressure on the environment, and buy us a few more years to ensure our energy use, along with our birthrates, reaches a sustainable（可持续的）level. After all, we're supposed to get smarter as we got older. Hopefully that holds true for the planet as well.

    During your four years in the college, you'll have many exciting choices to make, the first of which will be your course selection for your first semester. The beauty of this choice is that you can't go wrong! No matter which one of our First-Year Options you select to apply for, you will create a rich intellectual experience to begin your college career.

    Option 1: Liberal Arts Seminar

    The Liberal Arts Seminar is a multidisciplinary(多学科的)course that explores the cultural history of the Mediterranean through fictional and nonfictional books.

Fall schedule: When Registration opens, you will select between one and four additional courses to complete your schedule.

    Option 2: FLL Hager Scholars Program

    The FLL Hager Scholars Program is designed with our most ambitious students of languages and linguistics in mind, and is designed to create for them both a sense of community and opportunities for intellectual growth.

    Fall schedule: When Registration opens, you will select between one and three additional courses to complete your schedule.

    Option 3: Ignatius Seminars

    Offered only in the first semester, Ignatius Seminars introduce students to the depth and diversity of Georgetown's dynamic intellectual community.

    Fall schedule: When Registration opens, you will select three or four additional courses to complete your schedule.

    Option 4: Traditional First-Year Academic Program

    With this program, you'll take your first step into the college's rich and varied core courses and explore your fields of interest in free optional coursework.

    Fall schedule: When Registration opens, you will build a schedule of four or five additional courses from the full college curriculum.

Sunrise Hike

Saturday, October 21, 6:45 a.m.—7:45 a.m.

Enjoy sunrise from the hilltop as you learn about wildlife, plants, history and forest. Ages 8 and up; under 18 with an adult. To register by phone, call 630-933-7248.

Meet in the parking lot on the west side of Greene Road, south of 79th Street. Dress for the weather, wear comfortable shoes and bring water.

Trick or Treat

Saturday, October 28, 9:00 a.m.—11:30 a.m.

You and your family are invited to join the YMCA for a Halloween hike up Badger Mountain!

Make sure to wear your Halloween costumes (戏装)!

Free shirts for the first 200 kids registered. Remember to take away your shirt by 11:30 a.m. or it will be given away.

Cost: Trick or Treat is a FREE event.

Discovery Hike

Thursday, October 26, 1:00 p.m.—4:00 p.m.; Ages 3—8

Fall is pumpkin time. Listen to a pumpkin story and learn how pumpkins grow. Then we will head out on the path in search of a little pumpkin just for you and maybe, we will find the great pumpkin along the way. $7 per child.

Harvest Day Camp

Monday, October 31, 8:00 a.m.—5:00 p.m.

Harvest Camp is an opportunity for children aged 5—13 to find the wonder of autumn at Keystone Science School and enjoy all the fun the Halloween season offers. We'll explore the ways our natural environment has changed from summer to fall. As always, our programming is focused on building skills, knowledge and confidence. Cost: FREE.