A Guide to the University

Food

    The TWU Cafeteria is open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. It serves snacks, drinks, ice cream bars and meals. You can pay with cash or your ID cards. You can add meal money to your ID cards at the Front Desk. Even if you do not buy your food in the cafeteria, you can use the tables to eat your lunch, to have meetings and to study.

    If you are on campus in the evening or late at night, you can buy snacks, fast food, and drinks in the Lower Café located in the bottom level of the Gouglas Centre. This area is often used for entertainment such as concerts, games or TV watching.

Relaxation

    The Globe, located in the bottom level of McMillan Hall, is available for relaxing, studying, cooking and eating. Monthly activities are held here for all international students. Hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m, closed on Sundays.

Health

    Located on the top floor of Douglas Hall, the Wellness Centre is committed to physical, emotional and social health. A doctor and nurse is available if you have health questions or need immediate medical help or personal advice. The cost of this is included in your medical insurance. Hours are Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to noon and 1:00 to 4:30 p.m.

Academic Support

    All students have access to the Writing Centre on the upper floor of Douglas Hall. Here, qualified volunteers will work with you on written work, grammar, vocabulary, and other academic skills. You can sign up for an appointment on the sign-up sheet outside the door, two 30-minute appointments per week maximum. This service is free.

Transportation

    The TWU Express is a shuttle service. The shuttle transports students between campus and the shopping center, leaving from the Mattson Centre. Operation hours are between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturdays only. Round trip fare is $1.

    When Steve Jobs was born on Febuary24,1955, in San Francisco , California, his unmarried mother decided to put him for adoption because she wanted a girl. So in the middle of the night, his mother called a lawyer named Paul Jobs and said, “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” But his mother told his future parents to promise that they would send Jobs to college. After Steve Jobs graduated from high school, he went to college but decided to drop out because it was so expensive that he had to sleep on the floor in his friends' rooms.

At 20, he and a friend(Steve Wozniak) started a company in a garage on April 1, 1976. Jobs named their company —-Apple in memory of a happy summer he had spent as an orchard (果园) in Oregon.

    After 10 years of hard time and failures, starting from two kids working in a garage, Apple computer eventually grew into a big company with over 4000 employees.

    At 30, Jobs , however, was fired from the company he co-founded. But after he had to leave the company, Apple was under heavy pressure from rival (对手) Microsoft and in 1996 posted billions of dollars in losses. Apple needed Steve Jobs and he was appointed as Apple' CEO in1997. Under his leadership, Apple returned to profitability and introduced new products such as the iPhone and the iPod.

    Steve Jobs once said, “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick, Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.

    Tu Youyou, an 84-year-old female（女性）scientist, became the first Chinese to win a Nobel Prize in science on Oct 5. Before that, she ever won the 2011 Lasker Award for finding out artemisinin (Qinghaosu), which saved millions of lives. She was grateful（感激的）for the Lasker prize, but said, “It is just a scientist' duty. I will go on fighting for the health of all humans.”

    Tu kept her work in the 1960s and 1970s. In that age, Malaria (疟疾) could took away people's health. Scientists all over the world had already tried over 240, 000 times but failed. Tu Youyou, a member of the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing, began to study Chinese herbs.

    Before 2011, people didn't know Tu very much. Many friends played jokes with her “the Professor of Three None's” : no degree（学位）, no study experience abroad, not a member of any Chinese national colleges. But she is hard-working. She read a lot of traditional Chinese medicine books and did a lot of researches on the disease.

    In February, 2012, Tu was named National Outstanding Females (One of the Ten) Tu is now a model of Chinese medical workers.

    A new report says living in a city makes it harder for people to concentrate(集中) on some tasks. The research found that people who live in rural areas can focus better than people in urban areas. The study is from Goldsmiths College, which is part of the University of London. Head researcher Dr. Karina Linnell and her team made great contributions. They studied how two groups of people did the same "thinking tasks". The team went to a remote(偏远的) part of Namibia, southwest Africa, to study the Himba tribe. Himba people live a very basic life in the desert. They are still doing traditional farming. The team also studied members of the same tribe who had moved to the nearest town. Dr. Linnell said the tribe who lived in the desert did much better on the tests than those in the town. It's really interesting and shocking.

    Dr. Linnell said their research may lead to changes in the way companies operate. In the future, workers may move from cities to live and work in the countryside. Linnell said there are too many things around us in the city that stop us from thinking about one thing for a long time. This means we do not work at our best. She asked, "What if, for example, companies realized certain tasks would be better carried out by employees based outside of the urban environment? There their concentration ability is better. "The past century has seen billions of people move from the countryside to big cities. In the future, the trend may not continue. If Dr. Linnell's research is true, this century might see many of those people return to the great outdoors. Let's wait to see what will happen.

    Have you eaten too much over the holidays? You should try fidgeting for a while. Those around you might not like it, but scratching (moving your nails (指甲) against a part of your body) and twitching (moving suddenly and quickly when you don't want to) is an important way of burning up calories (卡路里).

    American researchers have found that some people's squirming (continuously turn your body when nervous) and wigging (move in small movements, especially from side to side) equals (等于) several miles of slow running each day.

    The scientists, based at the National Institute of Health's laboratory in Phenix, Arizona, are studying why some people get fat and other stay slim.

    In one study 177 people each spent 24 hours in a room in the institute where the amount (量) of energy is measured by their oxygen and carbon dioxide (二氧化碳) levels. By the end of the day, some people had burned up 800 calories in toe-tapping, (moving the front part of your foot up and down) finger-drumming (hitting your fingers continuously and lightly against something hard) and other nervous habits. However, others had burned up only 100 calories.

    The researchers found that slim（苗条的）women fidget more than fat women, but there was no significant difference in men. Heavy people burn up more energy when they fidget than do thin people.

    Anyone who has ever volunteered for any cause can tell you that in the end, they felt that they gained more from the experience than they gave. This is true for most examples of reaching out to help others. We find that we gain new understanding about not only those we help, but ourselves as well. Stressing the importance of helping others in martial arts students will benefit them both inside and outside of the class.

    Helping others strengthens families. Families that practice the belief of working together and helping each other prepare their children for the concept of teamwork outside of the home environment. By learning to help around the house through activities such as household jobs, baby-sitting and keeping a tidy bedroom, children learn valuable lessons that they carry with them to their future relationships.

    By helping others outside of the home environment, valuable friendships can be developed. When we learn to reach out to others and give off our time and talents we find that our friendships grow, which in turn is a benefit to our lives. Martial arts training supports this by exposing students to people of various backgrounds and beliefs that gather for a common goal and to help each other. Any time a group of people are working toward a common goal, team spirit surely forms. When we help each other in the martial arts setting and in every area of our lives, a friendship is formed that promotes teamwork.

    The most important thing to realize is that it does not take a lot to make a lot happen. Little things can make a big difference in the area of helping others. Simple gestures of kindness and support given frequently can build a strong base for the growth and development of each individual which leads to the success of all.