Doing well in high school prepares students for life in college and beyond, so achieving student success is important. High school students learn valuable information from class lectures and homework, and by asking for help when it is needed. Being prepared for tests and engaging in school activities can help a student to achieve success in high school.

    Complete any homework you are assigned on time. Then, if you need help understanding a concept you will have plenty of time to get help.

    Create a study area in your home. This can be a quiet bench outside or a seating area in your room. If you like to listen to music while studying, listen to classical or relaxing music. Be sure to have plenty of lighting in the area to read your textbook or notes.

    Keep a schedule. If you have extra-curricular activities like sports or school meetings, make sure to schedule your homework and study time around them. Keeping a schedule will allow you to get better grades while they are having fun in high school.

    Eat breakfast. Having breakfast each morning before school will give you energy and brain function to pay better attention in class. Eat snacks during study sessions to keep alert and focused on your work.

    Create a study group to help fellow high school students and get help if you need it. Studying with others will help reinforce concepts and information, and if you need help there will always be someone there to help you before you get behind in your studies.

    Set up after-school hours with your teacher if you need extra tutoring. Visiting a teacher for one-on-one time before a test will help you nail down those last few concepts you need help with.

    Most people say “yes” much more readily than “no”.

    A friend is moving house this weekend and would like some help, and you agree. But, what you really wanted was a couple of quiet days relaxing at home. Or a roommate spends the entire weekends playing video games and wants to borrow your homework for “reference”. But, you've just finished it after taking a whole day to work hard.

    Many people say “yes” to those kinds of requests. They tend not to consider their own interests and feelings, and are often angry with themselves afterwards.

    Saying “no” requires courage and considerable practice, in fact, according to psychologists.

    “Everyone wants to be liked,” says Gabriel Steinki, a German psychologist. “Saying ‘no' risk losing the affection of the person asking the favor or even a job.”

    The result is that many people say “yes” just for keeping the peace. But experts say this is regrettable. Anyone should have the right to say “no”.

    In fact, rejecting a request can even help to strengthen a relationship because it expresses a true feeling.

    But, for people used to agreeing to every request, changing can be a long and uncomfortable learning process.

    Most people believe that “If I say ‘no', I'll lose the affection of the person. But the affection is important to me.” This way of thinking can be replaced by this “If he only likes me because I always do what suits him, then the price of his affection is too high in the long term.”

    Steinki says the key is talking to the other person to find a mutual(相互的) solution. “One needs to present the situation from one's own point of view, and to suggest how the situation can be dealt with to the advantage of both parties. The other person must have the feeling that his interests are being considered.”

    When the refusal is not accepted, Steinki advises giving the reasons calmly again until the person gets the message.

    The writings of Shakespeare are today little read by young people in Britain. His young readership is limited to those who choose to study literature at university.

    Shakespeare's work, together with most other classics, is seen as remote, and written in a 400­year­old version of English that is about as inviting as toothache.

    Still, in Britain schools, it is compulsory to study the bard(诗人), and when something is made compulsory, usually the result is boredom, resentment(憎恨) or both.

    This was my experience of the classics at school. But when I reached my late teenage years, I had a change of heart. Like every other young person since the dawn of time, the world confused me. I wanted answers, so I turned to books to find them.

    I went on to take a PhD in literature and have taught it in Britain and China. I have never regretted it. There is something in literature that people want, even if they don't read books. You see this in the popularity of TV and movie adaptations of great works, the recent film version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice being a case in point. These popular adaptations may help increase people's interest in the classics.

    Reading a simplified Romeo and Juliet may perhaps lead to a reading of Shakespeare's actual play. If that is the case, then I welcome the trend. But do not make the mistake of thinking that it is the same thing. Shakespeare is a poet. His greatness is in his language. Reading someone else's rewriting of his work is like peeling a banana, throwing away the fruit, and eating the skin. Take on the original. It really is worth the effort.

    A man came home from work late, tired, to find his 5-year-old son waiting for him at the door.

    “Daddy, how much money do you make each hour?”

    “If you must know, I make ＄20 each hour.”

    “Oh,” the little boy answered, with his head down. He thought for a moment, looked up and said, “Daddy, could you lend me ＄10?”

    The father was furious, “If you asked for the money to buy a toy or some other rubbish, go straight to your room and think about why you are so selfish (自私)！”

    The little boy went to his room with no words and shut the door. After a short while, the father calmed (平静) down, and started to think, “Maybe he really needs to buy something and he didn't really ask for money very often.” So he went to the little boy's room.

    “Sorry！Maybe I was too hard on your just now.” said the man, “Here's ＄10.”

    “Oh, thank you Daddy！” he said happily. Then the boy took out some coins. When the father found that the boy already had money, he got angry again.

    “Why do you want more money since you already have some?” the father shouted angrily.

    “Because I didn't have enough, but now I do.” The little boy replied, “Daddy, I have ＄20 now. Can I buy one hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you. ”

    There is a lake near a forest in Sweden. The water in lake is very clear and everything is quiet and still. On the far side of the water is some farmlands and further away, across the fields, is an old church built on a hill. It has just stopped raining. The brook flowing into the lake is full and there is still some half-melted snow from last winter on the ground.

    The reason the water is so clear and everything is so quiet and still, is that most of the plant and animal life in and around the lake is died. There are no birds because all the fish and insects, which the birds need for food, have disappeared. Many trees in the forest are losing their leaves and bark, and are sick and dying. Others were blown down by the high winds of last winter. A farmer is working in a field planting something, but unless he plants a stronger kind of seed this year, the crop will be between 25 to 40 percent lower than a few years ago. The stones of the old church tower are turning to power and unless the tower is repaired soon, it will fall down.

    The smoke coming out of factories and poisonous gases from cars and trucks causes all the death and destruction in this place. And yet this silent lake is hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest factory and highways.

    Pizza is a pretty universal treat, but where did it start? Here are three things you probably didn't know about pizza.

    1: Pizza's Origins Are Half-Baked.

    The Neapolitans（那不勒斯人）in Italy are proud of saying they invented pizza, but it's probably more accurate to say, they perfected it. The idea of putting toppings on a flatbread and baking it started in the 6th century B. C. But the people of Naples were the first to put tomato on a flatbread in the 16th century. From its start, pizza was a food of the poor, as it was cheap, filling and easy to eat on the run. In Italian, the word “pizza” refers to anything that is made and then pressed flat.

    2: Pizza Margherita Is Not Exactly a Symbol of Italy.

It was said some day in 1889, a local baker named Raffaele Esposito created three pizzas for Queen Margherita when she was on a tour of Italy. The queen loved the version that had tomato, basil and mozzarella cheese— and just happened to match the colors of the Italian flag. So Esposito named the pizza after her.

    But Pizza historian Scott Wiener points out that Italy was unified in name only in 1889 so it was unlikely any Neapolitan baker would want to celebrate “the Northern conquerors.” Further, the letter of gratitude for the pizza from the royal household that Pizzeria Brandi displays appears to be a fake（赝品）and may just have been a marketing plan.

    3: Hawaliian Pizza Invented by a Canadian.

    Sam Panopoulos, from Greece originally moved to Canada at the age of 20. In 1962, he decided to put some ham and pineapple on a pizza at one of his restaurants in Ontario.

    “We just put it on for fun to see how it was going to taste,” he told the BBC in 2017. Panopoulos named it the Hawaiian pizza after the brand of canned pineapple he used. The mix of sweet and savory toppings caught on with a certain part of the pizza-loving public. The inventor died in 2017.