Jack threw some papers on my desk and looked at me angrily. “What's wrong?” I asked. “Next time you want to change anything, ask me first,” he shouted and left.

    “How dare he treat me like that?” I thought. I had just changed one long sentence, and correct grammar—something I thought I was paid to do. In fact I had been warned. On the first day one of  my workmates took me aside and reminded me of his temper. As the weeks went by, I came to look down on Jack.

    One day Jack's other papers left me in tears so I stormed into his office angrily. “What?” he asked.

    Suddenly I knew what I must do. After all, he earned it. “Jack, the way you've been treating me is wrong. I've never had anyone speak to me that way. As a professional, it's wrong for me to allow it to continue,” I said. Jack smiled nervously, “Susan, I make you a promise that I will be a friend. I will treat you as you should be treated, with respect and kindness,” he said. With these words, I left.

    Jack avoided me the rest of the week, and never questioned my work again. I brought cookies to the office one day and left some on his desk. Another day I left a note: “Hope your day is going great.” Over the next few weeks, Jack reappeared , but there were no more Jack's papers. One year later I discovered I had breast cancer, and was scared. The statistics (统计数字) were not great for my long-term survival.

    On the last day of my hospital stay, Jack came and silently handed me a bundle with several bulbs inside. “Tulips (郁金香) ,” he said. I smiled, not understanding. He cleared his throat. “If you plant them when you get home, they'll come up next spring. I think you will be there to see them when they come up.” Tears clouded my eyes and I whispered: “Thank you.”Jack held my hands firmly, saying, “You are welcome. You can't see it now, but next spring you will see the colors I picked out for you.”

    I have seen those red and white striped（有条纹的） tulips push through the soil every spring for over ten years now. This past September the doctor declared me cured. At a moment when I was praying for just the right word, a man with very few words said all the right things. After all, that's what friends do.

    Mary Krupa became friends with the grey squirrels during her first week at Penn State,after spotting them running around and idly（漫不经地）wondering what they would look like with tiny hats on their heads.Today, everyone at the university knows her as the "Squirrel Girl".

    Mary started bringing them food,and gradually they began to trust her.She managed to put a hat on a squirrel and take a picture.Thinking that her colleagues could do with something to lift up their spirits,she started posting similar Photos on Facebook.The response Was greatly positive,and before long Mary and her squirrels became an Internet sensation.

    Growing up in a neighborhood outside State College,Mary was always fond of birds and animals around her home,but she didn't interact with people very much.She was later diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome,but the squirrels changed that.The squirrels are actually a good way to break the ice,because I'll be sitting here patting a squirrel and other people will come over and well just start like feeding the squirrels together and chatting about them,"she said."I am a lot more outgoing.

    And in case you're wondering how Mary is able to get the squirrels to do what she wants for her photos,it has a lot to do with food.For example,whenever she wants them to hold or play with something,she puts peanut butter on the prop（道具）,and they'll grab it.But getting to that part took a while.In the beginning,she would throw peanuts up the trees on campus and invite the squirrels to come down and get them,but they hesitated to approach her.She had the patience to earn their trust,though.

    This year,Mary is graduating with a degree in English and wildlife sciences.She wants to be a science writer and educate people on how to preserve the environment.As for her furry friends,Mary plans to stay in the area and visit them as often as she can.

    We've all been blamed (责备) wrongly sometimes in our lives. How do we deal with it? Not with anger, hurt and tears, but in a collected way…

    If you are wrongly blamed, let others know of the true state of things at once. Do it calmly and clearly — if you lose your temper, people will stop listening or become defensive.

    If you don't find a sympathetic ear, find a person who will hear you out — a teacher, a parent, a friend, or a brother or sister who believes in you.

    If you've been in trouble before, it may be easy for people to doubt you. So win your respect back in their eyes by behaving with honesty.

    If what you are blamed for is something unimportant, sometimes it's better to smile it off.

    If you've been blamed for something serious, it's important to put your side of the story forward quickly and truthfully.

    Just remember:

    Respect your friends' secret if you don't want to be wrongly blamed for making them known.

    Don't blame others without first getting proof of their wrong doing.

    Putting the blame on someone else for what you have done wrong is weakness. Admit your mistake quickly.

    If someone else is wrongly blamed, stand up for that person.

    Don't pass the responsibility to others.

    You often can choose a private setting when you browse(浏览) the internet. But be forewarned: It may not afford nearly as much privacy as you expect. That's the finding of a new study.

    Major web browsers, such as Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, often a private-browsing option. It's sometimes referred to as “incognito.” This option lets you surf the Internet browser and saves a record into its history of each page that you visited. And what sites you visit won't affect the suggestions your browser makes the next time you're filling out an online form.

Many people believe—incorrectly— that the incognito setting protects them more broadly. Most believe it even after reading a web browser's explanation of the incognito mode.

    For instance, a new study had 460 people read web browsers' descriptions of private browsing. Each person read one of 13 descriptions. Then the participants answered questions about how private they thought their browsing would be while using this tool. The volunteers didn't understand the incognito mode. This was true no matter which browser explanation they had read. The researchers reported their findings on April 26 at the 2018 World Wide Web Conference in Lyon, France.

    More than half of the volunteers thought that if they logged into a Google account through a private window, Google wouldn't keep a record of their search history. Not true. And about one in every four participants thought private browsing hid their device's IP address. That's wrong, too.

    Blase Ur was one of the study's authors. He's an expert in computer security and privacy in Illinois at the University of Chicago. Companies could clear up this confusion by giving better explanations of the incognito mode, his team says. For example, the browsers should avoid vague（模糊).The web browser Opera, for instance, promises users that “your secrets are safe.” Nope Firefox encourages users to “browse like no one's watching.” In fact, someone might be. (If you'd like to know more about the research information, please click here.)

    The obsession(痴迷) with perfection among young people has risen by more than 30 percent over the last three decades, a study has found.

    Many of them believe that their environment is extremely demanding and that others judge them strictly, according to analysis of data from more than 40，000 British, Canadian and American university students from 1989 to 2017.

    The research, carried out by the University of Bath and York St John University, found that the degree to which young people attach an unreasonable importance to being perfect, hold unrealistic expectations of themselves and are highly self­critical has increased by 10 percent when compared to previous generations. The authors suggested their findings point to the influence of three decades of neoliberalism(新自由主义) forcing young people to compete against one another.

    Lead author Dr Thomas Curran from the University of Bath's Department for Health said he hoped organisations responsible for safeguarding the welfare of young people, such as schools, universities, and policymakers who shape the environments in which these organisations operate, would “resist the promotion of competitiveness at the expense of young people's psychological health”.

    He said, “Rising rates of perfectionism highlighted in this study is in line with three decades of neoliberalism, which has forced young people to compete against each other within increasingly demanding social and economic aspects.”

    The researches defined perfectionism as a combination of extremely high personal standards and overly strict self­criticism, leading to psychological difficulties.

    Co­author Dr Andrew Hill of York St John University added, “The increase in mental health difficulties among young people makes for a convincing background for our findings. The higher level of perfectionism may be a key contributing aspect to such difficulties. Young people are trying to find ways to deal with increasing demands being placed on them and they are responding by becoming more perfectionistic towards themselves and others.”

Like reading? Interested in Chinese classical novels? Have a look at the following four books which are we known to most Chinese as Four Masterpieces.

The Water Margin

The Water Margin, also known as All Men Are Brothers in Pearl Buck's translation, Shui Hu Zhuan in Chinese, is along chapter novel with the Song Jiang Uprising in the late Northern Song Dynasty as the main background and type of heroic legend. It is an immortal (不朽的) novel and has inspired many storytellers. The author of the novel is generally regarded as Shi Nai'an (1296~1371).

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the first full-length historical romance novel in China. Its author is Luo Guan zhong (about 1330~1400), a famous novelist in the late Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty. Characters such as Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhuge Liang have become household names among the Chinese.

Journey to the West

Journey to the West is the first romantic chapter novel about gods and devils in ancient China. There are 100 copies of Journey to the Westin the existing Ming Publications without the author's signature. Wu Yuxuan, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, first proposed that the author of Journey to the West was Wu Cheng'en (1500~1582) of the Ming Dynasty.

The Dream of the Red Chamber

The Dream of the Red Chamber, also called The Story of the Stone, is said to be the greatest masterpiece of Chinese fiction. It is generally believed to be written by Cao Xueqin (about 1715~1763), a writer of the Qing Dynasty. With hundreds of persons and their stories, the story is very complex but also very interesting for its encyclopedic character(百科全书式的人物).