I'm a 34-year-old man, married, lived in a nice house, and have a successful career as an educational consultant. But my life was not always so great. I had a learning disability from an early age. I went to a special school where I got plenty of extra help. Still, I suffered the rest of my school days in public schools.

       My life improved remarkably when I discovered art. The art world gave me a chance to express myself without words. I went to a workshop and gradually got good at making things with clay(黏土). Here I learned my first important lesson: disabled as I was in language. I could still be smart and well express myself with clay. And my confidence came along.

I got my next lesson from rock climbing. It was a fun thing but I was scared from the start. I soon noticed it wasn't a talent thing; it was practice. So I did it more. After about five years of climbing, I found myself in Yosemite Valley on a big wall. I learned that if you fall in love with something and do it all the time, you will get better at it.

       Later I decided to apply my previous experience to learning how to read and write. Every day I practiced reading and writing, which I used to avoid as much as possible. After two hard years, I was literate.

       Having gone through the long process with art, rock climbing, and reading and writing, now I've got to a point in my life where I know I am smart enough to dive into an area that is totally unknown, hard, but interesting.

     Once, when I was a teenager, my father and I were standing in line to buy tickets for the circus. Finally, there was only one family between us and the ticket counter.

     This family made a big impression on me. There were eight children, all probably under the age of twelve. You could tell they didn't have a lot of money.

     Their clothes were not expensive, but they were clean. The children were well-behaved, all of them standing in line, two-by-two behind their parents, holding hands. They were excitedly talking about the clowns, elephants, and other acts they would see that night with their brothers or sisters in a low voice.

One could sense they had never been to the circus before. It promised to be highlight of their young lives. The father and mother were at the head of the pack, standing proud as could be. The mother was holding her husband's hand, looking up at him as if to say, "You are my knight in shining armor."

He was smiling and responding in pride, looking back at her as if to say, "You got that right." The ticket lady asked the father how many tickets he wanted. He proudly responded, "Please let me buy eight children's tickets and two adult tickets so I can take my family to the circus."

The ticket lady gave the price. The man's wife let go of his hand, her head dropped, and his lips began to shake. The father leaned a little closer and asked, "How much did you say?"

     The ticket lady again quoted the price. The man didn't have enough money.

     How was he supposed to turn and tell his eight children that he didn't have enough money to take them to the circus?

     Actually we were not wealthy in any sense. So I understand how the kids would feel. I felt sorry for them.

注意：

所需写的短文词数应为150左右；

应使用5个以上短文标有下划线的关键词语；

续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已经为你写好；

续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词。

Paragraph 1

Seeing what was going on, my dad put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill and dropped it on the ground.

Paragraph 2

That day my father and I went back to our car and drove home without any tickets.

请阅读下面文字及图表，并按要求用英语写一篇150个词左右的英语短文。

    You really should finish compiling that boring spreadsheet, but you just can't bring yourself to do it. Maybe it can wait a little longer? Or it might just disappear if you ignore it long enough? You know the feeling.

    According to Professor Piers Steel, of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, 95% of people postpone important tasks at some point. But for some, procrastination (拖延症) isn't occasional, but constant. Professor Joseph Ferrari, of DePaul University Chicago, found that 20% of the population of the world are habitual procrastinators. Sadly, delaying our duties isn't very good for us. As the poet Edward Young wrote: “Procrastination is the thief of time”.

【写作内容】

1）. 用约30个单词概述上述信息的主要内容；

2）. 结合上述信息，简要分析“拖延症”产生的原因及危害；

3）. 根据你的分析，就如何克服“拖延症”谈谈你的看法（不少于两点）。

【写作要求】

1）. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；

2）. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；

3）. 不必写标题。

    Walk Out of the Comfort Zone and Try New Things

    For most high school students, free periods are useless. From what I have seen, few do homework, instead many are on their phones and talking, making it impossible for those who actually want to do work to complete any. As a senior next year, I think extra periods should be used to take optional subjects.

Our school offers many classes. Now is the time to experiment in different fields of study. We will never know if we are interested or talented in a subject if we don't try it.

    In my 8th grade, I was told that I had to take an art class as a graduation requirement; so in the 9th grade I took Studio and Art. One of the projects was to build a clay pot, but I built mine incorrectly, so it broke in the kiln (窑). I found out that I have no artistic ability at all, and now I know for sure that I do not want to be an artist. However, the class was one of my favorites that year. I was able to try new activities and test my ability.

    Walk out of our comfort zone and try new things! College is when we should focus on a specific major, but high school is when we have to figure it out.

    Half of all college students change their major at some point. By doing that hundreds of dollars are wasted on classes that they would have never needed to take. So use our extra periods to find out what we want to do in college. The classes we choose can impact us in future. Taking optional subjects will enrich our mind. It will also show colleges we are diverse students.

    Six days a week, up and down the red hills of northeast Georgia, my grandfather brought the mail to the folks there. At age 68, he retired from the post office, but he never stopped serving the community.

    On his 80th birthday, I sent him a letter, noting the things we all should be thankful for — good health, good friends and good outcomes. By most measurements he was a happy man. Then I suggested it was time for him to slow down. At long last, in a comfortable home, with a generous pension, he should learn to take things easy.

     “Thank you for your nice words,” he wrote in his letter back, “and I know what you meant, but slowing down scares me. Life isn't having it made; it's getting it made.”

     “The finest and happiest years of our lives were not when all the debts were paid, and all difficult experiences had passed, and we had settled into a comfortable home. No. I go back years ago, when we lived in a three-room house, when we got up before daylight and worked till after dark to make ends meet. I rarely had more than four hours of sleep. But what I still can't figure out is why I never got tired, never felt better in my life. I guess the answer is, we were fighting for survival, protecting and providing for those we loved. What matters are not the great moments, but the partial victories, the waiting, and even the defeats. It's the journey, not the arrival, that counts.”

    The letter ended with a personal request: “Boy, on my next birthday, just tell me to wake up and get going, because I will have one less year to do things — and there are ten million things waiting to be done.”

    Christina Rossetti, an English poet, once said: “Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end.” Today, at 96, my grandfather is still on that long road, climbing.

    Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, was born in Kingfish, Oklahoma on March 29, 1918. He was raised in Missouri where he worked in his father's store while attending school. This was his first retailing (零售业) experience and he really enjoyed it. After graduation, he began his own career as a retail merchant.

    He soon opened his first Wal-Mart store in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart specialized in name brands at low prices and Sam Walton was surprised at the success. Soon a chain of Wal-Mart stores sprang up across rural America. Walton's management style was popular with employees and he founded some of the basic concepts of management that are still in use today.

After taking the company public in 1970, Walton introduced his “profit sharing plan”. The profit sharing plan was a plan for Wal-Mart employees to improve their income dependent on the profits of the store. Sam Walton believed that “individuals don't win, teams do”. Employees at Wal-Mart stores were offered stock options (认股权) and store discounts. These benefits are commonplace today, but Walton was among the first to implement (实现) them. Walton believed that a happy employee meant happy customers and more sales. He also believed that by giving employees a part of the company and making their success dependent on the company's success, they would care about the company.

    By the 1980s, Wal-Mart had sales of over one billion dollars and over three hundred stores across North America. Wal-Mart's unique decentralized (分散的) distribution system, also Walton's idea, created the edge needed to further encourage growth in the 1980s during growing complaints that the “superstore” was stopping smaller and traditional stores from developing. By 1991, Wal-Mart was the largest US retailer with 1,700 stores. Walton remained active in managing the company, as president and CEO until 1988 and chairman until his death. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom shortly before his death.