Time management refers to managing time effectively so that the right time is allocated to the right activity. Time management is essential in every field of life because time is the precious resource one needs to accomplish a task. Every single moment that passes once will never come back again. Time management helps you do your task in time and use your time more productively. It helps you to identify the useless activities which can be avoided and how time can be saved. It helps you allocate proper time for a task and perform the task more efficiently.

    A student's daily routine is filled with a lot of activities. Some are related to his studies, some are essential for his life and some are for entertainment or physical fitness. Still some activities have no use and just waste time. Similarly if the number of the activities for entertainment exceeds what is reasonable, they waste the time of a student. These activities include using the internet for chatting, playing games, watching movies or listening to music for hours on end. Such activities are called “distracters” which distract one from one's real purpose.

    Games and physical exercise are important for a student because they keep him fit in body and mind but game time should be controlled as it may waste his time.

    No one wastes time intentionally. Time is always wasted in an insensible way. That's why a student is aware of it until the days of exams come. So it is better to use the present time more effectively than cry over what you've done in the future.

    As for a student, time management compromises various steps. It is not only necessary to allocate time for different subjects but also to identify right time for each such subject. What's more, to identify the distracters which become causes of wastage of time is of significance as well.

    Take a pen and sheet. Write down all the activities you do in your daily routine. Calculate how much time you have for your studies other than other activities. Determine how much time a subject can take out of your total study time. See which subject need more time.

Time management

    Age has its privileges in America, and one of the more prominent of them is the senior citizen discount. Anyone who has reached a certain age — in some cases as low as 55 — is automatically entitled to dazzling array of price reductions at nearly every level of commercial life. Eligibility is determined not by one's need but by the date on one's birth certificate. Practically unheard of a generation ago, the discounts have become a routine part of many businesses — as common as color televisions in motel rooms and free coffee on airliners.

    People with gray hair often are given the discounts without even asking for them; yet, millions of Americans above age 60 are healthy and solvent(有支付能力的). Businesses that would never dare offer discounts to college students or anyone under 30 freely offer them to older Americans. The practice is acceptable because of the widespread belief that “elderly” and “needy” are synonymous (同义的). Perhaps that once was true, but today elderly Americans as a group have a lower poverty rate than the rest of the population. To be sure, there is economic diversity within the elderly, and many older Americans are poor. But most of them aren't.

    It is impossible to determine the impact of the discounts on individual companies. For many firms, they are a stimulus to revenue. But in other cases the discounts are given at the expense, directly or indirectly, of younger Americans. Moreover, they are a direct irritant in what some politicians and scholars see as a coming conflict between the generations.

    Generational tensions are being fueled by continuing debate over Social Security benefits, which mostly involve a transfer of resources from the young to the old. Employment is another sore point. Buoyed (支持) by laws and court decisions, more and more older Americans are declining the retirement dinner in favor of staying on the job — thereby lessening employment and promotion opportunities for younger workers.

    Far from a kind of charity they once were, senior citizen discounts have become a formidable economic privilege to a group with millions of members who don't need them.

    It no longer makes sense to treat the elderly as a single group whose economic needs deserve priority over those of others. Senior citizen discounts only enhance the myth that older people can't take care of themselves and need special treatment; and they threaten the creation of a new myth, that the elderly are ungrateful and taking for themselves at the expense of children and other age groups. Senior citizen discounts are the essence of the very thing older Americans are fighting against — discrimination by age.

    Something happens to many children when they are out of school over the summer months. It is called the “summer slide.” This may sound like a ride at a water park. But it's not. Summer slide is when children forget much of what they learned during the latest school year.

    To fight the effects of summer slide, teachers often give students homework over the summer. Many parents may send children to all kinds of camps or find other activities to keep them learning. Some even try to build up their children's strengths by getting them into extra tutoring.

    However, experts say keeping children busy all the time is not good for them. The result is often a tired child with an overcrowded schedule. This keeps a child's brain active constantly—learning, gathering information and preparing for the next event. And this may have the opposite effect the parents are not hoping for.

    What should parents do instead? Nothing. According to Lea Waters, a psychologist specializing in positive psychology and positive education, slowing down actually helps children become the best they can be. Machines need to be reset, while kids need to goof off（偷懒）. She says that goofing off really allows kids to have some downtime, when they're not focused on a specific task but are free to do something that they're interested in doing and that they can do more automatically and get enjoyment from, like shooting baskets or listening to the music.

    She also adds that goofing off does not mean the brain isn't working. It just goes into this default network mode（默认网络模式）and uses that time to process all the information it had during the day, to integrate（整合）new information. It makes a kind of decision about what information to put into memory and what to get rid of, which in fact helps to improve memory.

注意：每个空格只填一个单词。

    Changes are hard for many people to accept. However, what's worth keeping in mind is that life is constantly changing. We might lose our jobs, lose our loved ones, or have other life-changing things, but these changes are just part of life. We might not like how society is changing or how our community is changing, but we need to be able to deal with these changes in a positive way. Luckily, there are many ways to view changes, to deal with them and to finally accept them.

To deal with changes wisely, you should accept that feeling when a type of change is upsetting you. There's no way you'll get past it if you ignore it and don't work through it. Thus, if you've lost your job, let yourself feel mad and/or disappointed. You can even express your feelings to others, but do so in a polite way. Also you can ask yourself, "Why am I upset or worried about this change?" Then, "What is it that I believe will happen, as a result of this change?" And then, "Are these thoughts and beliefs correct and practical?" Going through these questions can help you determine if the change is really worth worrying about. What's more, even though the change can have a negative effect on your life, in most situations you can use it to turn a loss into an opportunity or a way to rediscover your enthusiasm for life.

    Of course, when it comes to dealing with changes, taking action is more important. If you're going through a period in your life when the change is negatively influencing you, make yourself busy. Making yourself busy, by working, producing something or engaging socially with others, will do more than just make you forget worries–it'll help you contribute to changing your life positively for the future. Besides, you can try something you've never done before.

    An important part of accepting changes is finding a way to move on and thinking about your future. By looking ahead, you'll be able to better deal with the past and accept it as that had to happen in order to move forward. So accept the change that makes you uncomfortable, and determine you're going to try to use your energies to make an even better world. In this way, you're using it to power what you think is a positive change.

    Many of us have someone in our lives that has absolutely everything. Buying a gift for that special person can prove quite stressful. Here are a few points aimed at making this challenge a little bit easier.

    Buying that hard-to-find gift can have you wandering the malls for hours on end with little or no luck. Before starting such a shopping journey, think carefully about what that person might really enjoy instead of hoping the perfect gift will miraculously(奇迹般地 ) appear. Think about what is happening in their lives at the moment. Have they recently experienced a major life event, taken up a new hobby, or planned a trip? Think about how your gin can contribute to a these events.

    Have you ever found that perfect Christmas gift for someone in July, but decided to waif and buy it later? If you think it's a good gift, buy it then. Don't wait until the last minute to buy that perfect present. Chances are that you'll either forget what that gift was or it won't be available when you go to get it later. Last-minute shopping is rather stressful and usually doesn't have the desired results.

    Anything you can buy at a retail store these days can also be bought on the Internet. Better still, you can find special gifts that you normally can't find at the mall. Search for special gift ideas and you'll be amazed at the things that you may never have thought of before. For example, find out what their favorite toy or book was when they were a child and see if you can find it for sale on an auction site（拍卖现场）.

    Spend some time with the person and get a better idea of their interests. They may mention that they've needed something for the moment but just haven't got around to getting it. Or maybe they've lost or broken something that they really miss. Maybe they're still using something from the past that needs updating.

    If all else fails, there are always gift cards. Rather than just give the gift card, however, be a little creative. Make a game out of it such as wrapping the card in a series of larger boxes so it takes a while to get to it rather than just having them open an envelope. Another choice is to include a gift card with some theatre tickets.

The coffee story

    Kaldi was tired but he couldn't sleep. His goats were awake and very noisy. "Why can't they sleep?" Kaldi thought. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}They were eating some green plants with little red fruits on them. Kaldi decided to taste the fruits. He ate the soft part of each fruit and the hard things in the centre. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}He was not tired. He felt more awake and did not want to sleep.

    Those hard things were coffee beans, and Kaldi discovered them in Ethiopia more than 1,000 years ago. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Perhaps it is true, perhaps not. Nobody knows. But we know that coffee grew first in Ethiopia, and we know that somebody discovered it there more than 1,000 years ago.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Arab farmers began to grow coffee plants. People learnt to make a drink from the beans, and they called it qahwa.

For 400 years, only the Arabs knew about qahwa. Then people in Turkey learnt about it. Soon after that, western Europeans began to drink it, and in 1652 the first coffee shop in London opened.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Some famous coffee-growing countries are Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and, of course, Ethiopia Coffee is one of the world's favourite drinks thanks to Kaldi and his goats.

A. At least that's the traditional story.

B. After a minute he began to feel different.

C. Many Arab farmers grew coffee to make money.

D. Now farmers grow coffee in many parts of the world.

E. Coffee was such an important drink during that time period.

F. He couldn't understand the problem so he watched the animals carefully.

G. After that, Arab travelers took coffee plants to Egypt and other Arab countries.