What are the biggest problems that society will have to deal with in the new age? There re diseases like AIDS and cancer. There's climate change, of course. And what about producing enough cheap food and energy for the world's growing population? Who's going to solve all these terrible problems? Yes, politicians and world leaders will have a big part to play. Yes businesses will need to create the economic wealth to pay for some of these things. But who's going to make a much greater difference to something like AIDS or climate change. It's going to be a scientist. It is the scientist who can turn some new bit of science into a new technology to solve these problems. If you like thinking about the world around you, why not become a scientist? It doesn't mean you have to wear a white coat and plastic glasses and spend all your time in a lab as most people often imagine! Scientists do all kinds of amazing things that are actually interesting!

    Military scientists develop not only new weapons but new military technologies that could help make wars out of date. Forensic(法医的) scientists work with the police to find quite small clues to catch criminals. Scientists work in schools and colleges as the teachers and professors who will train tomorrow's scientists. Don't think a scientist is far away! Maybe you like cooking? You could be a food technologist helping to keep fruit and vegetables fresher for longer. Perhaps sport is your thing? Do you know that most top athletes work with sports scientists in order or improve their performance? You could even be the science writer who gets to spend the life studying the latest advances and sharing them with the world.

    Looking for something to do for the rest of your life? My advice? Take a long and hard look at science. It is interesting and ever.

    Watching some children trying to catch butterflies one hot August afternoon, I was reminded of an incident in my own childhood．When I was a boy of 12 in South Carolina, something happened to me that cured me forever of wanting to put any wild creature in a cage.

    We lived on the edge of a wood, and every evening at dusk the mockingbirds would come and rest in the trees and sing. There isn't a musical instrument made by man that can produce a more beautiful sound than the song of the mockingbird.

    I decided that I would catch a young bird and keep it in a cage and in that way would have my own private musician.

    I finally succeeded in catching one and put it in a cage. At first, in its fright at being captured, the bird fluttered about the cage, but eventually it settled down in its new home. I felt very pleased with myself and looked forward to some beautiful singing from my tiny musician.

    I had left the cage out on our back porch, and on the second day of the bird's captivity(囚禁) my new pet's mother flew to the cage with food in her mouth. The baby bird ate everything she brought to it. I was pleased to see this. Certainly the mother knew better than I how to feed her baby.

    The following morning when I went to see how my captive was doing, I discovered it on the floor of the cage, dead. I was shocked! What had happened! I had taken excellent care of my little bird, or so I thought.

    Arthur Wayne, the famous ornithologist, happened to be visiting my father at the time, hearing me crying over the death of my bird, explained what had occurred. “A mother mockingbird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes bring it poison berries. She thinks it better for her young to die than to live in captivity.”

    Never since then have I caught any living creature and put it in a cage. All living creatures have a right to live free.

    Looking back on the first twenty years of my life, I feel grateful to have been so healthy and happy. For my happiness, I am grateful to so many people and lucky events, but what have guided me and supported me in my life are my physical health, healthy finances, and my family's happiness.

    Health comes first for me, because without health everything else is meaningless. Imagine starting a career without good health. Imagine starting a family without good health. Imagine achieving anything without good health. Clearly, good health is the first necessary for other part of one's life.

    Good health is not enough to be happy. We still need to have money in today's society. Money obviously pays for basic needs of life — food, housing, clothing — but it is also necessary for other reason like the quality of our education and medical care.

    Next comes the most important thing in having a happy life — our family. It provides the love, joy and support that everybody needs. I love my family with all my heart. I get pleasure from their pleasure. I suffer when they suffer. My family helped me get through the hard times of entrance exams. They comforted and advised me when I had misunderstanding with my friends. More importantly, they have been there to share in my successes in the past twenty years. In summary, all these are what I need and want in this world. As long as I stay healthy, earn enough money, and share both good times and bad times with my family, I will always be the happiest girl in the world.

    Application Workshop

    Join Citizens Committee for New York City and the NYC Department of Sanitation for a workshop on the Green Team Mini-Grant application on February 2, which lasts from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM!

    The workshop will cover

    Applying for the Green Team Mini-Grant

    How to use the Zero Waste schools website

    Creative Coding

    We are hosting a free design workshop just for girls on March 7 from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM, in support of International Women's Day! The focus of the workshop is on Creative Coding, with art and technology, but we'll also have a few female designers to share their unique work with the attendees.

    No experience necessary, this event is for girls between the ages of 9-12.

SAT & ACT Roadmap to Success

    In this free 1-hour workshop, parents will discover the road map to SAT & ACT success. Topics included: Review of "goal scores" for SAT/ACT college admissions, national trends in college admissions, how to determine whether the SAT or the ACT is the best test for your student, steps to prepare for the Sat or ACT, best time to take the Sat or ACT. Join us on March 23.

    Square School Family Information Night

    Join us for our Family Information Night on March 14! We'll gather at the future home for Square School for an introduction to the school model at 6:30pm.

    This event is intended for families with young people entering grades six or seven in 2019 that want to be a part of a school community that attaches importance to a lifestyle of learning. Join us for this Family Information Night to see if Square School is the right choice for your family.

    To err is human. To blame the other guy is even more human. Common sense is not all that common. Why tell the truth when you can come up with a good excuse?

    These three popular misquotes (戏谑的引语) are meant to be jokes, and yet they tell us a lot about human nature. To err, or to make mistakes, is indeed a part of being human, but it seems that most people don't want to accept the responsibility for the problem. Perhaps it is the natural thing to do. The original quote about human nature went like this: "To err is human, to forgive, divine (神圣的)." This saying mirrors a deal people should be forgiving of others' mistakes. Instead, we tend to do the opposite-find someone else to pass the blame on to.

    However, taking responsibility for something that went wrong is a making of great maturity.

    Common sense is what we call clear thought. Having common sense means having a good general plan that will make things work well, and it also means staying with the plan. Common sense tells you that you take an umbrella out into a rainstorm, but you leave the umbrella home when you hear a weather forecast for sunshine. Common sense does not seem to be common for large organizations, because there are so many things going on that one person cannot be in charge of everything. People say that in a large company," the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing."

    And what is wrong with a society that thinks that making up a good excuse is like creating a work of art? One of the common problems with making excuses is that people, especially young people, get the idea that it's okay not to be totally honest all the time. There is a corollary (直接推论) to that: if good excuse is "good" even if it isn't honest, then where is the place of the truth?

    In 2011, Nancy Ballard went for a routine checkup that turned into something extraordinary. In fact, she was carrying a painting of a plant she'd done when she arrived at her doctor's San Francisco office. "It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy (化疗) rooms," the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one.

    She was shocked by what she found. The walls were dull and bare, and the paint was chipping (剥落). It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients restricted to chemo drips for perhaps several hours, often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls. Ballard didn't have cancer herself, but she could sympathize with the patients. "I couldn't imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that," she says. As it happens, Ballard's physician, Stephen Hufford, was ill with cancer himself, so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list. So Ballard made it her mission to brighten up the place.

    She started by e-mailing 20 local designers. "I wrote, 'You don't know me. But my heart hurts after seeing these rooms," she remembers. She then asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr. Hufford's rooms each.

    As it happened, six of them wrote back almost immediately. Six rooms got new paint, light fixtures, artwork, and furniture. Dr. Hufford was delighted. "All the patients feel relieved of the pain because of it," he said. He even noted that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients.

    Ballard was so encouraged by the patients' reactions that she created a nonprofit, Rooms That Rock 4 Chemo, to raise money and decorate more spaces. Since then, she has worked on 20 projects, including one in Pennsylvania. "We were in Philadelphia for a ribbon cutting, and a woman was there on her third battle with cancer," says Ballard. "When she saw what we'd done, she said, 'I'm gonna beat it this time. I thought I wasn't going to, but now I know I'm gonna beat it".