One of the most practical parts of my college education (and my entire education)was my student teaching. For six month, I gradually took over until I was completely teaching the class. It wasn't quite the same as a real teaching job. However, it was definitely a good way to get some real world experience. School should prepare students for the job market. Therefore, are our kids receiving enough practical education so they can be successful in the real world?

When teaching kids, it's important to be able to have a purpose for everything we teach. As parents and teachers, we should ask ourselves: what can this be used for when kids enter the job market? I can think about a college class I took where we had to analyze various movies. I honestly can't think of how analyzing "Rambo" benefited me. Perhaps, I would have been better off taking an auto shop class or a carpentry class. After all, I can't change a tire and I'm completely incapable when it comes to using power tools. The Guardian points out that the current generation is one of the most educated but lacks the skills to mend a hole in a shirt or put up a shelf. We have become a society that hires someone else to do these basic tasks. So how can we fix this?

    Perhaps, learning how to think is not enough. Rather than focusing on standardized tests so much, schools need to give students more practical application. Cooking is actually helpful when teaching children about fractions, measuring and multiplication. Students can learn how to double a recipe and see the relationship between 1/4 and 1/3 cup. As kids get into the upper grades, money management should be a focus. Making a budget and learning about interest rates are good ideas. I used to give my students real restaurant menus and a budged. They had to come up with what they could buy, including the tip with a set amount of money. In college, rather than only focus on the craft of writing, I wish I would have learned more about marketing and publishing my writing. Finally, internships in both high school and college should be required.

It appears that some high schools are doing a better job of preparing students for the real world. For instance, according to NBC News, in Michigan, "the Utica Center for Science and Industry uses technology to prepare students for automotive and military industry jobs." The program aims to combine students' skills with employers' needs. Students take optional courses in areas such as "multimedia, engineering or mechatronics" and also take part in activities where there isn't one right answer. For me, giving kids the opportunity to create is the key point. So far, the program is showing success.

According to a Gallup poll, fifty-seven percent of American workers say "the type of work they do generally" does not require "a bachelor's or a more advanced degree." Therefore, if a college degree isn't helping the majority of Americans at their job, then what is required? Many jobs require a skill. Electricians and contractors have specific skill that allow them to complete their jobs. Whether students go to four-year school or not, I think it's important for everyone to have a skill. After all, a Forbes article states that half of college graduates are working at jobs that don't require a degree. Clearly, being smart and qualified isn't always enough to make it in the real world.

    I'm going to encourage my kids to go to college and earn a degree. I'm also going to encourage them to think outside of the box and give them a practical education too. After all, you never know where life will take you.

    Let's look back all these years you've gone through, what have you done for your life? Are you spending your time wisely to make your life worthwhile? Neal Wu shared some ways we should do to make our short time of life meaningful, find out what you need to do next:

    a. Make friends as opposed to networking

    Your friends will go a lot further than the professional contacts you make, especially since only one of the two groups is invested in your personal happiness.

    b. Become an expert by learning as much as you can and deeply seeking out the things you are curious about

    Find the things you enjoy and practice the skills you want to develop. If you can achieve expertise then it will be easy to obtain an audience.

    c. Volunteer to help out those less fortunate

    In the process you will gain a ton of new perspective and will better understand other people's real problems. In a society that always looks upward, these people are being forgotten easily.

    d. Become as independent as possible

    Even though you work in a big company, you should constantly make small steps to reduce your dependence on your job. Write a book, build an app, or start a small business on the side. Release your inner entrepreneur.

    e. Don't spend too much time worrying about your personal brand

    Accomplish(完成) things, and the recognition will follow.

    f. Stop treating life as a competition and do things for their own sake

    Genuine(真正的) interest should be what drives you to improve yourself, rather than a desire to beat others. Find a community of people who are interested in the same things as you do, and drive each other to keep improving.

    A cancer-stricken British teenager said on Thursday she had been moved by messages of support from around the world after writing an online “Bucket List” of things she wanted to do before dying.

    Alice Pyne, 15, created an Internet blog in which she described her fight against a cancer of the white blood cells. “I've been fighting cancer for almost four years and now I know that the cancer is gaining on me and it doesn't look like I'm going to win this one,” she wrote.

    For her list, at the site www. alicepyne. blogspot. com, she has included making everyone sign up to be a bone marrow donor (骨髓捐赠者), swimming with sharks, meeting boy band Take That and getting a purple iPad computer.

Messages of support and offers of help quickly flooded her webpage and it became one of the most talked about subjects on Twitter.

     “Oh dear! And I thought that I was just doing a little blog for a few friends!” she wrote after her site attracted huge attention. “Thank you so much for all your lovely messages to me.”

    Alice, who lives with her family in the northwest English town of Ulverston, said the manager of Take That had arranged for her to see the band after reading her blog. A group of local lawmakers have also made efforts with the Anthony blood cancer charity to encourage people to join its stem cell (干细胞) projects.

    A new argument has been put forward as to whether penguins are disturbed by the presence of tourists in Antarctica.

    Previous research by scientists from Keil University in Germany monitored Adelie penguins and noted that the birds' heart rates increased dramatically at the sight of a human as far as 30 meters away. But new research using an artificial egg, which is equipped to measure heart rates, disputes this. Scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge say that a slow moving human who does not approach the nest too closely, is not viewed as a threat by penguins.

    The earlier findings have been used to partly explain the 20 per cent drop in populations of certain types of penguins near tourist sites. However, tour operators have continued to insist that their activities do not adversely（不利地）affect wildlife in Antarctica, saying they encourage non-destructive behavior in tourists, and that the decline in penguin numbers is caused by other factors.

    Amanda Nimon of the Scott Polar Research Institute spent three southern hemisphere summers at Cuverville Island in Antarctica studying penguin behavior towards humans. “A nesting penguin will react very differently to a person rapidly and closely approaching the nest,” says Nimon. “First they exhibit large and prolonged heart rate changes and then they often flee the nest leaving it open for predators（掠夺者）to fly in and remove eggs or chicks.” The artificial egg, specially for the project, monitored both the parent who had been 'disturbed' when the egg was placed in the nest and the other parent as they both took it in turns to guard the nest.

    However, Boris Culik, who monitored the Adelie penguins, believes that Nimon's findings do not prove his own research invalid. He points out that species behave differently – and Nimon's work was with Gentoo penguins. Nimon and her colleagues believe that Culik's research was methodologically（方法论上）defective because the monitoring of penguins' responses needed catching the birds and fitting them with heart-rate transmitters（发射器）. Therefore, argues Nimon, it would not be surprising if they became stressed on seeing a human subsequently.

    Started in 1636, Harvard University is the oldest of all the many colleges and universities in the United States. Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Dartmouth were opened soon after Harvard.

    In the early years, these schools were much alike. Only young men went to colleges. All the students studied the same subjects, and everyone learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Little was known about science then, and one kind of school could teach everything that was known about the world. When the students graduated, most of them become ministers or teachers.

    In 1782, Harvard started a medical school for young men who wanted to become doctors. Later, lawyers could receive their training in Harvard's law school. In 1825, besides Latin and Greek, Harvard began teaching modern languages, such as French and German. Soon it began teaching American history.

    As knowledge increased, Harvard and other colleges began to teach many new subjects. Students were allowed to choose the subjects that interested them.

    Today there are many different kinds of colleges and universities. Most of them are made up of smaller schools that deal with special fields of learning. There's so much to learn that one kind of school can' offer it all.