To celebrate the end of our exams, my friends and I went to a fast food restaurant. We1hamburgers and Coca Cola at the counter. When our2came, I started walking towards an empty table. By bad luck, my purse strap (带子) got3on a chair and the tray (托盘) that I was holding slipped4my hands and went flying in the air. The tray, and its contents,5on a man who was just about to6a bite of his sandwich. I stared, greatly7,as the drinks soaked (浸湿) his white shirt.

Then I8my eyes and prepared myself for his burst of9.Instead, he said “It's OK” to10me before he disappeared into the washroom.

    Still shaky and unsure11to do next, my friends and I went to a table and sat there, trying our best to look12.A moment later, the man came out of the washroom and13our table, my heart almost stopped

14.I thought he was going to ask for my father's15and call him.

    To my surprise, he merely smiled at us, handed us some cash and said,“16yourself new hamburgers. ”He then walked17without even finishing his food.

    He could have made what was already an uncomfortable situation worse,18he chose a different way and gave us a reason to believe that there is still19in this world. I will never20his actions.

    From my second grade on, there was one event I feared every year: the piano recital(独奏演唱会). A recital 1I had to practice a boring piece of music and perform before strangers. Each year I 2ask my father if I could skip the recital “just this once”. And each year he would shake his head, muttering(嘀咕)3about build self-confidence and working toward a 4.

    So it was with really great5that I stood in church one recent Sunday, video camera in hand, and 6my 68-year-old father sweating in his shirt 7rising to play the piano in his very first recital.

    My father had longed to play music since childhood, but his family was poor and couldn't 8lessons. He could have gone on regretting it,9too many of us do. But though he was rooted in his past, he wasn't 10there. When he retired three years ago, he 11 his church music director to take him as a student.

    For a moment after my father sat down at the keyboard, he 12stared down at his fingers. Has he forgotten the 13? I worried, remembering those split seconds14ago when my mind would go blank and my fingers would 15. But then came the beautiful melody(旋律)，from the 16fingers that once baited(装饵于) my fishing lines. And I17he had been doing what music teachers always stress:18the music and pretend the others aren't there.

     “I'm 19of him for starting something new at his age,” I said to my son Jeff.

    “Yeah, and doing it so20,” Jeff added.

    With his first recital, my father taught me more about courage and determination than all the words he used those 30-plus years ago.

    The first time Mercado thought seriously about becoming a professional model, she surfed the Internet for someone with a physical disability in the modeling world. That was six years ago, when disabled models were 1. Thus, her search came up empty.

    “I didn't think there was a 2.” she talks of the career she'd imagined "Not because I wasn't worthy of it, but because I didn't see anyone else like me out there. It was just not a thing.” However, Mercado has helped 3 that reality because of her not giving up. Last year, Mercado signed with IMG Models, the powerhouse agency which 4 top supermodels.

    During a shoot, there are certain movements and 5 that are simply not an option for her. But her team has always found a way to work around these 6, and she's never been cut from a campaign because of concerns about her disability.

    "There's 7 been a problem with the team not getting what they need to get from me as a model. There's never been an excuse where it's like—'she has a disability, this is not going to work because the 8 won't look nice.' "She says, "If I'm a model, a clothing company wants to showcase their 9 on me, that's great, "she says. "That's all it should be."

    Her small body has more than a dozen surgical 10 and she fell both nervous and excited when she decided last year to 11 them for a shoot for a lingerie(女式贴身内衣) company. "12 I'm very outspoken with what I believe in, I'm very much of a 13 person still at heart. But I wanted to 14 a challenge. "Mercado liked 15 people that everyone can and should feel attractive in their own skin: "You shouldn't be ashamed of your own 16.”

    In the meantime, she's focused on her work and using her blog to encourage those who want to follow her 17. When the next generation of disabled models searches the Web for 18, they'll find her.

    Mercado 19 her success to confidence, faith and never 20,"I'm an example that you can do what you want, because… "she pauses. "Just because! That's it. You just can. "

    Over the last 15 years, as a doctor, I have had heart-to-heart conversations with countless patients near the end of their lives. The most common emotion they express is 1. And that's 2 I came up with a project to encourage people to write a 3 to their loved ones. It's a lesson I learned years ago from a memorable 4 patient.

    He was a retired 5 with a cancer. Every day, his 6 spent many hours watching him watch television. She explained to me he had never been much of a 7 in their 50-plus years of marriage. But he seemed quite 8 to share his ideas with me, 9 when it became clear his days were 10. He spoke of his deep regret for not having spent enough time with his wife, and of his great 11 in his son, who had joined the Navy in his father's footsteps.

    One afternoon, when I mentioned these 12 to his wife and son, they looked disbelievingly at each other. They thanked me for being so kind but 13 my patient was unlikely to express such feelings. To make sure his family could hear his 14, I took my video camera with me the next morning and with the patients' 15, recorded an open letter from him to his family. When I gave them the 16 letter, both his wife and son were moved to tears.

    The experience 17 my letter project, which can help people complete their life review tasks: remembering to those we may have hurt; 18 those who have hurt us and saying "I love you". It may take much courage to write a life review letter. For some people, it 19 deep and troubling emotions. 20 it may be the most important letter you will ever write.

    I was the fool at school, regarded as a special needs student. I was termed as such, obviously, because I was not interested in school and did not care for my 1.

    Over time, I started to believe in my stupidity. I 2 the fact that I was in special needs classes and poured it out as anger and depression. But one activity 3 this view of myself: chess.

    I started to play chess with my father after school simply because I wanted to 4 him at something. My father was a 5 man, fond of physics, writing, religion…, almost every 6 . He was called a walking dictionary. So, winning in chess against my father would be a 7 that I had intellectual power. On the small chessboard, I had a chance to 8 my so-called inability.

    Game after game, I wanted to beat my father even more. I started to study chess books and play against a chess computer to 9 my skills. One weekend, I finally checkmated(将杀)my father on a ferry ride, which made me feel 10.

    Two years later, I became the second board on my school chess team, with our top board being the best high school player in the state. But before the tournament season, our top player 11 to come. There came my chance to play as top board against the best players in other states.

    I was determined to show who I had become: a(n)12 person able to win with calculation, logic and will. My most 13 game came in the final round. Our team was facing a high school which only excellent students attended. It was 14 a match between a special needs student and a smart soul. My opponent(对手) was playing well and kept 15 while I kept defending to keep my king safe. He spent long trying to break down my defenses, but could not find the final push. I 16 with more defensive moves, trying to make it as difficult for him as possible. With little 17 left, he started to make rapid moves.18 he could make the final decision, he ran out of time. Honestly, as his clock flag fell, I jumped up out of my seat and kissed the floor out of excitement. Of course it was not the most sportsmen-like 19, but I could not control my emotions.

While holding my winner's cup, I knew I was not 20. The inferiority complex(自卑感) had melted away, and I realized that underneath our thoughts, each person is a genius.

Dave McNee met Claudia Mandekic 14 years ago. When she told McNee how hard it could be to get students excited about math, her favourite discipline, he made a surprising suggestion: "Why not throw in something they enjoy, like sports?" The idea of mixing basketball and mathematics got its first shot in 2011, when the now colleagues — who had launched a tutoring non-profit — were invited to run a summer-school program for kids who'd failed Grade 9 math at Georges Secondary School.

When the students showed up for their first day, they weren't exactly excited. Over the next few hours, Mandekic and McNee gave the kids techniques to improve their shooting while also helping them calculate their field-goal percentage — which, in turn, taught them about fractions and decimal (分数和小数) points. At the end of the game, the winning team was determined based on which group had the highest total percentage and had done the most efficient math. "When the bell rang, they were so fixated on collecting their data and figuring out which team won that they didn't leave," says Mandekic. "I realized we might be onto something."

The classes, later named BallMatics, soon spread to other schools. "I was terrible at math," says Douglas, who enrolled in a fast-track summer program. "But once I started BallMatics and realized the sport I loved was directly tied to math, it made me a lot better at it. Every time I played basketball, I was thinking about math."

Almost any math problem, McNee and Mandekic realized, can be taught on the court. Kids can learn how to navigate an X-Y grid to find their next shooting spot or absorb the basic principles of trigonometry based on the angle at which they release the ball. In 2019, McNec and Mandekic established a private high school called Uchenna Academy. At the school, kids with top basketball skills can study all subjects, train at their sport and work part-time helping out with the BallMatics afterschool programs.

Douglas, now 20 and earning a degree in education believes the school's commitment to academics is the key reason it's been a winner. "If we didn't do our work, we weren't playing at the game," he says, adding that coaches would bench kids who didn't keep up in class. "At Uchenna, we were student athletes, not athlete students."