I had I had ever been invited to see a performance. That day I met a brave and talent boy I would never  (1)  .

The young musician, Mr. Patrick Henry Hughes was rolled onto the stage in his wheelchair and began to play the   (2)  . His fingers danced across the keys as he made beautiful   (3)  . He then began to sing as he played, and it was even more   (4)  . I was seeing something   (5)   in his face. It was something that I   (6)   can’t explain. And his smile was magic!

He was born with no   (7)   and a pair of paralyzed(瘫痪的) legs. As a child, he was fitted with artificial eyes and   (8)   in a wheelchair. Today, Patrick is a junior. His father   (9)   classes with him and heˈs made nearly all A’s.

But more than his   (10)   musical talent, it was Patrickˈs "attitude of gratitude" that   (11)   my soul. On stage, between songs, he talked to the   (12)  about his life and about how blessed he was. He said,“ God made me blind and unable to   (13)  . BIG DEAL! He gave me the ability, the musical   (14)   I have and the great opportunity to meet new people.”

I thought of a quote, "Life is not about waiting　  (15)   the storms to pass；itˈs about learning to　  (16)  　in the rain!”

I thought thatˈs it! We all   (16)   adversity(不幸) in our life. However, itˈs not the adversity, but how we react to it that will determine the joy and   (17)  in our lives. During   (18)   times, do we spend too much time feeling sorry for ourselves, or can we, with gratitude,   (19)   how to dance in the rain?

The day I received my letter of acceptance to New York University, I was extremely excited. It was my dream university, and my _  (1)   _ were pleased for me. But they also hadn’t  _  (2)   _  me to get into such a competitive school. In fact, the best thing they ever did for me was to  _  (3)   _  me from doing things  _  (4)   _ —indeed, when I was in elementary school, they offered to buy me a present  _  (5)   _  I got a C.

It _  (6)   _  when I was in third grade. An only child in an Asian family, I had just  _  (7)   _  with my family from Taiwan to Los Angeles. Months into third grade, I developed a strong feeling of  _  (8)   _  about getting bad grades. Seeing my anxiety, Dad said, “Kate, tell you what. If you get a C or  _  (9)   _ , I’ll buy you a present. If you score higher than that, I won’t buy you anything，because you won’t  _  (10)   _  it.”

Clearly dad wasn’t the  _  (11)   _  Asian tiger parent, pressuring me to work tirelessly for the best  _  (12)   _ , and neither was my mom. They didn’t want to push me. They wanted me to be _  (13)   _  and healthy. Dad’s  _  (14)   _  of a “failing grade” gift amazingly _  (15)   _  my worries and pressure. What’s more，I  _  (16)   _  getting A’s and B’s throughout high school, but without the added stress and fear of failing. I think it was my parents’ lack of stress on grades that gave me  _  (17)   _  to encourage my own desire for achievements.

I now realize I was  _  (18)   _  when I thought I didn’t receive a present from my dad that day. He gave me two invaluable  _  (19)   _ : the space to develop my own desire for excellence, and the healthy mind to _  (20)   _ it.

Our son Matthew is in high school. But he recently brought home a  (1)  . No, it wasn’t his son. Rather, it was an  (2)  for his health class: to take home a computerized baby doll and   (3)  it for 18 hours.

Sounds easy, right? Not so much. The “baby” was connected to a computer at school, so the child’s cries—and Matthew’s responses—were being   (4)   for the project. Whenever the baby cried, our son needed to   (5)   the reason. Was the little one hungry? Did he need sleep? Or, worse, did he have a dirty diaper (尿布)?

The  (6)  of the assignment, I suppose, was two-fold: to give the students preview of how to care for a child, and to teach them how   (7)  a task that is so they avoid becoming parents before their time. Indeed, it was a   (8)  , especially in a small apartment. He had to get all his other homework done and deal with  (9)  demands from his child. The doll cried 17 times while in his care. Matthew dealt with each   (10)  . He started to figure out scheduling: if he had recently  (11)  the child, he tried something else then. And his papa bear instinct (本能) kicked in: he   (12)   his younger brother not to make noise. And Matthew was   (13)   on his phone for the entire evening. There was   (14)   no time for texting or social media.

It wasn’t a hard night. In the early morning, the baby’s loud crying woke up the   (15)   house. Feeding time! We heard Matthew walking around for a while with the baby in his arms. Finally he came into our room,  (16)  , “I’ve been up with the baby for an hour and I’m tired of all the interruptions.”

  (17)   this, he actually seemed to enjoy the experience. He’s   (18)   his nurturing nature as a dad. He got an A+ on the project. I’m not sure if he has learned any big lesson,  (19)   it was a welcome reminder for him. I saw encouraging   (20)   that Matthew will make a great dad someday. But I hope it’s many years down the road before he has a chance to prove it.

When I was young at school, I loved to talk, a characteristic not always appreciated by Miss Jordan, my tenth-grade English teacher.

She was a teacher no one wanted because she was so   (1)  . She stood about five-foot-five, was very thin and wore her hair pulled back in a way that gave her a horsy  (2)  . She wore those half-circular reading glasses. Whenever she got upset, she would lower her head and look at you over the top of her glasses.

One day in her class I was busy talking. I didn’t  (3)   she had stopped teaching and was  (4)   straight at me. “Young lady, I would like to see you after school.”

Later MissJordan    (5)   ina low, but very firm voice that showed she expected me to listen when she was talking. For  (6)  she told me to write a thousand word essay on education and its effect on the economy(经济). She wanted it in by the following Wednesday.

Well, I met my deadline. I was   (5)  . It was a good paper. And I expected a sign of  (6)  _ from her. The next day in class,  (7)  , she was looking at me over her glasses. She called me forward and   (8)  my paper. “Go back and rewrite,” she said. “Remember, each paragraph is supposed to begin with a topic sentence.” When she gave my paper back a second time, she   (9)   the grammar. The third time, the spelling. The fourth time, it was punctuation（标点符号）. The fifth, it wasn’t neat enough. I was   (10)  !

The sixth time, I rewrote the whole paper  (11)  , in ink, leaving generous space. When she saw it, she removed her glasses and smiled. She finally   (12)  the paper. After that, I put the whole thing out of my   (13)  .

Two or three months passed. One day MissJordan came into the class and said to us: “Class, do you still   (14)   an essay contest held citywide? They’ve announced the   (15)  . I am happy to inform you that Mary has won third prize in the essay contest---‘On the Impact of Education on the Economy’.”

I was amazed and   (16)  . It was the first time I had ever won a prize. Years later, I told a reporter that story, and my comments---including my unfriendly  (17)  _ of MissJordan’s appearance. MissJordan wrote me, and said that her appearance wasn’t what was important. What was important was the _  (18)   I had learnt. When I wrote and rewrote that paper for her, I began to learn how to discipline myself. 

That morning, I stepped into the classroom, ready to share my knowledge and experience with seventy-five students who would be my English Literature class. Having taught in   (1)    for seventeen years, I had no   (2)   about my ability to hold their attention and to impress on them my   (3)   for the literature of my mother tongue.

As I entered the room, I was   (4)   when the monitor shouted: “Stand up!” The entire class rose, and I was somewhat   (5)   about how to get them to sit down again. Once that awkwardness was over, I quickly   (6)   my calmness and began what I thought was an informed lecture, sure to gain their respect — perhaps   (7)   their admiration. I went back to my office with the rosy glow which came from a sense of achievement.

I asked my students to keep   (8)  as homework. However, as I read them, the rosy glow was gradually   (9)   by a strong sense of sadness. The first diary said, “Our literature teacher didn’t teach us anything today.   (10)   her next lecture will be better.” Greatly surprised, I read diary after diary, each expressing a   (11)   theme. “Didn’t I teach them anything? I described the entire philosophical framework of Western thought and laid the historical   (12)   for all the works we’ll study in class,” I complained. “How   (13)   they say I didn’t teach them anything?”

It was a long term, and it   (14)   became clear that my ideas about   (15)   were not the same as those of my students. I thought a teacher’s job was to raise   (16)   questions and provide enough background so that students could   (17)   their own conclusions. My students thought a teacher’s job was to provide   (18)   information as directly and clearly as possible. What a difference!

  (19)  , I benefited a lot, for my experience with my Chinese students has made me a   (20)   American teacher, knowing how to teach in a different culture.