People returning to work after a career break: I call them relaunchers. These are people who have taken career breaks for elder care, for childcare reasons, pursuing a personal interest or a personal health issue. Closely related are career transitioners of all kinds: veterans, military spouses, retirees coming out of retirement or repatriating expats. Returning to work after a career break is hard because of a disconnect between the employers and the relaunchers. Employers can view hiring people with a gap on their resume as a high-risk proposition, and individuals on career break can have doubts about their abilities to relaunch their careers, especially if they've been out for a long time. This disconnect is a problem that I'm trying to help solve.
有些人经过离职长假之后 重新投入到工作中来， 我称他们为“再从业者”。 这些人选择休离职长假， 有些是要照顾老人， 有些是要照顾孩子， 也有些是追求个人爱好， 或是健康因素。 各行各业转业的人 都与之紧密相关： 退伍军人、军嫂， 退休返聘的人， 或遣返回国者。 离职长假后重返工作 是非常困难的， 因为雇主和再从业者之间 有了隔阂。 雇主们认为，雇佣这些 简历上工作时间不连贯的人 是风险极高的决策， 而正在离职长假中的人 可能对自己再从业的能力产生疑虑， 特别是那些离职时间较长者。 两者间的缺乏联系 是我在尝试解决的问题。
Now, successful relaunchers are everywhere and in every field. This is Sami Kafala. He's a nuclear physicist in the UK who took a five-year career break to be home with his five children. The Singapore press recently wrote about nurses returning to work after long career breaks. And speaking of long career breaks, this is Mimi Kahn. She's a social worker in Orange County, California, who returned to work in a social services organization after a 25-year career break. That's the longest career break that I'm aware of. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took a five-year career break early in her career.
如今，我们在各行各业 都能见到成功的再从业者。 这位是萨米·科法拉， 他是英国的一位核物理学家， 因为要在家照顾五个孩子 而度过了五年的离职长假。 新加坡的媒体最*发表了文章， 内容是有关离职长假后再从业的护士。 提到长时间的离职假期， 这位是米米·卡恩, 她是加州奥兰治县的一位社工， 她在度过20xx年的离职长假后 回到了一个社会服务组织工作。 这是据我所知最长的离职假期。 最高法院法官桑德拉·戴·奥康纳， 在其职业生涯早期 度过了五年离职长假。
And this is Tracy Shapiro, who took a 13-year career break. Tracy answered a call for essays by the Today Show from people who were trying to return to work but having a difficult time of it. Tracy wrote in that she was a mom of five who loved her time at home, but she had gone through a divorce and needed to return to work, plus she really wanted to bring work back into her life because she loved working. Tracy was doing what so many of us do when we feel like we've put in a good day in the job search. She was looking for a finance or accounting role, and she had just spent the last nine months very diligently researching companies online and ap***ing for jobs with no results.
这位是特蕾西·莎碧罗， 她度过了20xx年的离职长假。 特蕾西答复了从“今日秀”节目观众中 征集到的问题， 他们想要重返工作， 却发现很难做到。 特蕾西写道：自己是五个孩子的母亲， 也很享受居家的时间， 但是她历经了一次离婚， 并且急需回到工作状态， 另外，她很想把工作 带回她的生活中， 因为她也很享受工作。 特蕾西也曾做过 我们很多人所做的事， 每天不停的搜寻合适的工作。 她找过财经、会计领域的职位， 她在那之前花掉了九个月时间， 很努力地调查网上的公司， 然后投放简历，却一无所获。
I met Tracy in June of 20xx, when the Today Show asked me if I could work with her to see if I could help her turn things around. The first thing I told Tracy was she had to get out of the house. I told her she had to go public with her job search and tell everyone she knew about her interest in returning to work. I also told her, "You are going to have a lot of conversations that don't go anywhere. Expect that, and don't be discouraged by it. There will be a handful that ultimately lead to a job opportunity."
我在20xx年六月见到了特蕾西， 那时“今日秀”节目 问我可否与她合作， 看我能不能帮她走出困境。 我告诉特蕾西的第一件事， 就是她必须走出家门。 我告诉她，她必须 公开自己求职的想法， 然后告诉她认识的所有人， 自己再从业的强烈意愿。 我还告诉她， “有很多你参与的对话 是对你完全没有帮助的。 你要做好心理准备， 别因为那些而灰心丧气。 找到工作机会之前， 确实要经历很多琐事。”
I'll tell you what happened with Tracy in a little bit, but I want to share with you a discovery that I made when I was returning to work after my own career break of 11 years out of the full-time workforce. And that is, that people's view of you is frozen in time. What I mean by this is, when you start to get in touch with people and you get back in touch with those people from the past, the people with whom you worked or went to school, they are going to remember you as you were before your career break. And that's even if your sense of self has diminished over time, as happens with so many of us the farther removed we are from our professional identities. So for example, you might think of yourself as someone who looks like this. This is me, crazy after a day of driving around in my minivan. Or here I am in the kitchen. But those people from the past, they don't know about any of this. They only remember you as you were, and it's a great confidence boost to be back in touch with these people and hear their enthusiasm about your interest in returning to work.
我稍后再告诉你们 特蕾西是如何处理的， 我想先跟大家分享 我的一个发现， 那时我刚刚回到工作中， 结束了自己离开全职工作大军 20xx年的长假。 这个发现就是， 人们对你的印象凝固在过去。 我的意思是， 当你再次开始与人打交道， 与曾经合作过的人重新接触， 例如跟你一起上学、工作过的人， 他们对你的印象是 离职长假之前的你。 我们的自我意识 随着时间推移逐渐淡化， 我们很多人都会这样， 我们距离我们的职业身份 也就越来越远。 举个例子， 你可能把你自己看成这样。 这就是我，开了一天小面包车， 整个人感觉很疯狂。 这是我在厨房里的样子。 但是从前的那些人， 他们对这些一无所知。 他们只记得你曾经的样子， 当你重新与这些人沟通时， 真是大大的增强了自信心， 而且他们对你有再从业的兴趣 感到非常的开心。
There's one more thing I remember vividly from my own career break. And that was that I hardly kept up with the business news. My background is in finance, and I hardly kept up with any news when I was home caring for my four young children. So I was afraid I'd go into an interview and start talking about a company that didn't exist anymore. So I had to resubscribe to the Wall Street Journal and read it for a good six months cover to cover before I felt like I had a handle on what was going on in the business world again.
我还清晰地记得发生在 我离职长假中的一件事。 那时我几乎完全不关注经济新闻。 我曾是财经行业出身， 然而我在家照顾四个孩子时， 我几乎不关注任何的新闻。 所以我很害怕， 自己去参加面试的时候， 会讲到一个不复存在的公司。 所以我重新订阅了华尔街日报， 然后连续看了六个月， 之后我才觉得自己对经济 又有了点解了。
I believe relaunchers are a gem of the workforce, and here's why. Think about our life stage: for those of us who took career breaks for childcare reasons, we have fewer or no maternity leaves. We did that already. We have fewer spousal or partner job relocations. We're in a more settled time of life. We have great work experience. We have a more mature perspective. We're not trying to find ourselves at an employer's expense. Plus we have an energy, an enthusiasm about returning to work precisely because we've been away from it for a while.
我相信再从业者是 劳动大军中的精英， 原因如下。 想想我们人生的阶段： 对于那些因为要照顾孩子 而休离职假期的人， 大都没有产假，或是产假很短。 我们早就做过这些了。 我们离婚率较低， 也很少因伴侣而调整工作。 我们的生活更稳定。 我们有很棒的工作经历， 更成熟的眼光， 我们不会成为雇主的牺牲品。 此外，我们有一种能量 - 重返岗位的热情， 正是因为我们离职一段时间了。 另外，我也跟雇主讨论，
On the flip side, I speak with employers, and here are two concerns that employers have about hiring relaunchers.
以下是雇主们 关于雇佣再从业者的两个担忧。
The first one is, employers are worried that relaunchers are technologically obsolete. Now, I can tell you, having been technologically obsolete myself at one point, that it's a temporary condition. I had done my financial ***ysis so long ago that I used Lotus 1-2-3. I don't know if anyone can even remember back that far, but I had to relearn it on Excel. It actually wasn't that hard. A lot of the commands are the same. I found PowerPoint much more challenging, but now I use PowerPoint all the time. I tell relaunchers that employers expect them to come to the table with a working knowledge of basic office management software. And if they're not up to speed, then it's their responsibility to get there. And they do.
其一，雇主担心这些再从业者 技术方面比较落后。 我可以告诉各位， 虽然有段时间我自己技术确实落后， 但那只是暂时的。 很早以前我用“莲花123”软件 来做财经分析， 我不知道有没有人还记得 那么早以前的事了， 这些技能我得在 Excel上重新拾起。 其实这并并非难事， 很多的操作指令是一样的。 我发现PowerPoint更具挑战性， 但现在我对PowerPoint驾轻就熟。 我告诉再从业者们， 雇主希望找工作的人 对基本的办公管理软件 有实践经验。 如果他们操作速度不够快， 那他们就必须变得更高效。 而他们确实做得到。
The second area of concern that employers have about relaunchers is they're worried that relaunchers don't know what they want to do. I tell relaunchers that they need to do the hard work to figure out whether their interests and skills have changed or have not changed while they have been on career break. That's not the employer's job. It's the relauncher's responsibility to demonstrate to the employer where they can add the most value.
雇主对再从业者的第二种忧虑， 就是他们担心再从业者 不清楚他们想要做什么。 我告诉再从业者， 他们必须仔细研究， 了解自己的爱好或者技能 在离职长假的过程中 是否发生了变化。 这不是雇主的职责。 这个是再从业者的责任， 把自己展现给雇主， 来充分展示自己可创造的价值。
Back in 20xx I started noticing something. I had been tracking return to work programs since 20xx, and in 20xx, I started noticing the use of a short-term paid work opportunity, whether it was called an internship or not, but an internship-like experience, as a way for professionals to return to work. I saw Goldman Sachs and Sara Lee start corporate reentry internship programs. I saw a returning engineer, a nontraditional reentry candidate, ap*** for an entry-level internship program in the military, and then get a permanent job afterward. I saw two universities integrate internships into mid-career executive education programs.
20xx年，我开始注意到一件事。 我从20xx年开始追踪 人们重返岗位的情况， 然而在20xx年，我开始注意到， 一种短期、带薪的工作机会开始出现， 不论它是不是名叫“实*”， 但总之是一个很像实*的经历， 这为重回岗位的专业人士 开辟了一条道路。 我看到高盛和莎莉集团 都开始了此类 二次从业的实*项目。 我看到一个再从业的工程师， 算是不太传统的再从业人士， 申请了一个 军方的初级实*项目， 后来他获得了一个永久的工作。 我看到两所大学 将实*项目整合到 职业中期管理学教育项目中。
So I wrote a report about what I was seeing, and it became this article for Harvard Business Review called "The 40-Year-Old Intern." I have to thank the editors there for that title, and also for this artwork where you can see the 40-year-old intern in the midst of all the college interns. And then, courtesy of Fox Business News, they called the concept "The 50-Year-Old Intern."
于是，就我所观察到的现象， 我写了一篇报告， 后来它发表在了 《哈佛商业评论》中， 名字叫《40岁的实*生》。 我必须得感谢编者拟的标题， 还有这个很棒的配图， 你们可以看到那个40岁的实*生 出现在一群大学实*生中。 后来，还得感谢福克斯商业新闻， 他们把这个概念称为 “50岁的实*生”。
So five of the biggest financial services companies have reentry internship programs for returning finance professionals. And at this point, hundreds of people have participated. These internships are paid, and the people who move on to permanent roles are commanding competitive salaries. And now, seven of the biggest engineering companies are piloting reentry internship programs for returning engineers as part of an initiative with the Society of Women Engineers. Now, why are companies embracing the reentry internship? Because the internship allows the employer to base their hiring decision on an actual work sample instead of a series of interviews, and the employer does not have to make that permanent hiring decision until the internship period is over. This testing out period removes the perceived risk that some managers attach to hiring relaunchers, and they are attracting excellent candidates who are turning into great hires.
五家最大的金融服务公司 都设立了再从业实*项目， 专为重回岗位的金融精英。 截至目前，数百人参与了这些项目。 这些实*项目是带薪的， 而且那些晋升到永久岗位的人， 都有极具竞争力的薪资。 现在，七家最大的工程公司， 也在推行再从业实*项目， 来帮助重返岗位的工程师， 这也是女性工程师协会 新方案的一部分。 那么，为什么这些企业 大力支持再从业实*呢? 因为这种实*可以让雇主 基于参与者实际工作成效 来做出雇佣决策， 而非一系列的面试， 而且雇主不必在实*结束之前 就做出永久雇佣的决定。 这段试验期消除了一定的风险， 这关乎某些经理人 对雇佣再从业者的担忧， 同时，这也吸引了大量再从业人士， 他们成为了出色的雇佣对象。
Think about how far we have come. Before this, most employers were not interested in engaging with relaunchers at all. But now, not only are programs being developed specifically with relaunchers in mind, but you can't even ap*** for these programs unless you have a gap on your resume.
各位,想一想我们取得的进步， 在此之前，大多数雇主 根本没兴趣与再从业者打交道。 然而现在，有许多项目在开展实施， 特别是针对再从业者的项目， 如果简历上没有一段空档期， 你根本不能申请这些项目。
This is the mark of real change, of true institutional shift, because if we can solve this problem for relaunchers, we can solve it for other career transitioners too. In fact, an employer just told me that their veterans return to work program is based on their reentry internship program. And there's no reason why there can't be a retiree internship program. Different pool, same concept.
这标志着一种实质变化， 一种真正的制度变革， 因为如果我们可以 为再从业者解决这个问题， 我们亦可为其他的职业转型者 解决同样的问题。 事实上，一位雇主刚刚告诉我， 他们的“退伍军人再从业项目”， 就是基于他们的再从业实*项目。 我们也没有理由不去设立 一个“退休人士实*项目”。 不同的对象，相同的概念。
So let me tell you what happened with Tracy Shapiro. Remember that she had to tell everyone she knew about her interest in returning to work. Well, one critical conversation with another parent in her community led to a job offer for Tracy, and it was an accounting job in a finance department. But it was a temp job. The company told her there was a possibility it could turn into something more, but no guarantees. This was in the fall of 20xx. Tracy loved this company, and she loved the people and the office was less than 10 minutes from her house. So even though she had a second job offer at another company for a permanent full-time role, she decided to take her chances with this internship and hope for the best. Well, she ended up blowing away all of their expectations, and the company not only made her a permanent offer at the beginning of 20xx, but they made it even more interesting and challenging, because they knew what Tracy could handle.
让我告诉你们特蕾西·莎碧罗 最后发生了什么。 各位回想一下， 她必须告诉她认识的每一个人， 自己对重返工作岗位很有兴趣。 结果，她与自己社区里的长辈 进行了一次关键的谈话， 这让她找到了一份工作邀请。 那是一个金融部门的会计工作。 但那是临时的。 公司告诉她， 有可能有岗位晋升的机会， 但是不能保证。 那是20xx年的秋天。 特蕾西很爱那个公司， 而且她喜欢那里的员工， 从办公室去她家只需10分钟。 所以即使她后来得到了 第二份工作邀请， 来自另一家公司， 而且有永久、全职的保证， 她决定在这份实*项目中冒冒险， 尽人事，听天命。 最后，她的业绩 远远超出了所有人的期望值， 公司不但提供了她永久岗位， 那是在20xx年初， 而且他们还让她的工作 更加有趣、有挑战性， 因为他们知道特蕾西可以办得到。
Fast forward to 20xx, Tracy's been promoted. They've paid for her to get her MBA at night. She's even hired another relauncher to work for her. Tracy's temp job was a tryout, just like an internship, and it ended up being a win for both Tracy and her employer.
时间快进到20xx年， 特蕾西获得了晋升。 公司为她的夜校工商管理课程买单。 她甚至雇佣了 另一位再从业者为她工作。 特蕾西的临时工作像是一个试验， 就像实*项目， 而最终，特蕾西和她的雇主 达到了双赢局面。
Now, my goal is to bring the reentry internship concept to more and more employers. But in the meantime, if you are returning to work after a career break, don't hesitate to suggest an internship or an internship-like arrangement to an employer that does not have a formal reentry internship program. Be their first success story, and you can be the example for more relaunchers to come.
我的目标是将这种 再从业实*的概念 推荐给越来越多的雇主。 但是与此同时， 如果你在离职长假后重返岗位， 别犹豫向雇主提议设立实*项目， 或者类似实*项目的想法， 特别是那些没有 正式的再从业实*项目的公司。 争当他们的第一个成功故事， 而你们都可以成为 未来更多再从业者的楷模。
Thank you.
谢谢大家。
do you think it's possible to control someone's attention? even more than that, what about predicting human behavior? i think those are interesting ideas, if you could. i mean, for me, that would be the perfect superpower, actually kind of an evil way of approaching it. but for myself, in the past, i've spent the last 20 years studying human behavior from a rather unorthodox way: picking pockets. when we think of misdirection, we think of something as looking off to the side, when actually it's often the things that are right in front of us that are the hardest things to see, the things that you look at every day that you're blinded to.
for example, how many of you still have your cell phones on you right now? great. double-check. make sure you still have them on you. i was doing some shopping beforehand. now you've looked at them probably a few times today, but i'm going to ask you a question about them. without looking at your cell phone directly yet, can you remember the icon in the bottom right corner? bring them out, check, and see how accurate you were. how'd you do? show of hands. did we get it?
now that you're done looking at those, close them down, because every phone has something in common. no matter how you organize the icons, you still have a clock on the front. so, without looking at your phone, what time was it? you just looked at your clock, right? it's an interesting idea. now, i'll ask you to take that a step further with a game of trust. close your eyes. i realize i'm asking you to do that while you just heard there's a pickpocket in the room, but close your eyes.
now, you've been watching me for about 30 seconds. with your eyes closed, what am i wearing? make your best guess. what color is my shirt? what color is my tie? now open your eyes. by a show of hands, were you right?
it's interesting, isn't it? some of us are a little bit more perceptive than others. it seems that way. but i have a different theory about that, that model of attention. they have fancy models of attention, posner's trinity model of attention. for me, i like to think of it very simple, like a surveillance system. it's kind of like you have all these fancy sensors, and inside your brain is a little security guard. for me, i like to call him frank. so frank is sitting at a desk. he's got all sorts of cool information in front of him, high-tech equipment, he's got cameras, he's got a little phone that he can pick up, listen to the ears, all these senses, all these perceptions. but attention is what steers your perceptions, is what controls your reality. it's the gateway to the mind. if you don't attend to something, you can't be aware of it. but ironically, you can attend to something without being aware of it. that's why there's the cocktail effect: when you're in a party, you're having conversations with someone, and yet you can recognize your name and you didn't even realize you were listening to that.
now, for my job, i have to play with techniques to exploit this, to play with your attention as a limited resource. so if i could control how you spend your attention, if i could maybe steal your attention through a distraction. now, instead of doing it like misdirection and throwing it off to the side, instead, what i choose to focus on is frank, to be able to play with the frank inside your head, your little security guard, and get you, instead of focusing on your external senses, just to go internal for a second. so if i ask you to access a memory, like, what is that? what just happened? do you have a wallet? do you have an american express in your wallet? and when i do that, your frank turns around. he accesses the file. he has to rewind the tape. and what's interesting is, he can't rewind the tape at the same time that he's trying to process new data.
now, i mean, this sounds like a good theory, but i could talk for a long time and tell you lots of things, and they may be true, a portion of them, but i think it's better if i tried to show that to you here live. so if i come down, i'm going to do a little bit of shopping. just hold still where you are.
hello, how are you? it's lovely to see you. you did a wonderful job onstage. you have a lovely watch that doesn't come off very well. do you have your ring as well? good. just taking inventory. you're like a buffet. it's hard to tell where to start, there's so many great things.
hi, how are you? good to see you.
hi, sir, could you stand up for me, please? just right where you are. oh, you're married. you follow directions well. that's nice to meet you, sir. you don't have a whole lot inside your pockets. anything down by the pocket over here? hopefully so. have a seat. there you go. you're doing well.
hi, sir, how are you? good to see you, sir. you have a ring, a watch. do you have a wallet on you? joe: i don't. apollo robbins: well, we'll find one for you. come on up this way, joe. give joe a round of applause. come on up joe. let's play a game.
(applause)
pardon me.
i don't think i need this clicker anymore. you can have that. thank you very much. i appreciate that.
come on up to the stage, joe. let's play a little game now. do you have anything in your front pockets? joe: money. ar: money. all right, let's try that. can you stand right over this way for me? turn around and, let's see, if i give you something that belongs to me, this is just something i have, a poker chip. hold out your hand for me. watch it kind of closely. now this is a task for you to focus on. now you have your money in your front pocket here? joe: yup. ar: good. i'm not going to actually put my hand in your pocket. i'm not ready for that kind of commitment. one time a guy had a hole in his pocket, and that was rather traumatizing for me. i was looking for his wallet and he gave me his phone number. it was a big miscommunication.
so let's do this sim***. squeeze your hand. squeeze it tight. do you feel the poker chip in your hand? joe: i do. ar: would you be surprised if i could take it out of your hand? say yes. joe: very. ar: good. open your hand. thank you very much. i'll cheat if you give me a chance. make it harder for me. just use your hand. grab my wrist, but squeeze, squeeze firm. did you see it go? joe: no. ar: no, it's not here. open your hand. see, while we're focused on the hand, it's sitting on your shoulder right now. go ahead and take it off. now, let's try that again. hold your hand out flat. open it up all the way. put your hand up a little bit higher, but watch it close there, joe. see, if i did it slowly, it'd be back on your shoulder. (laughter) joe, we're going to keep doing this till you catch it. you're going to get it eventually. i have faith in you. squeeze firm. you're human, you're not slow. it's back on your shoulder. you were focused on your hand. that's why you were distracted. while you were watching this, i couldn't quite get your watch off. it was difficult. yet you had something inside your front pocket. do you remember what it was? joe: money. ar: check your pocket. see if it's still there. is it still there? (laughter) oh, that's where it was. go ahead and put it away. we're just shopping. this trick's more about the timing, really. i'm going to try to push it inside your hand. put your other hand on top for me, would you? it's amazingly obvious now, isn't it? it looks a lot like the watch i was wearing, doesn't it?
(laughter) (applause)
joe: that's pretty good. that's pretty good. ar: oh, thanks. but it's only a start. let's try it again, a little bit differently. hold your hands together. put your other hand on top. now if you're watching this little token, this obviously has become a little target. it's like a red herring. if we watch this kind of close, it looks like it goes away. it's not back on your shoulder. it falls out of the air, lands right back in the hand. did you see it go? yeah, it's funny. we've got a little guy. he's union. he works up there all day. if i did it slowly, if it goes straightaway, it lands down by your pocket. i believe is it in this pocket, sir? no, don't reach in your pocket. that's a different show. so -- (squeaking noise) -- that's rather strange. they have shots for that. can i show them what that is? that's rather bizarre. is this yours, sir? i have no idea how that works. we'll just send that over there.
that's great. i need help with this one. step over this way for me. now don't run away. you had something down by your pants pocket. i was checking mine. i couldn't find everything, but i noticed you had something here. can i feel the outside of your pocket for a moment? down here i noticed this. is this something of yours, sir? is this? i have no idea. that's a shrimp.
joe: yeah. i'm saving it for later.
ar: you've entertained all of these people in a wonderful way, better than you know. so we'd love to give you this lovely watch as a gift. (laughter) hopefully it matches his taste. but also, we have a couple of other things, a little bit of cash, and then we have a few other things. these all belong to you, along with a big round of applause from all your friends. (applause)
oe, thank you very much.
(applause)
so, same question i asked you before, but this time you don't have to close your eyes. what am i wearing?
(laughter)
(applause)
attention is a powerful thing. like i said, it shapes your reality. so, i guess i'd like to pose that question to you. if you could control somebody's attention, what would you do with it?
thank you.
What I'd like to do today is talk about one of my favorite subjects, and that is the neuroscience of sleep.
Now, there is a sound -- (Alarm clock) -- aah, it worked -- a sound that is desperately, desperately familiar to most of us, and of course it's the sound of the alarm clock. And what that truly ghastly, awful sound does is stop the single most important behavioral experience that we have, and that's sleep. If you're an average sort of person, 36 percent of your life will be spent asleep, which means that if you live to 90, then 32 years will have been spent entirely asleep.
Now what that 32 years is telling us is that sleep at some level is important. And yet, for most of us, we don't give sleep a second thought. We throw it away. We really just don't think about sleep. And so what I'd like to do today is change your views, change your ideas and your thoughts about sleep. And the journey that I want to take you on, we need to start by going back in time.
"Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber." Any ideas who said that? Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Yes, let me give you a few more quotes. "O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?" Shakespeare again, from -- I won't say it -- the Scottish play. [Correction: Henry IV, Part 2] (Laughter) From the same time: "Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together." Extremely prophetic, by Thomas Dekker, another Elizabethan dramatist.
But if we jump forward 400 years, the tone about sleep changes somewhat. This is from Thomas Edison, from the beginning of the 20th century. "Sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days." Bang. (Laughter) And if we also jump into the 1980s, some of you may remember that Margaret Thatcher was reported to have said, "Sleep is for wimps." And of course the infamous -- what was his name? -- the infamous Gordon Gekko from "Wall Street" said, "Money never sleeps."
What do we do in the 20th century about sleep? Well, of course, we use Thomas Edison's light bulb to invade the night, and we occupied the dark, and in the process of this occupation, we've treated sleep as an illness, almost. We've treated it as an enemy. At most now, I suppose, we tolerate the need for sleep, and at worst perhaps many of us think of sleep as an illness that needs some sort of a cure. And our ignorance about sleep is really quite profound.
Why is it? Why do we abandon sleep in our thoughts? Well, it's because you don't do anything much while you're asleep, it seems. You don't eat. You don't drink. And you don't have sex. Well, most of us anyway. And so therefore it's -- Sorry. It's a complete waste of time, right? Wrong. Actually, sleep is an incredibly important part of our biology, and neuroscientists are beginning to explain why it's so very important. So let's move to the brain.
Now, here we have a brain. This is donated by a social scientist, and they said they didn't know what it was, or indeed how to use it, so -- (Laughter) Sorry. So I borrowed it. I don't think they noticed. Okay. (Laughter)
The point I'm trying to make is that when you're asleep, this thing doesn't shut down. In fact, some areas of the brain are actually more active during the sleep state than during the wake state. The other thing that's really important about sleep is that it doesn't arise from a single structure within the brain, but is to some extent a network property, and if we flip the brain on its back -- I love this little bit of spinal cord here -- this bit here is the hypothalamus, and right under there is a whole raft of interesting structures, not least the biological clock. The biological clock tells us when it's good to be up, when it's good to be asleep, and what that structure does is interact with a whole raft of other areas within the hypothalamus, the lateral hypothalamus, the ventrolateral preoptic nuclei. All of those combine, and they send projections down to the brain stem here. The brain stem then projects forward and bathes the cortex, this wonderfully wrinkly bit over here, with neurotransmitters that keep us awake and essentially provide us with our consciousness. So sleep arises from a whole raft of different interactions within the brain, and essentially, sleep is turned on and off as a result of a range of
Okay. So where have we got to? We've said that sleep is complicated and it takes 32 years of our life. But what I haven't explained is what sleep is about. So why do we sleep? And it won't surprise any of you that, of course, the scientists, we don't have a consensus. There are dozens of different ideas about why we sleep, and I'm going to outline three of those.
The first is sort of the restoration idea, and it's somewhat intuitive. Essentially, all the stuff we've burned up during the day, we restore, we replace, we rebuild during the night. And indeed, as an explanation, it goes back to Aristotle, so that's, what, 2,300 years ago. It's gone in and out of fashion. It's fashionable at the moment because what's been shown is that within the brain, a whole raft of genes have been shown to be turned on only during sleep, and those genes are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways. So there's good evidence for the whole restoration hypothesis.
What about energy conservation? Again, perhaps intuitive. You essentially sleep to save calories. Now, when you do the sums, though, it doesn't really pan out. If you compare an individual who has slept at night, or stayed awake and hasn't moved very much, the energy saving of sleeping is about 110 calories a night. Now, that's the equivalent of a hot dog bun. Now, I would say that a hot dog bun is kind of a meager return for such a complicated and demanding behavior as sleep. So I'm less convinced by the energy conservation idea.
But the third idea I'm quite attracted to, which is brain processing and memory consolidation. What we know is that, if after you've tried to learn a task, and you sleep-deprive individuals, the ability to learn that task is smashed. It's really hugely attenuated. So sleep and memory consolidation is also very important. However, it's not just the laying down of memory and recalling it. What's turned out to be really exciting is that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep. In fact, it's been estimated to give us a threefold advantage. Sleeping at night enhances our creativity. And what seems to be going on is that, in the brain, those neural connections that are important, those synaptic connections that are important, are linked and strengthened, while those that are less important tend to fade away and be less important.
Okay. So we've had three explanations for why we might sleep, and I think the important thing to realize is that the details will vary, and it's probable we sleep for multiple different reasons. But sleep is not an indulgence. It's not some sort of thing that we can take on board rather casually. I think that sleep was once likened to an upgrade from economy to business class, you know, the equiavlent of. It's not even an upgrade from economy to first class. The critical thing to realize is that if you don't sleep, you don't fly. Essentially, you never get there, and what's extraordinary about much of our society these days is that we are desperately sleep-deprived.
So let's now look at sleep deprivation. Huge sectors of society are sleep-deprived, and let's look at our sleep-o-meter. So in the 1950s, good data suggests that most of us were getting around about eight hours of sleep a night. Nowadays, we sleep one and a half to two hours less every night, so we're in the six-and-a-half-hours-every-night league. For teenagers, it's worse, much worse. They need nine hours for full brain performance, and many of them, on a school night, are only getting five hours of sleep. It's sim*** not enough. If we think about other sectors of society, the aged, if you are aged, then your ability to sleep in a single block is somewhat disrupted, and many sleep, again, less than five hours a night. Shift work. Shift work is extraordinary, perhaps 20 percent of the working population, and the body clock does not shift to the demands of working at night. It's locked onto the same light-dark cycle as the rest of us. So when the poor old shift worker is going home to try and sleep during the day, desperately tired, the body clock is saying, "Wake up. This is the time to be awake." So the quality of sleep that you get as a night shift worker is usually very poor, again in that sort of five-hour region. And then, of course, tens of millions of people suffer from jet lag. So who here has jet lag? Well, my goodness gracious. Well, thank you very much indeed for not falling asleep, because that's what your brain is craving.
One of the things that the brain does is indulge in micro-sleeps, this involuntary falling asleep, and you have essentially no control over it. Now, micro-sleeps can be sort of somewhat embarrassing, but they can also be deadly. It's been estimated that 31 percent of drivers will fall asleep at the wheel at least once in their life, and in the U.S., the statistics are pretty good: 100,000 accidents on the freeway have been associated with tiredness, loss of vigilance, and falling asleep. A hundred thousand a year. It's extraordinary. At another level of terror, we dip into the tragic accidents at Chernobyl and indeed the space shuttle Challenger, which was so tragically lost. And in the investigations that followed those disasters, poor judgment as a result of extended shift work and loss of vigilance and tiredness was attributed to a big chunk of those disasters.
So when you're tired, and you lack sleep, you have poor memory, you have poor creativity, you have increased impulsiveness, and you have overall poor judgment. But my friends, it's so much worse than that.
(Laughter)
If you are a tired brain, the brain is craving things to wake it up. So drugs, stimulants. Caffeine represents the stimulant of choice across much of the Western world. Much of the day is fueled by caffeine, and if you're a really naughty tired brain, nicotine. And of course, you're fueling the waking state with these stimulants, and then of course it gets to 11 o'clock at night, and the brain says to itself, "Ah, well actually, I need to be asleep fairly shortly. What do we do about that when I'm feeling completely wired?" Well, of course, you then resort to alcohol. Now alcohol, short-term, you know, once or twice, to use to mildly sedate you, can be very useful. It can actually ease the sleep transition. But what you must be so aware of is that alcohol doesn't provide sleep, a biological mimic for sleep. It sedates you. So it actually harms some of the neural proccessing that's going on during memory consolidation and memory recall. So it's a short-term acute measure, but for goodness sake, don't become addicted to alcohol as a way of getting to sleep every night.
Another connection between loss of sleep is weight gain. If you sleep around about five hours or less every night, then you have a 50 percent likelihood of being obese. What's the connection here? Well, sleep loss seems to give rise to the release of the hormone ghrelin, the hunger hormone. Ghrelin is released. It gets to the brain. The brain says, "I need carbohydrates," and what it does is seek out carbohydrates and particularly sugars. So there's a link between tiredness and the metabolic predisposition for weight gain.
Stress. Tired people are massively stressed. And one of the things of stress, of course, is loss of memory, which is what I sort of just then had a little lapse of. But stress is so much more. So if you're acutely stressed, not a great problem, but it's sustained stress associated with sleep loss that's the problem. So sustained stress leads to suppressed immunity, and so tired people tend to have higher rates of overall infection, and there's some very good studies showing that shift workers, for example, have higher rates of cancer. Increased levels of stress throw glucose into the circulation. Glucose becomes a dominant part of the vasculature and essentially you become glucose intolerant. Therefore, diabetes 2. Stress increases cardiovascular disease as a result of raising blood pressure. So there's a whole raft of things associated with sleep loss that are more than just a mildly impaired brain, which is where I think most people think that sleep loss resides.
So at this point in the talk, this is a nice time to think, well, do you think on the whole I'm getting enough sleep? So a quick show of hands. Who feels that they're getting enough sleep here? Oh. Well, that's pretty impressive. Good. We'll talk more about that later, about what are your tips.
So most of us, of course, ask the question, "Well, how do I know whether I'm getting enough sleep?" Well, it's not rocket science. If you need an alarm clock to get you out of bed in the morning, if you are taking a long time to get up, if you need lots of stimulants, if you're grumpy, if you're irritable, if you're told by your work colleagues that you're looking tired and irritable, chances are you are sleep-deprived. Listen to them. Listen to yourself.
What do you do? Well -- and this is slightly offensive -- sleep for dummies: Make your bedroom a haven for sleep. The first critical thing is make it as dark as you possibly can, and also make it slightly cool. Very important. Actually, reduce your amount of light exposure at least half an hour before you go to bed. Light increases levels of alertness and will delay sleep. What's the last thing that most of us do before we go to bed? We stand in a massively lit bathroom looking into the mirror cleaning our teeth. It's the worst thing we can possibly do before we went to sleep. Turn off those mobile phones. Turn off those computers. Turn off all of those things that are also going to excite the brain. Try not to drink caffeine too late in the day, ideally not after lunch. Now, we've set about reducing light exposure before you go to bed, but light exposure in the morning is very good at setting the biological clock to the light-dark cycle. So seek out morning light. Basically, listen to yourself. Wind down. Do those sorts of things that you know are going to ease you off into the honey-heavy dew of slumber.
Okay. That's some facts. What about some myths?
Teenagers are lazy. No. Poor things. They have a biological predisposition to go to bed late and get up late, so give them a break.
We need eight hours of sleep a night. That's an average. Some people need more. Some people need less. And what you need to do is listen to your body. Do you need that much or do you need more? Simple as that.
Old people need less sleep. Not true. The sleep demands of the aged do not go down. Essentially, sleep fragments and becomes less robust, but sleep requirements do not go down.
And the fourth myth is, early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Well that's wrong at so many different levels. (Laughter) There is no, no evidence that getting up early and going to bed early gives you more wealth at all. There's no difference in socioeconomic status. In my experience, the only difference between morning people and evening people is that those people that get up in the morning early are just horribly smug.
(Laughter) (Applause)
Okay. So for the last part, the last few minutes, what I want to do is change gears and talk about some really new, breaking areas of neuroscience, which is the association between mental health, mental illness and sleep disruption. We've known for 130 years that in severe mental illness, there is always, always sleep disruption, but it's been largely ignored. In the 1970s, when people started to think about this again, they said, "Yes, well, of course you have sleep disruption in schizophrenia because they're on anti-psychotics. It's the anti-psychotics causing the sleep problems," ignoring the fact that for a hundred years previously, sleep disruption had been reported before anti-psychotics.
So what's going on? Lots of groups, several groups are studying conditions like depression, schizophrenia and bipolar, and what's going on in terms of sleep disruption. We have a big study which we published last year on schizophrenia, and the data were quite extraordinary. In those individuals with schizophrenia, much of the time, they were awake during the night phase and then they were asleep during the day. Other groups showed no 24-hour patterns whatsoever. Their sleep was absolutely smashed. And some had no ability to regulate their sleep by the light-dark cycle. They were getting up later and later and later and later each night. It was smashed.
So what's going on? And the really exciting news is that mental illness and sleep are not sim*** associated but they are physically linked within the brain. The neural networks that predispose you to normal sleep, give you normal sleep, and those that give you normal mental health are overlapping. And what's the evidence for that? Well, genes that have been shown to be very important in the generation of normal sleep, when mutated, when changed, also predispose individuals to mental health problems. And last year, we published a study which showed that a gene that's been linked to schizophrenia, which, when mutated, also smashes the sleep. So we have evidence of a genuine mechanistic overlap between these two important systems.
Other work flowed from these studies. The first was that sleep disruption actually precedes certain types of mental illness, and we've shown that in those young individuals who are at high risk of developing bipolar disorder, they already have a sleep abnormality prior to any clinical diagnosis of bipolar. The other bit of data was that sleep disruption may actually exacerbate, make worse the mental illness state. My colleague Dan Freeman has used a range of agents which have stabilized sleep and reduced levels of paranoia in those individuals by 50 percent.
So what have we got? We've got, in these connections, some really exciting things. In terms of the neuroscience, by understanding the neuroscience of these two systems, we're really beginning to understand how both sleep and mental illness are generated and regulated within the brain. The second area is that if we can use sleep and sleep disruption as an early warning signal, then we have the chance of going in. If we know that these individuals are vulnerable, early intervention then becomes possible. And the third, which I think is the most exciting, is that we can think of the sleep centers within the brain as a new therapeutic target. Stabilize sleep in those individuals who are vulnerable, we can certainly make them healthier, but also alleviate some of the appalling symptoms of mental illness.
So let me just finish. What I started by saying is take sleep seriously. Our attitudes toward sleep are so very different from a pre-industrial age, when we were almost wrapped in a duvet. We used to understand intuitively the importance of sleep. And this isn't some sort of crystal-waving nonsense. This is a pragmatic response to good health. If you have good sleep, it increases your concentration, attention, decision-making, creativity, social skills, health. If you get sleep, it reduces your mood changes, your stress, your levels of anger, your impulsivity, and your tendency to drink and take drugs. And we finished by saying that an understanding of the neuroscience of sleep is really informing the way we think about some of the causes of mental illness, and indeed is providing us new ways to treat these incredibly debilitating conditions.
Jim Butcher, the fantasy writer, said, "Sleep is God. Go worship." And I can only recommend that you do the same.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.
Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.
See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.
But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.
For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.
Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.
But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.
Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?
Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.
So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.
But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.
In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.
Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.
Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?
Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.
I'd like to share with you a discovery that I made a few months ago while writing an article for Italian Wired. I always keep my thesaurus handy whenever I'm writing anything, but I'd already finished editing the piece, and I realized that I had never once in my life looked up the word "disabled" to see what I'd find.
Let me read you the entry. "Disabled, adjective: crippled, helpless, useless, wrecked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated, run-down, worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile, decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done-for, done-in cracked-up, counted-out; see also hurt, useless and weak. Antonyms, healthy, strong, capable." I was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing, it was so ludicrous, but I'd just gotten past "mangled," and my voice broke, and I had to stop and collect myself from the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed.
You know, of course, this is my raggedy old thesaurus so I'm thinking this must be an ancient print date, right? But, in fact, the print date was the early 1980s, when I would have been starting primary school and forming an understanding of myself outside the family unit and as related to the other kids and the world around me. And, needless to say, thank God I wasn't using a thesaurus back then. I mean, from this entry, it would seem that I was born into a world that perceived someone like me to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them, when in fact, today I'm celebrated for the opportunities and adventures my life has procured.
So, I immediately went to look up the 2009 online edition, expecting to find a revision worth noting. Here's the updated version of this entry. Unfortunately, it's not much better. I find the last two words under "Near Antonyms," particularly unsettling: "whole" and "wholesome."
So, it's not just about the words. It's what we believe about people when we name them with these words. It's about the values behind the words, and how we construct those values. Our language affects our thinking and how we view the world and how we view other people. In fact, many ancient societies, including the Greeks and the Romans, believed that to utter a curse verbally was so powerful, because to say the thing out loud brought it into existence. So, what reality do we want to call into existence: a person who is limited, or a person who's empowered? By casually doing something as simple as naming a person, a child, we might be putting lids and casting shadows on their power. Wouldn't we want to open doors for them instead?
One such person who opened doors for me was my childhood doctor at the A.I. duPont Institute in Wilmington, Delaware. His name was Dr. Pizzutillo, an Italian American, whose name, apparently, was too difficult for most Americans to pronounce, so he went by Dr. P. And Dr. P always wore really colorful bow ties and had the very perfect disposition to work with children.
I loved almost everything about my time spent at this hospital, with the exception of my physical therapy sessions. I had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of exercises with these thick, elastic bands -- different colors, you know -- to help build up my leg muscles, and I hated these bands more than anything -- I hated them, had names for them. I hated them. And, you know, I was already bargaining, as a five year-old child, with Dr. P to try to get out of doing these exercises, unsuccessfully, of course. And, one day, he came in to my session -- exhaustive and unforgiving, these sessions -- and he said to me, "Wow. Aimee, you are such a strong and powerful little girl, I think you're going to break one of those bands. When you do break it, I'm going to give you a hundred bucks."
Now, of course, this was a simple ploy on Dr. P's part to get me to do the exercises I didn't want to do before the prospect of being the richest five-year-old in the second floor ward, but what he effectively did for me was reshape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me. And I have to wonder today to what extent his vision and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong, powerful and athletic person well into the future.
This is an example of how adults in positions of power can ignite the power of a child. But, in the previous instances of those thesaurus entries, our language isn't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we would all want, the possibility of an individual to see themselves as capable. Our language hasn't caught up with the changes in our society, many of which have been brought about by technology. Certainly, from a medical standpoint, my legs, laser surgery for vision impairment, titanium knees and hip replacements for aging bodies that are allowing people to more fully engage with their abilities, and move beyond the limits that nature has imposed on them -- not to mention social networking platforms allow people to self-identify, to claim their own descriptions of themselves, so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing. So, perhaps technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth: that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society, and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset.
——5分钟英语演讲稿 (菁华3篇)
I believe in our future
Honorable Judges fellow students:
Good afternoon Recently ther is a heated debate in our society. The college students are thebeneficiaries of a rare privilege who receive exceptional education atextraordinary places. But will we be able to face the challenge and support ourselvesagainst all odds Will we be able to better the lives of others Will we be ableto accept the responsibility of building the future of our country The cynics say the college students are the pampered lost generation whichwould cringe at the slightest discomfort. But the cynics are wrong. The collegestudents I see are eagerly learning about how to live independently. We help eachother clean the dormitory go shopping and bargain together and take part timejobs to supplement our pocket money. The cynics say we care for nothing other than grades and we neglect the needfor character cultivation. But again the cynics are wrong. We care dee* for eachother we cherish freedom we treasure justice and we seek truth. Last weekthousands of my fellow students had their blood type tested in order to make acontribution for the children who suffer from blood cancer. As college students we are adolescents at the critical turning point in ourlives. We all face a fundamental choice: cynicism or faith each will profoundlyimpact our future or even the future of our country. I believe in all my fellowclassmates. Though we are still inexperienced and even a little bit childish. Ibelieve that we have the courage and faith to meet any challenge and take on ourresponsibilities. We are preparing to assume new responsibilities and tasks andto use the education we have received to make our world a better place. I believein our future.
我对未来充满信心
尊敬的评委，各位同学：
下午好! 最*，社会上有一场很激烈的争论。大学生是一种稀有特权的享有者，在很棒的地方接受高等教育。但是，我们能面对挑战而无所畏惧吗?我们能够改善他人的生活吗?我们能够承担建设祖国未来的'重任吗? 怀疑论者说大学生是被宠坏的一代，一丁点挫折都受不了。但是他们错了，我所看到的大学生正在努力的学*独立生活。我们互相帮助打扫卫生，一起上街砍价购物，一起参加兼职工作来赚零花钱。 怀疑论者说我们除了成绩什么都不关心，从而忽略了性格的培养。但是，他们又错了。我们彼此关心，我们向往自由，我们珍惜公正，我们追求真理。上个星期，很多我的同学去验血，为了给患血癌的孩子贡献自己的力量。 作为大学生，我们是处在人生分水岭的青年。我们都面临一个重要的选择：怀疑人生还是相信自己，每一种都会给我们的人生带来重大的影响，甚至影响我们祖国的未来。我相信我们的同学们，虽然我们依然缺乏经验，甚至有些志气，但是我相信我们有勇气和自信来面对生活的挑战并承担我们的责任。我们正努力准备接受新的任务，用我们所学*的知识将世界变得更美好。我对我们的未来充满信心。
Today I am very glad to be here to share with you my ideas of success. What is success? It is what everyone is longing for.Sometimes success would be rather simple. Winning a game is success; getting a high grade in the exam is success; making a new friend is success; even now I am
standing here giving my speech is somehow also success.
However, as a person’s whole life is concerned, success becomes very
complicated. Is fortune success? Is fame success? Is high social status success? No, I don’t think so. I believe success is the realization of people’
s hopes and ideals.Nowadays, in the modern society there are many people
who are regarded as the successful. And the most obvious characteristics of hem are money, high position and luxurious life. So most people believe that s success and all that they do is for this purpose. But the problem is wether it is real success. We all know there are always more money, higher position and better condition in front of us. If we keep chasing them, where is the end? What will satisfy us at last? Therefore, we can see, to get the real Success we must need something inside, which is the realization of
people’ hopes and ideals.
Different people have different ideas about success; cause people’s hopes and ideas vary from one another. But I am sure every success is dear to everybody, cause it is not easy to come by, cause in the process of our striving for success, we got both our body and soul tempted, meanwhile we are enlightened by the most valuable qualities of human beings: love, patient, courage and sense of responsibility. These are the best treasures. So now I am very proud that I have this opportunity to stand here speaking to all of you. It is my success, cause I raise up to challenge my hope.
What is success? Everyone has his own interpretation as I do. But I am sure
every success leads to an ever-brighter future. So ladies and gentlemen, believe in our hopes, believe in ourselves, we, every one of us, can make a
successful life!
Wish you all good success!
I believe in our future
Honorable Judges, fellow students:
Good afternoon!
Recently, ther is a heated debate in our society. The college students are the beneficiaries of a rare privilege, who receive exceptional education at extraordinary places. But will we be able to face the challenge and support ourselves against all odds? Will we be able to better the lives of others? Will we be able to accept the responsibility of building the future of our country?
The cynics say the college students are the pampered lost generation, which would cringe at the slightest discomfort. But the cynics are wrong. The college students I see are eagerly learning about how to live independently. We help each other clean the dormitory, go shopping and bargain together, and take part time jobs to supplement our pocket money.
The cynics say we care for nothing other than grades; and we neglect the need for character cultivation. But again, the cynics are wrong. We care dee* for each other, we cherish freedom, we treasure justice, and we seek truth. Last week, thousands of my fellow students had their blood type tested in order to make a contribution for the children who suffer from blood cancer.
As college students, we are adolescents at the critical turning point in our lives. We all face a fundamental choice: cynicism or faith, each will profoundly impact our future, or even the future of our country. I believe in all my fellow classmates. Though we are still inexperienced and even a little bit childish. I believe that we have the courage and faith to meet any challenge and take on our responsibilities. We are preparing to assume new responsibilities and tasks, and to use the education we have received to make our world a better place. I believe in our future.
——五分钟优秀英语演讲稿（精选5篇）
The word wealth always reminds people of money and the sayings or concepts related to money. For example, “money talks”; “money makes the ghosts turn the mill”; “as birds die for food, so men die for wealth”; “the poor have no friends even though they live in the noisy downtown, while the rich have remote kinsfolk even if they live in the deep mountains”; “poverty chills ambition” “one cent short may put a hero in an awkward situation” etc, etc..
In the 1980' s, all shops were state-owned with marked prices. You couldn't buy what you wanted with even one cent short, so one cent could indeed embarrass a hero. A popular song at that time started “I picked up one cent at the roadside, and I handed it over to the policeman” But now no one cares to pick it up even if it were ten cents.
People's reverence for money is expressed in varied ways. The names of companies or stores are often “Beer of Wealth and Honor”, “Restaurant of Wealth and Rank” “Store of the Aristocrats” “Hotel of Fame and Prestige” etc. . At New Year's time, the god of wealth is worshiped and the picture of the god is covered with signs of money. When a millionaire is walking in the street, people will show their profound respect even though they know very well that they can not get a cent from him. The English film “the Million-Pound Note” makes a most vivid revelation of this situation. With the million pound note in hand, the hero has the privilege to buy on credit, or on loan and is even presented money from others. It's an idealized end of the story that the hero is still loved by his girl friend even after he lost his million-pound note. However, without the million-pound note, they couldn't have known each other. It's very difficult for people to make friends directly with beggars.
You have a world of opportunity in front of you, and it is for you to decide what to do with this platform that you’ve worked so hard to earn.
No matter what field you enter after graduation, you have the opportunity to use your gifts to make a difference in the world.
This can feel daunting, at the outset of your post-Stanford life. Some of you may know exactly what contribution you want to make in the world, while others may still be searching for your way to make an impact.
But whatever you do, whatever profession you pursue or journey you take – whether you become a teacher or a community leader, a lawyer or a physician, an engineer or an artist, or a scholar or a scientist, or a mother or father, a caregiver to the next generation – whatever you make of your life and the opportunities before you, I hope you will use your gifts to change the world for the better.
Having a platform also comes with a responsibility. It requires an ongoing process of self-examination and a continual return to your guiding values.
You may find, at times, that the path forward is unclear. Or you may realize, in hindsight, that you have made missteps along the way.
All of us make mistakes. I certainly do – just ask my wife and kids!
All of our lives require self-examination.
I have many hobbies. I like drawing and I can drawvery well,which get a lot of praisefrommy teachers and friends.
I likesports,such as dancing,skating,biking and playing badminton. I often play badmintonwith my sisters and we have a great fun together. I love music,especially thepop music,which makes me feel relax. I love English,too. I hope I can travelall over the world one day.
I have manyfriends. I often study and play with Ke Jingqi and Zhu Si huai. Sometimes,wego to bookstore or supermarket together. We are so happy when we are together. Ilove my friends and they love me,too.
Thatsall!Thank you for your attention.
Part of the genius of this system of universities involves adding you into the mix. It is the combination of brilliant scholars who dedicate their lives to exploring what we know, might know and must know about all the things in the universe, who work daily at the edge of accumulated human knowledge, sheltered by the principle of academic freedom, guided by the norms of scholarly temperament, working within the decentralized governance structure of the University. Together with the most brilliant and curious youth brought in from all over the world, to whom we teach everything we know so that they can go on with their lives and know even more.
It is all this that creates the utterly unique context of the modern research university and that unites the exhilarating intertwined ambitions of scholarship and teaching. The structure and functioning of these institutions are unique, no other organization has ever been designed in these ways, nor would it seem to anyone sensible to do.
From the outside, all look ungovernable. From the inside, and I can singularly attest to this, it is ungovernable, and it works and fabulously so.
Over the course of the 20th, and now the 21st centuries, virtually every new discovery of significance emanated from our academic research institutions which now number in the hundreds.
My friend, Our distinguished alumnus Warren Buffet likes to say that the American system operates with a secret sauce that has brought this nation to the pinnacle of human success in maximizing the welfare of its people, but that secret sauce begins with the knowledge created right here.
Confidence,which is not only the faith in your abilities, but also the faith of pursuit of firm target in yourself, is the first secret of success. With it, you can go toward the shore of victory. When at a low ebb of the Chinese revolution, xxx believed that "a single spark can start a prairie fire". ChenYi believed "repeated action can not take off" he was confident. In short, self-confidence refers to the navigation towards victory, as is the driving force of progress.
Inferior tends to look at the advantages of others too much, overweight, and this is a lack of understanding of their strengths. Someone who has so heavy psychological pressure makes himself passive. Inferior psychological barrier limits the development of ability, making them lose the chance of success, ultimately nothing. Humble and out of the shadow, there must be sunny days ahead! In both the "thousand goddess of mercy" dancing miracle of the spotlight, the actors are in the faith and destiny of the strong, overcoming the inferiority, their performance won the audience's warm applause, dee*** loved by people.
Overcoming self-abased and developing confidence is our inevitable choice.
Conceit and inferiority are extreme psychological. Swellheads smug after some achievements, even defiant, arrogance. These people even had made some achievements, but it was just a flash in the pan. Xiang yu in the struggle played a great role，but temporary military advantage made him blind. The results had been defeated by Liu Bang, the former hero. At last Xiang Yu committed *** by Wujiang river .
We want to believe in ourselves, but not conceited. I do not give up. Choose confidence, overcome being self-abased, and being away from the ego, which is the requirement of the new century, and is the pursuit of perfect personality. "Talk about heroes, you can find someone today", xxx was full of self-confidence, who will always inspire us to move forward.
——1分钟英语演讲稿(精选5篇)
The City Mouse and the Country Mouse
Once there were two mice. They were friends. One mouse lived in the country; the other mouse lived in the city. After many years the Country mouse saw the City mouse; he said, "Do come and see me at my house in the country." So the City mouse went. The City mouse said, "This food is not good, and your house is not good. Why do you live in a hole in the field? You should come and live in the city. You would live in a nice house made of stone. You would have nice food to eat. You must come and see me at my house in the city."
The Country mouse went to the house of the City mouse. It was a very good house. Nice food was set ready for them to eat. But just as they began to eat they heard a great noise. The City mouse cried, " Run! Run! The cat is coming!" They ran away quickly and hid.
After some time they came out. When they came out, the Country mouse said, "I do not like living in the city. I like living in my hole in the field. For it is nicer to be poor and happy, than to be rich and afraid."
this morning i went to the market to buy some vegetables with my parents. on the way we all highly praised a young man in western-style clothes and leather shoes who was riding by. but he rode so fast that he knocked an old lady down carelessly.instead of stopping, he pretended not to see this and rode away quickly. we were all very angry with the young man. to our happiness, a girl in plain dress ran forward at once, helped the lady up and took her home. we all praised the girl.
from this we know we cannot judge a person by his appearance. a person who is dressed beautifully may not have a beautiful soul. only a person who has a beautiful soul is really beautiful.
1分钟英语演讲稿 [篇2]
Hello, everyone
I’d like to ask you to point out your favorite country if here is a map. Maybe you will choose the United States for the freedom; maybe you will choose French for the romantic. I’d like to say that these are nice countries for traveling. But there is one country in the bottom of my heart, and I will be proud of her forever, that’s China---my motherland!
Our great motherland is one of the largest countries in the world. It has a population of over thirteen hundred million. Beijing is its capital.
It’s needless to say that China has a long history.Now China is a strong and developing country. Facts have proved that China is a powerful, invincible. If anyone asked, we will proudly say that I am Chinese.I am proud of you-----China.
I am a primary school student now; I know that all of us are the future of our nation. So, what we need to do is to study hard step by step, listen carefully in the class and do homework everyday so that we can dedicate ourselves to our nation when we grown up! That’s my speech! Thank you for listening.
Hi everybody.
Beauty usually refers to what appeals to the eye. A nice and well built girl is regarded as beautiful. A bunch of vigorous flowers are also considered as beautiful. A splendid waterfall ing down from a mountain is as well looked on as beautiful.
Beauty also refers to what appeals to the mind. The virtue of the Chinese nation-industry and bravery are taken as beautiful，because it helped to produce such a magnificent culture in the world. Einstein's theory of relativity is also perceived as beautiful，for it explains many natural phenomena so perfectly.
Beauty is around us. If you keep an eye or pay some attention，it is never difficult to find something beautiful somewhere about you. Wonderful natural spots，historical relics，fine arts，splendid buildings，and kind people are just a few inches away.
thank you.
老猫
一位老妇有只猫，这只猫很老，它跑不快了，也咬不了东西，因为它年纪太大了。一天，老猫发现一只老鼠，它跳过去抓这只老鼠，然而，它咬不住这只老鼠。因此，老鼠从它的嘴边溜掉了，因为老猫咬不了它。
于是，老妇很生气，因为老猫没有把老鼠咬死。她开始打这只猫，猫说：“不要打你的老仆人，我已经为你服务了很多年，而且还愿意为你效劳，但是，我实在太老了，对年纪大的不要这么无情，要记住老年人在年青时所做过的有益的事情。”
A man was going to the house of some rich person. As he went along the road, he saw a box of good apples at the side of the road. He said, "I do not want to eat those apples; for the rich man will give me much food; he will give me very nice food to eat." Then he took the apples and threw them away into the dust.
He went on and came to a river. The river had become very big; so he could not go over it. He waited for some time; then he said, "I cannot go to the rich man's house today, for I cannot get over the river."
He began to go home. He had eaten no food that day. He began to want food. He came to the apples, and he was glad to take them out of the dust and eat them.
Do not throw good things away; you may be glad to have them at some other time.
Life is important to anyone in the what the life mean is not clear to anyone on the earth.
What is the meaning of life?Someone thinks that life is working and think that they don't need to know anything outside the field of their specializations,so they don't care about many things such as sports,entertainment,music...
Life is more than course working is important to our life,because it supports oppotunity to get money,and make our life ver,working is not enough to a human in today's society,he or she should know much more knowledge than his or her own knowledge outside one's specialization can help him or her build up the moral sense.
The meaning of life is difficult to one can give the clear identification of the life is not meaning of life is to anyone in the world is ready to devote,the life of the world will be more beautiful.
——英语演讲稿3分钟 (菁华6篇)
change ourselves
Good evening, honorable judges, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s my greatpleasure to stand here to present my speech—change the world, change ourselves.
It’s noticable that western holidays are becoming increasingly popular day by day, while chinese traditional festivals are being somewhat neglected. not long before about 10 doctors in beijing university and qinghua unversity announced that we should reject the invasion of western holidays ,because they regard western holidays as an challenge against our traditional festivals and culture.
Frankly speaking, i don’t quite agree with them.indeed, we should never neglect or even discard our traditonal festivals as china boasts a brilliant history and splendid traditions. (examples).but why can’t we absorb the meaningful western holidays and culture.
There are obvious reasons why some western holidays are so popular in china. on the one hand, some of the western holidays which we chinese don’t have are reasonable and meaningful, such as father’s day and april fool’s day etc. on the other hand,the prevalence of globalization enables western culture to prevail in china. overwhelmed by such a trend,chinese unconsiciously get involved in western holidays and culture.
With the further development of the whole world, the cultural communication between different countries and nations becomes faster and more and more important. we are indeed from different nations, but we are the citizens of the same world, so the outstanding culture of different nations is the commom wealth of everyone on the earth.the only way for us to protect our traditional culture is to reject the foreign culture? the answer is definitely no. what we ought to do is to spare no effort to educate chinese to get to know and treasure our splendid traditions instead of rejecting foreign culture. only by educating can we set our confidence and belief towards our culture. only by educating can we preserve and promote the wealth that our ancesters left for us.
At last i’d like to share a famouse saying of gandhi with all of you ,that is:if you want to change the world, then you must change yourself first.”
Dear teacher and classmates:
I am very glad to make a speech here in this class again! This time, I'd like to talk something about English.
I love English. English language is now used everywhere in the world. It has become the most common language on Internet and for international trade. Learning English makes me confident and brings me great pleasure.
When I was seven, my mother sent me to an English school. At there, I played games and sang English songs with other children . Then I discovered the beauty of the language, and began my colorful dream in the English world.
Everyday, I read English following the tapes. Sometimes, I watch English cartoons.
On the weekend, I often go to the English corner. By talking with different people there, I have made more and more friends as well as improved my oral English.
I hope I can travel around the world someday. I want to go to America to visit Washington Monument, because the president Washington is my idol. Of course, I want to go to London too, because England is where English language developed. If I can ride my bike in Cambridge university, I will be very happy. I hope I can speak English with everyone in the world. I'll introduce China to them, such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Puyang.
I know, Rome was not built in a day. I believe that after continuous hard study, one day I can speak English very well.
If you want to be loved, you should learn to love and be lovable. So I believe as I love English everyday , it will love me too.
Good morning, Everyone!
I will talk about sports. I am an active boy. I like many kinds of sports, such as walking, skating, climbing, cycling and skipping. Doing sports gives me a good health and brings me a lot of fun.
Now, I will tell you about my cycling sport. I often ride my bicycle when I am free. I like to ride my bicycle on a road near my house. It is an empty road. There are no cars and few people walking on the road. It is about four kilometers long. It has several long slopes. So it is very good for cycling. When I ride down the slopes, the bicycle runs very fast, and I feel I am flying. That’s a very good feeling for me. When I ride up the slopes, it is very difficult, but it is a good training for me. I always try my best to ride up as long as possible. Cycling there gives me lots of fun.
Everyone can get ill, but doing sports is a good doctor. I know an English saying “Exercise one hour a day, keep illness away.” My own story has proved it. I once had an illness. I had to go to see the doctors and take medicines very often. After doing sports for several years, I have recovered now.
Doing sports gives me a strong body and brings me lots of fun. So if you want to be strong, please do sports; if you want to enjoy a happy life, please do sports, too.
Thank you
I Agree or not agree: the next twenty years from now on, students will not use printed books any more.
I don't think so. printed books won't be abandoned in such a short time. I admit that new technology is developing fast. Many advanced electronic products are gradually take the place of traditional tools. Just like in university, teachers like to use multimedia in class for it is quite convenient and efficient. However, for our student, it is not realistic to study completely by electronic products. There are many things need to recorded on books. Books are something meaningful and practical.
I should say, in our country, printed books wouldn't be abandoned within 20 years at least for two reasons. Firstly, books are classical container of knowledge. They accompany human to advance. A student without books could be someway ridiculous. Secondly, our country haven't developed so strong to make every student study by com*r or other forms of electronic tools. And even after 20 years, the possibility is also very small. I also think it is unnecessary because books are cheap but useful and still meaningful.
my hometoic center of *. it has lots of famous sights to offer. the potala palace is the most famous, a magnificent and and bravery of our people.
Secondly, led by the reforming and opening policy of china, lhasa has changed a lot. many neeto us? i don’t think so.
Honor her and benete interested in this language because of her enlightenment. so many years have passed and miss zhang is still an ordinary primary school teacher e questions:
1、do you kno men and from the infinite, so long as you are young .
When the aerials are down , and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old ,even at 20 , but as long as your aerials are up ,to catch waves of optimism , there is hope you may die young at 80.
Thank you!
Respected teachers, dear students: hello!
Parents love, is the light in the dark, let my heart no longer lonely.
Parents love, is a can be sprinkled in my heart drizzle, moisten my dry heart.
Parents love, is the gas station in life, let me have the courage to accept the challenge.
The old saying says: "the sheep has kneel down the milk of the grace, the crow has the sense of feeding back." Every bit of our growth is inseparable from the help of parents, water when yongquan phase reported, therefore, we should know how to Thanksgiving, know how to thank parents.
Students, let us Thanksgiving parents! With a grateful heart to treat parents, with a sincere heart and parents exchange. They are great enough to bring us into this beautiful world, and they raise us as *s, giving us nothing in return. Be grateful for what your parents have given you.
Thank you!
——3分钟英语演讲稿 (菁华5篇)
Students, guests , teachers and Honorable Judges.
Good morning !
my great pleasure to share my dream with you today. my dream is to become a teacher....
As the whole world has its boundaries, limits and freedom coexist in our life. I don’t expect complete freedom, which is impossible. I sim* have a dream that supports my life.
I dream that one day, I could escape from the deep sea of thick schoolbooks and lead my own life. With my favorite fictions, I lie freely on the green grass, smelling the spring, listening to the wind singing, breathing the fresh and cool air and dissolve my soul in nature at last. Simple and short enjoyment can bring me great satisfaction.
I dream that one day the *s could throw their prejudice of comic and cartoon away. They could keep a lovely heart that can share sorrow and happiness with us while watching cartoon or doing personal things. That’s the real communication of heart to heart.
I have the belief that my dreams should come true. I am looking forward to some day coming when I am like a proud eagle, which flies to the blue and vast sky.
Facing this audience on the stage, I have the exciting feeling of participating in the march of history, for what we are facing today is more than a mere competition or contest. It is an assembly of some of China’s most talented and motivated people, representatives of a younger generation that are preparing themselves for the coming of a new century.
I’m grateful that I’ve been given this opportunity, at such a historic moment, to stand here as a spokesman of my generation and to take a serious look back at the past 15 years, a crucial period for every one of us and for this nation as well.
Though it is only within my power to tell about my personal experience, and only a tiny fragment of it at that, it still represents, I believe, the root of a spirit which has been essential to me and to all the people bred by the past 15 years.
In my elementary years, there was a little girl in the class who worked very hard but somehow could never do satisfactorily in her lessons.
The teacher asked me to help her, and it was obvious that she expected a lot from me. but as a young boy, restless, thoughtless, I always tried to evade her so as to get more time to enjoy myself.
One day before the final exam, she came up to me and said, Could you please explain this to me? I want very much to do better this time. I started explaining, and finished in a hurry. Pretending not to notice her still confused eyes, I ran off quickly. Nat surprisingly, she again did very badly in the exam. And two months later, at the beginning of the new semester, word came of her death of blood cancer. No one ever knew about the little task I failed to fulfill, but I couldn’t forgive myself. I sim* couldn’t forget her eyes, which seem to be asking, Why didn’t you do a little more to help me, when it was so easy for you? Why didn’t you understand a little better the trust placed in you, so that I would not have to leave this world in such pain and regret?
I was about eight or nine years old at that time, but in a way it was the very starting point of my life, for I began to understand the word responsibility and to learn to always do my duties faithfully and devotedly, for the implications of that sacred word has dawned on me: the mutual need and trust of people, the co-operation and inter-reliance which are the very foundation of human society.
Later in my life, I continued to experience many failures. But never again did I feel that regret which struck me at the death of the girl, for it makes my heart satisfied to think that I have always done everything in my power to fulfill my responsibilities as best I can.
As I grew up, changed and improved by this incident and many other similar ones, I began to perceive the changes taking place around me and to find that society, in a way, was in its formative years like myself. New buildings, new commodities and new fashions appear every day.
New ideas, new information, new technologies. People can talk with each other from any corner of the earth in a matter of seconds. Society is becoming more competitive.
&nds. Society is becoming ike individuality and creativity are getting more emphasis and more people are rewarded for their hard work and efforts. Such is the era in which this generation ,grows and matures.
Such is the era in which this generation will take over the nation from our fathers and learn to run it. Yet in the meantime, many problems still exist.
Everyone has a choice when he wakes up in the early morning.You can choose to be happy or sad all the day. But for me , I think I have responsibilities to fulfill all the day. So every morning my first job is to choose what kind of day I am going to have. Today I can complain because it is rainy or I can be grateful that the grass is watered for free.
Today I can feel sad because I don’t have more money or I can be glad that it will prevent me from wasting.
Today I can feel very down because of a bad cold or I can rejoice that I am still alive.
Today I can lament over all that my parents didn’t give me when I was growing up or I can feel grateful that they allowed me to be born.
Today I can be disappionted for my lack of friends or I can be excited to discover new relationships.
Today I can be exhausted because I have too much homework to do or I can feel honored because I’m getting closer to my dream in this way.
What today will be like is just up to ourselves.We can get to choose what kind of day we will have! As teenagers,we stilll have much time to achieve our dreams, but the way to success is not so easy.If we choose to face it in a good mood and carry on trying,I believe we can enjoy the whole process and get to the destination of success much more easily and happily.
In fact,everything depends on your own attitude.If you choose to be happy and positive,you will enjoy your work and have a good time.If you choose to be sad and negative,nothing good will come to you and your life will be colourless.
The world around us is so beautiful.There is no reason why we don’t enjoy it.So,everybody,let’s choose to be happy everyday!
Ok,that’s all.
Thanks for listening!
hello everyone!
Students, guests , teachers and Honorable Judges
Good morning !
my great pleasure to share my dream with you today. my dream is to become a teacher.
As the whole world has its boundaries, limits and freedom coe_ist in our life. I don’t e_pect complete freedom, which is impossible. I sim* have a dream that supports my life.
I dream that one day, I could escape from the deep sea of thick schoolbooks and lead my own life. With my favorite fictions, I lie freely on the green grass, smelling the spring, listening to the wind singing, breathing the fresh and cool air and dissolve my soul in nature at last. Simple and short enjoyment can bring me great satisfaction.
I dream that one day the *s could throw their prejudice of comic and cartoon away. They could keep a lovely heart that can share sorrow and happiness with us while watching cartoon or doing personal things. That’s the real communication of heart to heart.
I have the belief that my dreams should come true. I am looking forward to some day coming when I am like a proud eagle, which flies to the blue and vast sky.
Thank you!
good afternoon, my dear friends.
i am very happy to meet you here.it is my great honor to communicate with you at such a special occation.first of all,please allow me to e_press my appreciation to you all to listion to me.
i am proud of being a college student.the collegelife is fresh,new teachers, new classmates and new friends. i like the friendship, and their wide knowledge and opening mind. the grand library, school buildings and wide playground attrattde me very much.my college life is better than i e_pected, i can do anything i like. in the college we can not only learn the professional knowledge,but also develop our comprehensive abilities.if we can make full use of the period,we can learn many useful things.besides,we should have the active attitude to our life,do a contributionto the society.
collegelife is the most precious time in our life.most of us want to become an outstanding man. but there are some students still waste their time. they get together for eating, drinking or playing cards. they're busy in searching for a girlfriend or a boyfriend. they completely forget their task as college students.
finally, i hope everybody can try their best to become a worthy person to our country, and make great contributions to the society!
——英语演讲稿3分钟大学生（精选5篇）
verytime I am asked what I want to do in the future. I think a minute and say being a doctor is my dream job.
Doctor is an other kind of artist who does human art by fighting with diseases and making people feel good. I think it is a pleasure to try my best to bring happiness to others. It is a feeling of pride and I am fond of it. In modern life,a mass of people work day and night to seek wealth and as a result they ignore their health. It is known that strong body is a foundation of beatific life. I dreamed to be an excellent doctor who can help them have a right to enjoy life again. Curing people is a doctor's holy responsibility.
Being a doctor is my dream job,now I should study hard to gain more knowledge to reach my goal.
A proverb says,"Time is money." But in my opinion, time is even more precious than money. Why? Because when money is spent, we can earn it back. However, when time is gone, it will never return. This is the reason why we must value time.Collected by.
It goes without saying that the time for our study and work is unusually limited. Hence, even an hour is extremely precious. We should make full use of our time to do useful things. As a student,I must make efforts to engage in my study so as to serve our nation and people in the future. But it is a pity that there. are a lot of people who do not know the importance of time. They do not realize that wasting time is equal to wasting a part of their valuable life.collected by.
In a word, we should form the good habit of saving time. Do not put off what can be done today till tomorrow. Laziness will not only bring us failure but also lead us to the road of poverty.
the cynics say we care for nothing other than grades; and we neglect the need for character cultivation. but again,
the cynics are wrong. we care dee*** for each other, we cherish freedom, we treasure justice, and we seek truth. last week, thousands of my fellow students had their blood type tested in order to make a contribution for the children who suffer from blood cancer.
as college students, we are adolescents at the critical turning point in our lives. we all face a fundamental choice: cynicism or faith, each will profoundly impact our future, or even the future of our country. i believe in all my fellow classmates. though we are still inexperienced and even a little bit childish. i believe that we have the courage and faith to meet any challenge and take on our responsibilities. we are preparing to assume new responsibilities and tasks, and to use the education we have received to make our world a better place. i believe in our future.
he responsibilities of the current college students
As the 90’s generation kids became older and started to step into the college , we became to know the world better . we still remember the time in high school ,our high school teacher told us that we just need to insist on study for less than 1 year then we could have a life like heaven in the college ! thus ,all of us just studied day and night .in spite of all the problems ,just looking forward the happy time of college .
And now ,I am in college ,I am already in the place that I dreamt of over one thousand times in the past . I just found all the beautiful stories created by our high school teacher was not real .but I have to admit we did have quite a lot of spare time now , however what comes along it was the responsibilities which coming from the study ,the family ,the future ,even the society .everyday I live with these things ,I do these things daily, though there is nobody forcing me to study or to stop playing computer games anymore like my mom ,because I know it is my heart that encourage me to insist on doing these .
What is friendship? It is to relate with somebody without need for money or objective. It is to need emotion and over wealth is friendship , no matter what their background , age , sex or personality.
Friendship can be pure. We hear , nowdays, however, how one can be cheated by friends. Many people get along with someone because they have a lot of money. It is doultful that is real friendship.
Having friends, one can be find happiness. If you are in trouble your friends will help you through or at least comfort you. When you are happy , they share it with you. They are also there for you to chat with at any time.
It is a wonderful feeling, as the proverb says" to love each other is easy but to make friends is hard", So, it is crutial that we should get along with our friends. In my opinon ,it is a shame to deceive your friends . The world would be more beautiful if it was full of filled with friendship.
——3分钟大学英语演讲稿通用5篇
change the world? change ourselves.
good evening, honorable judges, ladies and gentlemen.
it’s my great pleasure to stand here to present my speech—change the world, change ourselves.
it’s noticable that western holidays are becoming increasingly popular day by day, while chinese traditional festivals are being somewhat neglected. not long before about 10 doctors in beijing university and qinghua unversity announced that we should reject the invasion of western holidays ,because they regard western holidays as an challenge against our traditional festivals and culture.
frankly speaking, i don’t quite agree with them.indeed, we should never neglect or even discard our traditonal festivals as china boasts a brilliant history and splendid traditions. (examples).but why can’t we absorb the meaningful western holidays and culture.
there are obvious reasons why some western holidays are so popular in china. on the one hand, some of the western holidays which we chinese don’t have are reasonable and meaningful, such as father’s day and april fool’s day etc. on the other hand,the prevalence of globalization enables western culture to prevail in china. overwhelmed by such a trend,chinese unconsiciously get involved in western holidays and culture.
with the further development of the whole world, the cultural communication between different countries and nations becomes faster and more and more important. we are indeed from different nations, but we are the citizens of the same world, so the outstanding culture of different nations is the commom wealth of everyone on the earth.the only way for us to protect our traditional culture is to reject the foreign culture? the answer is definitely no. what we ought to do is to spare no effort to educate chinese to get to know and treasure our splendid traditions instead of rejecting foreign culture. only by educating can we set our confidence and belief towards our culture. only by educating can we preserve and promote the wealth that our ancesters left for us.
at last i’d like to share a famouse saying of gandhi with all of you ,that is:if you want to change the world, then you must change yourself first.”
As you slowly open your eyes, look around , notice where the light comes into your room; listen carefully, see if there are new sounds you can recognize; feel with your body and spirit, and see if you can sense the freshness in the air. Yes, yes, yes, it’s a new day, it’s a different day, and it’s a bright day! And most importantly, it is a new beginning for your life, a beginning where you are going to make new desicisions, take new actions, make new friends, and take your life to a totally unprecedented level! You know all this is real as long as you are confident,passionate and committed! And you are confident, you are passionate, you are committed! You will no longer fear making new sounds, showing new facial expressions, using your body in new ways,approaching new people, and asking new questions. You will live every single day of your life with absolute passion, and you will show your passion through the words you speak and the actions you take. You will focus all your time and effort on the most important goals of your life. You will never succumb to challenges of hardships. You will never waver in your pursuit of excellence. After all,you are the best, and you deserve the best! As your coach and friend, I can assure you the door to all the best things in the world will open to you, but the key to that door is in your hand. You must do your part, you must faithfully follow the plans you make and take the actions you plan, you must never quit, you must never fear. I know you must do it, you can do it, you will do it, and you will succeed! Now stand firm and tall, make a fist, get excited, and yell it out: I must do it! I can do it! I will do it! I will succeed! I must do it! I can do it! I will do it! I will succeed! I must do it! I can do it! I will do it! I will succeed!
Opportunities and Challenges
Good afternoon ，ladies and gentlemen!
I’m very honored to stand here and give you a short speech! my topic is Opportunities and Challenges.
First, I would like to know, what does your destiny offer you? Happiness, wisdom, a strong body or something else. If I had asked this question to president Nixon, he would probably had said,”Our destiny offers not the cup of despair, but the chalice of opportunity.”
Needless to say, one of the biggest opportunities given to China is the 20xx Olympic Games. Till now, we have used two sevenths of the preparation time. How much changes have you seen? New roads, new subway lines, public-exercising equipments with beautiful colors, large blocks of grass fields, and also lots of modern gyms which are under construction.
Other than those, there are even more good effects brought to us by the Olympic Games that cannot be seen directly. For example, more and more people will get to know China. I’m sure the mysterious Chinese culture will attract them strongly. And the games will also do good to the economy and environment, for it is gaining the attention of foreign investors and the awareness of environmental protection is being strengthened. What is more, Olympic Games give a unique opportunity to inspire and educate a new generation of Chinese youth with the Olympic values and the Olympic spirit. Now that we have seen so many advances, could you even imagine us losing the holding rights?
I’ve already said a lot about the Olympics and China. But I think everyone should use some time to think of this question, ”Does the Olympic Games have any special meaning to you?”
For us, I mean the Chinese youth, 20xx Olympic Games is a tremendous gift. Because what we are waiting for is to do something significant as repaying the love given to us .The society is just like a ship, and in our dreams the captain is waving his hand and saying ”Hey! Come here and take the helm! ”How charming his voice is, but we have never heard of it in our true life. This morning, however, when we wake up, we will see the Olympic Games waving its hand. After chewing, most of us will have at least one plan about what to do for the Olympic Games. And mine is to be a “comforter” ----that is someone who will give comfort to others.
At the end of my speech, I hope all the preparation will go well, and everyone will show their ability to the world. Let us seize opportunities and give a big smile to challenges.
We should learn to stick to our life no matter how difficult the life is and we should learn to love others .It is the flim tellsx me .
It is a story talks about a black girl named Precious .Precious isx fat and not beautiful. Her bad temped mother never workx, always cheated others to relieve her ,and atex while watching TV all day.What is worse ,Precious was only 16,but she had pregnant for twice .Out of assumption ,her child is her farther ''s child .Living in this life ,she alawys imagine to avoid facing her life .Fortunately,with the help and careneof the teacher and doctor ,her life became not so bad .
Precious has a tough life ,and if she gives up her life and does not join the adult education ,she will not meet the teacher and her life may not be changed .When we xfaced with the difficulty x,avoidingx is not a good way for us. It can not solve the problems.What we need to do is that ***ying the cause and trying to changed our place .So we should be brave and face the trap directly.
The film also teachs us to love others.Precious is someone who may exit near us .If precious own a good family and some friends,she may not fell so despaired. In spite of the development of our world ,there still many people suject misfortune.love and help can make them fell better ,so we should not scant our love .
Good afternoon ，ladies and gentlemen!
I’m very honored to stand here and give you a short speech! To begin with ,I want to ask a question .Does everybody dream a good dream last night? Actually ,today I want to talk about dream with you. Of course, What I want to talk is not a dream you have last night,but a dream—— about life. Everyone has dreams about life, different dreams at different life stage,and we need dreams to support us. Dreams are like the stars we never reach in the sky,but like most mariners(水手),we can chart our course by them. With the dream,we have a direction,with a direction, we were no longer confused.With the dream, there is hope,With hope, we have the strength to fight. But I know，life is tough,and there are always ups and downs, maybe we fail in the way to our aims,and we may feel depressed ,whenever at this time, the dream in our heart can always comfort us, encourage us ,and support us to move ahead . Young!Fortunately, I am young now. Just due to it, I know that nothing is impossible.I firmly believe that nothing can stand in my way. If I can't realize my dream,it result from that I haven't work harder enough and I won't find other excuses. If no people believe you, you can make it to prove that you are right. If you think the god haven't blessed you and there is no truth here, you can become the god and create the truth. 'My breath swallows the sky and make the yellow river overflow, my sword is famous in Kyushu and it can collapse the five sacred mountains.' At some time in the past I also had am bitious words and I had some achievements. Each achievement results from my hard work. I always believe that 'If you want to have more achievements than others, you must work harder.' In some extent, the dream is the hope. If you can insist on doing something, the victory will come. Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a brokenwinged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow. So my dear friends, think of your old and maybe dead dreams. Whatever it is, pick it up and make it alive from today. Let's move out! Thank you for your listening!
