Hundreds of people have formed impressions of you through that little device (装置) on your desk. And they’ve never actually ____ you. Everything they know about you ____ through this device, sometimes from hundreds of miles away. ____ they feel they can know you ____ from the sound of your voice. That’s how powerful the ____ is.

Powerful, yes, but not always ____. For years I dealt with my travel agent only by phone. Rani, my faceless agent whom I’d never met ____, got me rock-bottom prices on airfares, cars, and hotels. But her cold voice really ____ me. I sometimes wished to ____ another agent.

Rushing out ____ I called out over my shoulder, ＂By the way, what’s your name?＂ ＂I’m Rani,＂ she said.  I turned around and saw a ____ woman with a big smile on her face waving to wish me a safe trip. I was ____! Why had I thought she was cold? Rani was, well, so ____.

Sitting back in the car on the way to the airport, I figured it all out. Rani’s ____ — her warm smile, her nods, her ‘I’m here for you’ ____ — were all silent signals that didn’t travel through wires.

   Of course, she wasn’t really my aunt and, out of fear, I never called her that to her face. I only referred to her as “My Aunt Fannie” because the name always made my father laugh quietly and gave my mother cause to look strictly at both of us — at me for being disrespectful to my elder and at my father for encouraging my bad behavior. I enjoyed both reactions so I looked for every opportunity to work the name into as many conversations as possible.

As a young woman, my mother had worked in the kitchen of a large Victorian farmhouse. During those years my mother helped Aunt Fannie make the best blueberry jam ever tasted by anyone in Glenfield. She was well-known for her jam and for never sharing the recipe (食谱) with others. Even though my mother knew the recipe by heart, as long as Aunt Fannie was alive, she never made the jam without Aunt Fannie in our kitchen to direct the process and kept the secret.

Each August, my mother would prepare me for Aunt Fannie’s visit. One year, after I had helped with the jam process Aunt Fannie gave me a coin and then made me promise that I would never spend it. “Hold onto this coin,” she said, “and someday you will be rich. I still have my very first coin, given to me by my grandmother.” So I kept the coin in a small box and waited to become rich.

I now have the blueberry jam recipe and the coin from Aunt Fannie. In people’s eyes Aunt Fannie’s success resulted from that secret recipe. But to me, it was just a common recipe. Neither has made me become a rich person, but 1 keep them as reminders (提醒人的事物) to hold onto the valuable things in life. Money can make you feel rich for a while, but it is the relationships and the memories of time spent with friends and family that truly leave you wealthy. And that is a fortune that anyone can build.

   Just like everyone，I have experienced ups and downs in my life. I am an aerospace engineer（航空工程师）from India. I was told by my relatives，close friends and others that it was _________ for a non-IT student to pursue（继续进行）a master's degree in IT and graduate from a US university.

I had never taken courses _________ to computers or programming. I was never interested in being a _________，but things changed. Computers became my companion and I _________ how dependent on them I was. I _________ imagining the backend processes happening inside the CPU and they amazed me. That's why I _________ to pursue a master's degree in IT.

At first，it was too _________. Coming from a middle-class family，the huge cost was a big _________. My English accent was terrible. Most _________，the course seemed impossible at first. But I never __________.

I got a few offers，but I decided to choose my university __________ it promises students to help them learn practically. During my first month，it was difficult to understand the American's __________ and finish my assignments. But I never gave up. I walked two miles to the __________ every day so that I could use my travel money to buy a meal. I started looking for __________ and I got an offer to work as a student assistant.

I took it as a __________, and I believed that hard work was my strength. Right now I am graduating with good grades and a job offer from a company that has asked me to start right after ________.

If you want to achieve something, you need to __________ yourself and start working on your __________.

Hard work always pays off. To be __________, you need to start from somewhere and always question yourself about the limits of how far you would go to __________ your goals.

   Today, I was phoning at an ATM that was situated inside a gas station. The security guard who was an old man _______ reminded me that I could not use my cell phone there and that it was _______. When I came outside, he smiled at me and I had a strong wish to _______ him.

At first, I felt a little sympathetic (同情的). In my _______, he seemed like a poor, elderly man who was still working. He was _______ at first and just talked about his family in a small voice. When he talked about his _______, he was happy. He told me that she always _______ him, even though she was married herself. Then he _______ his son, who “has a heart of gold”. He also told me I had better _______ some money for my old age, and I thanked him for his ________.

________ we spoke, he opened up quite a bit. He told me about his limited income and how the family were still ________ in spite of all the difficulties. I had nothing to give except ________. I thought about ________ him money, but it didn’t feel quite right. In our conversation , it was ________ that he wanted my time, not my money. I did not want to take away his ________ by giving him money.

By the time the conversation ________, I was close to tears. Ordinary people — when given the opportunity to ________ their story — are real gems (难能可贵的人). Sometimes, time and ________ are the best gifts you can give. That thought made me ________ listening to this old man.

   I was one of the young US soldiers in Saudi Arabia. At one time before the Internet，our only lifeline to friends and family was the mail we sent and received.

One evening the mail soldier called my name and，instead of a letter，handed me a large box from my grandmother in Oklahoma. One of the great hardships of the war for me was the absence of my grandmother's cooking—her fried chicken and onion，corn bread，and，most of all，her desserts. But on that evening I was about to take a gastronomic（美食的） journey home: I opened the box and found two dozen pies made by my grandmother.

A man from New York approached and asked me what I had received. I couldn't answer；my mouth was full of pie. So I just offered him one. “So nice！”he said. “What are they？”He had to wait a few moments for an answer，but eventually I explained. As insurance，I offered him another pie to keep him quiet.

Once a day for the next three weeks，I imagined returning home to my grandmother's kitchen，if only I had had a few sweet bites at a time.

Some of my earliest memories are associated with my grandmother's pies. She had been baking pies since before the Great Depression. She would have astonished the judges on today's TV cooking challenges. I remember coming across a persimmon（柿子）tree once while out hiking. It was autumn，and the fruit was soft and sweet. I picked a few dozen and brought them to Grandma. Guess what！The next day I walked into her kitchen to find a persimmon pie waiting for me.