All of my friends had jobs but I didn’t. That’s because they had a “hook up”. At times, I wished I had a hook up! If I did, I wouldn’t have to go through all those nervous interviews, or waste my ink on those applications that probably got thrown.

One day I asked my grandmother, “Why does no one want to hire me?” She said it was because I didn’t have any experience. How was I supposed to have experience when I’d never had a job before? Even McDonald’s wouldn’t hire me. I applied there so many times. It was a shame.

The Gap was one of the hardest places to apply. Once you filled out an application, the managers would interview you right on the spot. It made me so nervous that I couldn’t talk right. The first question they asked was, “Why do you want to work for the Gap?” Your mind was telling you to say, “For the money.” But you didn’t want to say that because you didn’t want to make yourself sound greedy, even if it’s the truth. So I said, “Because I’m familiar with what the company does, which is selling clothes.”

However, not for long there was another question that always seemed to get me every time, “What can you bring to this company?” I didn’t know, maybe more customers? By the time I got ready to pick it up, I heard them say, “If we don’t contact you in 24 hours, you don’t get the job.”

But if I was asked that question now, I would say, “I’m a hard worker and a very reliable person, and with these kinds of abilities I cannot only do a good job, but I can influence other employees to do so too.”

Despite all the bad luck I seemed to have, I didn’t give up. Eventually, I finally found a summer job.

   When she was just 17 years old，Liz crashed into the back of a truck that was waiting to turn in a left-turn lane（车道）. The crash is a life-changing one for her. Because of the crash，she's blind in one eye，loses her sense of smell，loses some of her hearing，loses the ability to create tears，and she cannot fall asleep naturally.

“Initially，I thought I would not be defeated but clearly I was completely wrong. Apart from the medical problems，the hardest part about my life after the car accident was the fact that I was alone，”Liz said.“Everyone was away at college，but I wasn't. I couldn't drive or go to college. My friends who used to hang around with me were there for me at first，but after a while they stopped coming by.”

“I viewed her Facebook page，and she said on there: Can anybody please hang out with me today？I don't have any friends，”recalled Liz's mother，Betty.

In time, Liz and her mother teamed up with the US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to make a video. They wanted to get the point across that texting and driving can have life-transforming consequences.

In the video Liz appealed to drivers not to text when driving. She admitted she was checking and sending messages via her phone when she crashed her car into the back of the truck.

“Don't text your loved ones when you know they' re driving,”said Liz's mother.“It can change their lives forever.”

“If you get a text, don't look at it,”Liz said.“It's not worth it.”

   It was Christmas evening. I just _______ home from the nearby grocery store with all kinds of things. The kitchen was _______ with brown bags and boxes. On seeing me coming back, my youngest son, Isaiah, reached me and _______ if I would play a game with him.

I took Isaiah's _______ . He stood there and his green eyes were _______ . “Here is a Christmas _______   for you. Please find it. You can look for something silver. ” he said. I began to do it. I _______ the table in the corner and some other places.

After a few seconds, I saw there was a _______ snow globe on the top of the piano. It was silvery and beautiful. I held the cool _______ in my hands. Isaiah said to me that it was to ________ the one that he had broken the year before. I was puzzled completely. So I bent(弯曲) my ________ beside him. He added how he ________ enough money and asked his elder brother,Logan, to help him buy this one to ________ the broken one. They just wanted to give me a (n) ________ .

Logan nodded and smiled. When I ________ the key on the bottom of the globe, the quiet room was full of music. Isaiah said,“Mum, do you remember how I by accident ________ your snow globe? It broke on the ground ________ the music was still going on. I was so,so sad. ”His face turned a little ________ . But the truth was that I did not quite ________ the broken snow globe after a long time. But Isaiah had been sorry for his ________ all the time. I was sure I would keep this snow globe in my mind forever.

   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.

   A little girl studied at her desk in the purple bedroom of her childhood home. The girl’s homework was to _______ a true story. Simple. Yet there she was, _______ it for a long time for better past her bedtime.

So attentive was the girl — changing words to _______ the mood (语气), erasing passages to move the story along, reading out loud to _______ the rhyme — that she jumped when she _______ her father’s hand on her shoulder. Dad was a business manager. He liked to _______ and watch TV at night. It was not his _______ to check up on her.

“Daddy?” she said, looking up at him. “I think I just decided what kind of job I want when I grow up. I like to write about things that really _______. I like to move the words around.” “I’m glad to see you take your schoolwork so _______,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”________ he kissed the top of her head.

Decades later, the girl made great efforts in writing, which ________ her a top job at Reader’s Digest, a ________ that has for nearly a century told true stories of ________ interest. As she walked out of the office that afternoon, she ________ the night in her purple bedroom and decided that for every issue (期刊), she would write her editor’s note as a story. That way, she would honor the ________ of the magazine. She ________ her mom with the news of her job. “Oh, honey, I wish your father were ________,” her mom wrote. “He would be so proud.”

“As an ________, I am doing the work I love, writing about people of interest doing things that matter. It’s been a (n)________ to connect with the thousands of you who have ________ to me. Let’s continue to do so,” the girl said.