Anna Chen （陳芝穎）
In the first semester of my university life, there were good times and bad times. Among them, the happiest and most unforgettable experience was when I won the Freshman Cup of tennis. Being a “professional tennis fan” who always wanted to feel the sweetness of winning, I realized my dream in this semester and also experienced the true spirit of tennis.
In that evening, an unusual wind was blowing. Accompanied by my friend Kim, I walked toward the tennis court with a feeling of excitement. Waiting for the other players to sign in, I wondered how many girls were attending the competition and how good they were. Luckily, there were only three girls attending the game; therefore, each of us had to play two matches to decide the winner. Before the matches, we drew lots to decide the order, and then we waited for the roll which would be called successively.
Among all sports, tennis might be the most individual one because on the court, you have to challenge not only the opponent but yourself. You have to believe and keep the faith in yourself to win the matches. Both physical strength and mental strategy are equally important in this sport.
However, due to the lack of practicing, my legs seemed not belonging to me after twenty minutes. The opponent’s rally was too unpredictable and many times I just watched balls passing by. I gave up in the last few points and lost the opportunity to win the first match. I walked down the tennis court and kept saying to myself, “I can’t keep on playing anymore. How can she play like that? I’m so exhausted.” I used all my strength in the beginning, so the power of my rallies soon burned out in the middle of the match. Forgetting the hundreds of matches and stories I had watched and read, I had only negative thoughts in my mind just because I lost a match. During the break, I asked myself why I joined the competition and why I loved tennis. “Because of the spirit of tennis! Don’t you remember what you always tell me?” asked my friend Kim.
Exactly! How could I forget the spirit of tennis? In tennis, you may lose one match, but you may win the next one, and this is true not only for sports but also for life. No one can always win, and nobody will always lose. Chances keep coming, so all you need is to seize them. It’s all determined by your faith. After a short break, the batteries of my confidence were all recharged. Even though my energy had burned out, my negative thinking was gone, too. I stepped onto the tennis court and fought only against myself. That was the way I became the champion of the Freshman Cup.
I am thankful and grateful for this experience which gave me the opportunity to realize my dream. The process from self-doubt to self-belief proves how confidence can influence a person. After this educational experience, I believe that I can face more difficulties in life.
My Part-time Jobs
Debby Chang（張文蒨）
According to the statistics, about 40% of Taiwanese university students have part-time jobs after school, and their average income per month is more than 10,000 dollars. Most parents are worried that their children will neglect their studies because of work, but 75% of students believe that a part-time job has no harmful effect on their schoolwork. Take me for example, I did at least 5 part-time jobs in past few years, and I still have one at present. I would like to introduce some special part-time jobs here and share with you some of my experiences such as being a booking clerk, a tutor, and a whiskey promoter. In addition, I want to talk about the toil behind those jobs since all jobs require toil.
The first job I had was being a sales clerk for one and half year in a multiple cinema located in Kaohsiung when I was a student in a junior college. The payment was low, 80 dollars per hour, but I had to do a lot of work. I sold not only movie tickets, but also coke and popcorn. In fact, the main income of the cinema came from the food we sold. That was why my colleagues and I always tried to persuade our customers to spend extra money on our coke, popcorn, or hot dog. The more they spent, the more my boss gained. If we did not reach the target, the managers would blame us. Besides, as a staff member in a cinema, I had to fry popcorn, boil hot dog, and replenish stocks. However, the benefit satisfied me after the toilsome work. The staff could enjoy any movies on weekdays as they wished. We would get together to see movies when we were free. I even saw “The Lord of The Ring” for 5 times. Those free movies saved me a lot of money, and I also developed my interest in films. I really made many friends when I worked at the cinema.
Then, I worked as a phone tutor for a company selling English learning materials for more than 3 years. My responsibility was to call the kids and check if they could read aloud every word in the book. The payment was acceptable, 130 dollars per hour, and it was a nice job to me. My working time was from 6:00 to 9:00 pm, Monday thru Friday. It is a relaxing and delightful job. After I graduated from the junior college, I moved to Taichung and studied at Feng Chia University. I quitted that tutoring job, and I started my new job as an English teacher at a language school for children. There were only 4 children in my class, but one of them was a disaster. The boy named Jeff never sat on his seat silently for more than 5 minutes. Actually, he did not like English at all, but his parents forced him to learn English. For this reason, he never listened to me, never did his homework, and even never let other students learn. Although I got 350 dollars per hour, I only taught one semester and quitted. I have been teaching junior high school students English since I ran away from those noisy little devils. I think I feel more comfortable with teenagers although I am quite good at handling some naughty kids.
Finally, I want to introduce a special part-time job for young, pretty girls—beer or whiskey promoter. The payment is usually higher than that of normal part-time jobs, about 250 to 500 dollars per hour. However, in order to be a qualified promoter, one needs to meet some criteria. For example, one should be between 18 and 25 years old, at least 160 centimeters tall, and weigh no more than 55 kilograms. The flexible working hours schedule is suitable for students. Students can work on the day they are free. Without spending too much time on this kind of jobs, they still can make some money. I have promoted beer, cigarette, and now I am promoting whiskey. I meet different kinds of people everyday. I learn how to sell my products and how to solve the problems. The only thing I am concerned about is my safety. For all its high payment, the job is still full of danger. I have to go home late because my work ends at midnight. Once in a while, I may be confronted by some drunken people. Consequently, I have to stay away from those drunkards and go home as soon as possible. Briefly, it is a unique part-time job for university girls.
Many adults may worry if their children spend too much time on part-time jobs, but all in all, students can make their petty cash, and learn some social experience as well. However, if they spend too much time on their part-time jobs, they may not have enough time to handle their school work. For this reason, students have to manage their time appropriately and keep the balance between their study and part-time jobs.
If I Were aMillionaire
Liya Tseng（曾孟誼）
In the high-tech society, having a great fortune has remained a dream to most people for years. That is, if one has more money, he or she may have a more enjoyable life. That’s why I sometimes dream about winning the lottery and plan how to make a great use of the money. I think if I were well off and became a millionaire, I would spend the money fulfilling my dreams: to study abroad, to invest in real estate, and to donate money to charities.
If I were a millionaire, the first dream I would fulfill would be to study in a graduate program in a Western country. Since I am an English major, I need to learn the language, and its culture. Once having finished the program, I would travel around the world to broaden my mind and enrich my life experiences.
The second thing I would do would be to invest in real estate. Because spending money without any earnings will eventually lead to bankruptcy, investing might be the best way to work it out. Since houses in big cities usually go up in price after years, I would buy at least one villa and two big houses and keep them.
Last of all, if I were a millionaire, I would donate money to charities. Nowadays, while a lot of people are so rich that they spend much money mainly on luxurious things, others are so poor that they even starve to death. To help solve part of the problems, I consider that donating food or money to aid the homeless and the disabled would be worth the value of life.
To sum up, if I were rich, I would first fulfill my two dreams including studying abroad and investing, and later I would donate some food or money to charities. Being rich can make not only the material life more enjoyable, but also the spiritual life more meaningful through lighting up the lives of the poor.
The Differencesbetween Speaking and Writing
Belle Huang（黃月香）
Speaking and writing are both the tools of communication among people, and they are closely related to each other because if a person has a good speaking ability, he or she may also have a good writing ability. However, there are still many differences between speaking and writing, for example, in the ways of their acquisition process, their complexity, and their organization.
Learning to speak is easier than learning to write. People are born to have the ability of speaking, and with the environment of a certain language that people are exposed to, they are able to speak the language. On the contrary, people could only be trained to write, and people are usually taught many writing rules. For example, if a person wants to make his/her writing good, he/she should follow the following four steps: discovering points, developing strong supports for the points, organizing these supports, and revising the written passages to ensure it is a good one. In short, people can write well only by being taught the skill of writing while they can speak well just because they are exposed to the language for a long time.
When two people are talking to each other, they don't need to say a complete sentence because speaking is casual. However, writing needs complete sentences because if a person writes many fragmented sentences in one essay, the whole passage will be in disorder, and it will be hard for readers to follow. Moreover, people are allowed to say many simple sentences to describe a thing or a person in speaking, but they are usually asked to use conjunctions to link simple sentences into complex ones when they are writing. Complex sentences can make the writing briefer, clearer and more formal than speaking. For example, people can say that Mary is a girl, and she is very beautiful, and she is a good student, and she studies very hard, and so on; in contrast, people had better use different sentence patterns in their written passages. They should use complex or compound sentences to make these sentences briefer.
In addition, writing differs greatly from speaking in regard to their organization and grammatical rules. When people speak, they did not pay too much attention to their grammar because they just say simple sentences. The organization of spoken language is also simple, so it is easy for people to speak. On the other hand, written language has a complicated organization. If people write an article, there should be at least three paragraphs, and they should pay more attention to the grammatical structures. For example, the verb tense should be consistent from sentence to sentence, and so are the pronouns.
To sum up, speaking and writing are different in many ways. Speaking is easier to acquire, is less complex, and has less grammatical problems in organization than writing. Therefore, if people want to learn a language, they should learn step by step. After they can speak a language quite well, then, they may learn to write a longer essay, otherwise, they would feel much frustrated in learning writing.
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