In 1974, after filling out fifty applications, going through four interviews, and winning one offer, I took what I could get — a teaching job at what I considered a distant wild area: western New Jersey. My characteristic optimism was alive only when I reminded myself that I would be doing what I had wanted to do since I was fourteen — teaching English.

School started, but I felt more and more as if I were in a foreign country. Was this rural area really New Jersey? My students took a week off when hunting season began. I was told they were also frequently absent in late October to help their fathers make hay on the farms. I was a young woman from New York City, who thought that “Make hay while the sun shines” just meant to have a good time.

But, still, I was teaching English. I worked hard, taking time off only to eat and sleep. And then there was my sixth-grade class — seventeen boys and five girls who were only six years younger than me. I had a problem long before I knew it. I was struggling in my work as a young idealistic teacher. I wanted to make literature come alive and to promote a love of the written word. The students wanted to throw spitballs and whisper dirty words in the back of the room.

In college I had been taught that a successful educator should ignore bad behavior. So I did, confident that, as the textbook had said, the bad behavior would disappear as I gave my students positive attention. It sounds reasonable, but the text evidently ignored the fact that humans, particularly teenagers, rarely seems reasonable. By the time my boss, who was also my taskmaster, known to be the strictest, most demanding, most quick to fire inexperienced teachers, came into the classroom to observe me, the students exhibited very little good behavior to praise.

My boss sat in the back of the room. The boys in the class were making animal noises, hitting each other while the girls filed their nails or read magazines. I just pretended it all wasn’t happening, and went on lecturing and tried to ask some inspiring questions. My boss, sitting in the back of the classroom, seemed to be growing bigger and bigger. After twenty minutes he left, silently. Visions of unemployment marched before my eyes.

I felt mildly victorious that I got through the rest of class without crying, but at my next free period I had to face him. I wondered if he would let me finish out the day. I walked to his office, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

He was sitting in his chair, and he looked at me long and hard. I said nothing. All I could think of was that I was not an English teacher; I had been lying to myself, pretending that everything was fine.

When he spoke, he said simply, without accusation, “You had nothing to say to them.”

“You had nothing to say to them”. he repeated. “No wonder they are bored. Why not get to the meat of literature and stop talking about symbolism. Talk with them, not at them. And more important, why do you ignore their bad behavior?” We talked. He named my problems and offered solutions. We role-played. He was the bad student, and I was the forceful, yet, warm, teacher.

As the year progressed, we spent many hours discussing literature and ideas about human beings and their motivations. He helped me identify my weaknesses and strengths. In short, he made a teacher of me by teaching me the reality of Emerson’s words: “The secret to education lies in respecting the pupil.”

Fifteen years later I still drive that same winding road to the same school. Thanks to the help I received that difficult first year, the school is my home now.

It is a familiar scene these days: employees taking newly laid­off (下岗) co­workers out for a drink for comfort. But which side deserves sympathy more，the jobless or the still employed? On March 6，researchers at a conference at the University of Cambridge heard data suggesting it's the latter.

Brendan Burchell，a Cambridge sociologist，presented his analysis based on various surveys conducted across Europe. The data suggest that employed people who feel insecure in their jobs show similar levels of anxiety and depression as those who are unemployed. Although a newly jobless person's mental health may “bottom out” after about six months，and then even begin to improve，the mental state of people who are continuously worried about losing their jobs “just continues to get worse and worse，” Burchell says.

Evolutionary psychologists support this theory by arguing that human beings feel more stressed during times of insecurity because they sense an immediate but invisible threat. Patients have been known to experience higher levels of anxiety，for example，while waiting for examination results than knowing what they are suffering from — even if the result is cancer. It's better to get the bad news and start doing something about it rather than wait with anxiety. When the uncertainty continues，people stay in a nonstop “fight or flight” response，which leads to damaging stress.

But not every employee in insecure industries has such a discouraging view，Burchell says.In general，women get on better. While reporting higher levels of anxiety than men when directly questioned，women scored lower in stress on the GHQ 12，even when they had a job they felt insecure about losing. As Burchell explains，“For women，most studies show that any job — it doesn't matter whether it is secure or insecure — gives psychological improvement over unemployment.” Burchell supposes that the difference in men is that they tend to feel pressure not only to be employed，but also to be the primary breadwinner，and that more of a man's self­worth depends on his job.

The new two-child policy is making job hunting more difficult for women when about 40 percent of them said they were asked whether they planned to have a second child during job interviews, according to a report in Chongqing.

China dropped its decades-long one-child policy in October and allowed each family to have two children. The country now has about 270 million married women of childbearing age.

This change has put millions of career women in a dilemma between family and career. Employers also face big challenges as more female workers will have two childbearing leaves, seven to eight months altogether. A human resources website www.job.cq.qq.com conducted a survey among 500 employers and 5,000 job seekers about how the two-child policy affects the job market.

Though two thirds of employers said the policy would make no difference to their recruitment(招聘), the survey showed that more than 70 percent of job seekers believe that bearing a second child will make women less popular in the job market. Forty percent of employers said they will give priority to married women with two children, according to the survey.

Lin Xia, 29, quit her job after giving birth to her first child. She is now preparing to return to work. After several inquiries at a job fair, she found that the employers are concerned about future birth plans. "I thought it would be easier to find a job after giving birth," she was quoted as saying by the website. "I had to answer whether I will have a second child before I could get a chance for a job interview."

Liang Siqi, 23, a college graduate, said although employers did not ask her the child question yet, she will not plan to have two children. "It (having two children) will definitely affect my career and personal life, so I will have only one," she said.

Zhou Jiansong, who is in charge of human resources at a large private high-tech group in Chongqing, said the company will discuss birth issues with interviewees in order to make a better work plans. "We fully respect a women's right to bear a child or two," he said. "But you don't want them to go on a childbearing leave soon after they join your company." The experts expect more labor dispute cases concerning childbearing leave rights when bearing a second child in future.