My mother was never truly happy in Connecticut finding the winter bitter cold and the culture provincial (偏狭的). Though she grew up in New Jersey, she moved to San Francisco in her early twenties, met and married my dad out there. After I was born, they decided to return east, closer to their own parents. But she never let go of her love for the Bay Area.
California was always part of the conversation when I was a kid. I ate meals off a map-of-the-world placemat (餐垫), and Mom taught me to identify San Francisco before I learned where Hartford was. She told us stories of perfection on a single city, fantasizing about retiring out west. My dad would play along, but his heart wasn’t in the same place.
While my mother’s status in the nonprofit world advanced, her desire to move back to her favorite place grew strong. She applied for jobs in the Bay, underwent bicoastal Skype screenings, even traveled out for a couple of interviews on a whim (心血来潮). Sometimes her cover letters disappeared, other times she made it down to the final two candidates. With each rejection, she promised to make her next job application even stronger.
This past May, I relocated from San Francisco to New York for a job. A few weeks later, Mom called me. Her pursuit had finally paid off. She’s been offered a vice president position at a public health nonprofit in Oakland. A few weeks later, she packed up her baggage and left Connecticut for good.
Our lives are more semblable than ever these days. We’re both discovering our new homes, making friends. We’re looking for a good yoga studio to join, reading the same books and chatting about the plots by text message. I emailed her photos from my trip to Burning Man and she replied with stories about her new coworkers who go every year.
There’s even time for the occasional dating disaster.
Perhaps that’s the paradox (悖论) of growing older. Things will always change, and they can change immediately—my mother is proof. But an individual’s own power to create change always stays the same. Everything can change, and therefore nothing ever really changes.
Now when I’m out west for a visit, Mom meets me at a station with her big bag. We stop by the Grand Lake farmers market, picking out the freshest seasonal ingredients, before hiking up the hill to her new apartment. One of these days, I’ll actually cook her dinner.
【小题1】What can we learn from Paragraph 2?| A．The author spent her childhood in California. |
| B．The author’s father didn’t want to live in California. |
| C．The author’s mother liked to use plates with map designs. |
| D．The author’s family preferred listening to stories of the west. |
| A．She always likes to struggle on her own. |
| B．She owns a public health nonprofit company. |
| C．Nothing can stop her from reaching her goal. |
| D．She takes everything of her daughter on herself. |
| A．Changeable. | B．Comfortable. | C．Similar. | D．Creative. |
| A．The relationship between the author and her mother is good. |
| B．Everyone has the power to make a difference to his family. |
| C．Culture and living conditions have influence on one’s life style. |
| D．The author’s mother had a hard time before she looked for a job. |
| A．her family’s life changes all the time because of her mother |
| B．the mother-daughter feelings will stay the same forever |
| C．she has grown up during her family’s constant moves |
| D．her mother always wants to change her current situations |
It seemed ridiculous. On a practical level, there’s no way I could afford to buy a house anytime soon. More importantly, I wouldn’t want to. I’m not sure where I’ll be living in two years, or what kind of job I’ll have. And I don’t think I’ll be ready to settle down and stay in one place.
So this is probably the generation gap that divides my friends and me from our parents. When our parents were our age, they’d gotten their education, chosen a career, and were starting to settle into responsible adult lives.
My friends and I – “Generation Y” – still aren’t sure what we want to do with our lives. Whatever we end up doing, we want to make sure we’re happy doing it. We’d rather take risks first, try out different jobs, and move from one city to another until we find our favorite place. We’d rather spend our money on travel than put it in a savings account.
This casual attitude towards responsibility has caused some critics to call my generation “arrogant”, “impatient”, and “overprotected”. Some of these complaints have a point. As children we were encouraged to succeed in school, but also to have fun. We grew up in a world full of technological innovation: cellphones, the Internet, instant messaging, and video games.
Our parents looked to rise vertically（垂直的）– starting at the bottom of the ladder and slowly making their way to the top, on the same track, often for the same company. That doesn’t apply to my generation.
Because of that, it may take us longer than our parents to arrive at responsible, stable adulthood. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In our desire to find satisfaction, we will work harder, struggle for ways to keep life interesting, and gain a broader set of experiences and knowledge than our parents’ generation did.
【小题1】What is the main “generation gap” between the author and her friends and their parents according to the article?
| A．Their ways of gaining experience. |
| B．Their attitude towards responsibility. |
| C．Their attitude toward high technology. |
| D．Their ways of making their way to the top. |
| A．It involves too much effort to rise vertically. |
| B．It’s better to take adult responsibility earlier. |
| C．It’s all right to try more before settling down. |
| D．It’s ridiculous to call her generation “arrogant”. |
| A．The author is envious of her parents enjoying a big house at her age. |
| B．“Generation Y” people don’t want to grow up and rush into adulthood. |
| C．Growing up in a hi-tech world makes “Generation Y” feel insecure about relationships. |
| D．The author wrote this article so that others would be able to understand her generation better. |
| A．Criticisms of the young generation. |
| B．The sudden realization of growing up. |
| C．A comparison between lifestyles of generations. |
| D．The factors that have changed the young generation. |
Rob Kenney’s dad left him when he was little. At a time when he was on the path to young adulthood, he had no father to guide him on the way. He had a painful experience as a young boy, but learned, with the help of his marriage, to forgive his dad just before his dad died in his 80s. Now, with a wife of 29 years and two successful adult children — Kristine, 27, who works with kids, and Kyle, a software engineer — Kenney wants to pay it forward.
“My goal in life was to raise good adults, not good children,” he explains. The fact that his kids have both grown up and left the house left him thinking how he might help others. And the quarantine (隔离期) was actually the perfect time for him to finally share some key life skills with other kids who might be growing up in difficult situations — maybe they’ve lost a parent or have parents who are absent.
So the dad set up a heart-warming YouTube program called Dad, How Do I?, a program that shares instructional videos like how to cook a meal and tie a perfect tie.
His practical tips have really touched the viewers, which are growing in number day by day. Rob Kenney is just what the Internet needs — a caring dad who wants to share his skills. It’s no wonder that he has gotten as many as 1.9 million fans in return.
The unbelievable success of Rob Kenney’s videos suggests the need for a good father figure in a child’s life. From teaching basic life skills to encouraging them to be kind, a father figure helps kids develop into active members of society. He especially instructs them in good manners, being honest, and being grateful.
【小题1】What do we know about Kenney?| A．He learnt life skills from his wife. | B．He recognised his failing as a father. |
| C．He once hated his father so much. | D．He learnt a lot from his dad. |
| A．To encourage people to lead a healthy life. |
| B．To prepare his own children for the adulthood. |
| C．To teach life skills to kids with absent parents. |
| D．To offer tips on how to deal with loneliness. |
| A．Best qualities of a good father figure. |
| B．A father figure’s role in child development. |
| C．Lessons learnt from Kenney’s success. |
| D．Kenney’s achievements as a father figure. |
I am on holiday here in Switzerland with my parents and I am having a fantastic time.
We have been on lots of walks in the mountains but we always go with a guide.
Yesterday we went for a boat trip around the lake but we had to go back to the hotel early.
| A．It’s safe to go out alone. |
| B．You don’t have to go with a guide but it’s safer. |
| C．It started to rain heavily and we couldn’t even see the shore. |
| D．It’s also the first time I’ve ever stayed in a hotel and I really like it. |
| E．It’s the second time I’ve been to Switzerland. |
| F．We’re staying in a hotel near a lake and I can see snowy mountain peaks from my bedroom window. |
| G．The best thing of all is the beautiful scenery. |
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