At 63, Jerry Valencia was determined to get his college degree — and his master’s degree, too. The student arrived early, sat front and center, and stood out in my classroom in more ways than one. I’d say that he had about 40 years on his classmates in my undergraduate communications class at California State University, Los Angeles. He eagerly jumped into class discussions, with his modest humor and wisdom of experience. And he was always respectful of the other students’ views, as if each of them were a teacher. Jerry Valencia walked in with a smile — and he left with one, too.
Valencia always said that these students gave him the confidence and joy that he didn’t need to feel bad about his age.
One day, I found Valencia sitting on campus. He said he would have to stop taking classes that semester and reapply for next year. By then, he hoped to have earned enough money from construction jobs he used to take to pay for his tuition. But he said he would still come to campus to attend events, see his friends and take the final exams. He asked seriously whether he could still sit in my communications class.
“Sure,” I said.
Soon there he was again, back at his old desk, front and center, jumping into our discussions on how to find and tell stories in Los Angeles-a 63-year-old junior with as much energy and curiosity as any of the youngsters in my class.
For an assignment on changing neighborhoods, Valencia wrote about a favorite local chain restaurant that was “unceremoniously (随便地) closed”. He called it as a theft of childhood. “It is almost as if someone has stolen that childhood and replaced it with a slippery hill where everything they cherish will slide away,” he wrote. A lot of Valencia’s classmates apparently knew he couldn’t pay that semester’s tuition. However, he was still making his efforts to do the homework well.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
In my eyes, Valencia is an old man with strong will.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I was pretty astonished when hearing what he had said.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
组卷网是一个信息分享及获取的平台，不能确保所有知识产权权属清晰，如您发现相关试题侵犯您的合法权益，请联系组卷网
