Two years ago I was very lonely and didn’t talk with anyone about my feelings. At the time I didn’t have many friends. I wanted someone to share my experiences and secrets with. I wanted someone to understand me. I started to imagine this friend and often imagined our conversations and what we would do.

Some weeks later we started a new project in school and I was working with one of my schoolmates. We had never worked together before but we got along well. After the project we started to spend some time together in school. One day we decided to take a walk. Ever since that walk we’ve been best friends. We listened and really understood each other.

I had wished for a best friend, but the universe gave me so much more. I have met one of my soul mates. We can sense each other, and it just takes one look and we know what the other is thinking. I didn’t think our friendship could grow much stronger. But now we have known each other for two years and our friendship is growing all the time.

It hasn’t only been easy. We have gone through both easy and hard times. But I’m thankful for the hard times, because they have forced me to grow and taught me a lot. My best friend has changed me. She has made me believe in myself. And I am now focusing on achieving one of my biggest dreams. Without her I wouldn’t even have realized what my biggest dream is.

I know there are soul mates out in the world for you. I am so thankful to have met one of mine. Believe in them, and your paths will cross!

Steph Clemence always intended to go to college. But life has a tendency to throw obstacles in the way. Growing up, she led a nomadic life because her mother, who divorced and remarried several times, was always on the move. Her mother had to support three daughters on a modest income, paying for college became out of the question.

Steph found a job, and tried to figure out what to do with such a life. The answer came when she spotted a thick folder, in which Steph found two stapled pages from her junior English teacher, Dorothy Clark.

One afternoon, Mrs. Clark walked into the classroom carrying a stack of stapled papers and instructed each student take one. The handout was titled “Mrs. Clark’s Book List.” It wasn’t homework, the teacher announced, but it could be a road map. She’d spent months creating a list of 153 fiction and nonfiction books, covering science, history, economics, politics, and literature. “Some of you might not go on to higher education,” Mrs. Clark said, “but you can continue to learn.”

She flipped the page to see the first book: Bulfinch’s Mythology. And so it began. It was 1970. “I was hopeful and: determined to improve myself,” Steph says. Starting at the top, she would read every book in the order they appeared.

Steph worked a variety of jobs, and she kept reading. Then she retired as an office manager for a dentist.

“Reading these books is an emotional and intellectual experience,” she says. “Each of the books has added something to who I am and how I see the world. I’m no expert, but I now have the background to see what it might mean.”

Now Steph is 70, and she never did get to college. But she has only four books left to read from the list. She expects to complete them sometime in 2023.

He Jiang, who was the first person from China to deliver a Harvard University commencement (学位授予典礼) address, has made the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 List.

Forbes’ 30 Under 30 is a set of lists issued annually by Forbes magazine. On Tuesday, the magazine published the sixth annual 30 Under 30, featuring 600 young inventors and leaders who challenge conventional wisdom and rewrite the rules for the next generation.

The list recognizes 30 game-changers in each of 20 industries. All under 30 years old, the candidates were examined by a group of judges in their fields. “The winners are the people that will run every field for the next 50 years,” said Randall Lane, editor of Forbes.

He, a 29-year-old postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was chosen for the healthcare category. He was recommended by his professors at Harvard.

At Harvard, He used a new technology to understand more about how flu infects cells, and discovered human genes with strong anti-viral effects. He is now applying the same techniques to white blood cells. He hopes the lab research he did could be put to practical use in healthcare.

He grew up in a small village with limited educational opportunities. By studying hard, he graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China with a bachelor’s degree in 2009, and was accepted into Harvard’s PhD program on a full scholarship the same year.

In May, the biochemistry PhD delivered a speech representing the university’s 13 graduate and professional schools at the ceremony. In the speech, he talked about the unbalanced distribution of science and medicine into places they aren’t reaching, like his own village, where his mother once treated his spider bite with fire.