When I got to high school at the age of 16, I took art classes for all of my electives. I began looking at ________ and I knew New York City had the best design schools; the ________ was deciding which one was the best fit for me. I found FIT was a good fit because it could throw you into your area of ________ immediately and absorb you in the culture of New York City.

I’ve always felt like I’ll ________ FIT because I know the fashion design program is probably ________ at times, but that is one of the things I love about the fashion industry. It’s constantly moving, changing and looking ________. There’s no time to slow down and think about anything but what’s ________ next. Not only is fashion an ever ________ industry, it is also an expensive industry. In situations where it’s ________ to get your words out right, the way you present yourself is a form of ________. I like fashion and art in general because I can use it to reveal things about myself to people who don’t ________ me that well and to express my opinions or ________.

Once I got settled in high school and got more ________ in my art classes, I moved my ________ towards learning more about design. My school offers lots of art classes. ________, fashion design is not included. So I have to search for ________ on my own. The summer after my freshman year I ________ a two-week class at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. I ________ at 8 each morning and learned how to draw a figure with fashion proportions (比例) and even ________ my first clothing. There were ups and downs to this program, ________ this pre-college experience has helped me realize that this is what I need to be doing, and that I don’t want to give up until I’m doing it.

My father , a soldier , was deployed(调度) again . The ukulele I had watched him play was _________ The musical instrument sat there lifeless .

It came as a ________ because we had just moved into the present duty station a few weeks before . It was the fourth time we’d moved to a new place in just two years . Still ,________ was the thing that connected my father with Hawaii , a _______of his home and culture . We learned about our   ancestors   and   family   traditions mostly through his music .

But this time , everything was ________ . We were finally “home” in Hawaii and expected to ________ a place that we’d only heard about in my parents’ stories. We were just arriving, but he was already prepared to leave again, this time without us._______ ,we were surrounded by cousins and aunties who grew up knowing each other and ________ a cultural tradition of which we only knew the surface. We were ________ in the family. The person who made us fit, our father ,was gone. That was when I noticed my father’s ukulele. As I plucked（弹拨） the strings tunelessly , I felt ________ to him and our Hawaiian roots . So I picked up an old song book , and I ________ myself to play . I would play and sing,   as if my father had been here. After my father eventually________ , he bought another ukulele, and we had a mini concert. He was________ that I had learned so much. But what I really gained knowledge of was that music has the________ to do truly extraordinary things ________ us to our culture and each other , our past and our present.

I am not sure if it was the crowds, the harsh lighting, the cheap fabric, or the overwhelming choices spread out before me. But last December, staring at rows of scarves in an H&M in London, I was _________. I decided to give up fast fashion for a year.

Fashion is an estimated $ 2.4 trillion industry. Fast fashion, a big portion of it, has completely _________the way we shop. Brands like H&M, Zara and Forever 21, with their quick _________to trends, speedy deliveries to stores, and ridiculously low prices, have developed faster than their competitors for years. Fast fashion is also a dirty industry, however. It is full of unsafe labor conditions and _________ resources.

Still, giving up fast fashion is not the easiest choice. I was addicted to what our fashion reporter Marc Bain calls the “sad cycle of uncontrollable shopping and _________” brought about by shopping at places such as H&M. But somewhere along the line, browsing for clothes had _________being fun and started feeling mindless. I wasn’t _________finding items I really liked. I was _________clothes as quickly as I was acquiring them. This was partly the _________of mistrusting my own fashion sense, but it was also about the way I shopped. Why care about how well-made or good-looking a piece of clothing is if you can just replace it at a minimal cost to yourself?

And so I __________to ignore the bright shop windows and glittery mannequins (人体 模型) and to bring some “mindfulness" to my wardrobe. For the most part, the shopping __________came as a relief. I began to buy things of __________quality and price, take better care of my clothes, and repair them instead of throwing them away.

However, my fast fashion-less year was __________. Toward the end of the year, I relaxed my rules and allowed myself to buy a few second-hand fast-fashion clothes at charity shops. I hope in the year ahead, with a more focused __________, I can learn how to shop better. Marc’s suggestion is to pause and ask yourself “How much do I really want this?” -- a guideline he follows to reduce his __________to the wastefulness of fast fashion.