When we are grown-ups, it’s quite natural to look back on our different stages of life and remember who was there to see us through. 【小题1】 While some people’s high school friendships gradually end, mine have struck with me through every bit of life since. And I suppose high school friends are the friends you’ll build the strongest relationships with.

【小题2】 Whether it is the bad haircut or the braces(牙箍) you wear, your high school friends help you through it all. They tell you that you look wonderful when you cannot go out in public with that hairdo. 【小题3】

They understand the most about you. High school friends know you better than anyone else. They can just look at you and know how you’re feeling. You cannot hide much from them. 【小题4】 And they’d rather help deal with the problem at hand than let it go. So even when you don’t want to hear it, prepare yourself ----because they’re not going to stop trying until you’re back to your normal yourself.

They make for the best reunion. Reunions are harder to organize when friends live across the country. However, with high school friends, it’s easy to enjoy the time together----you can often pick up just where you left off, no matter how long ago that was. Friendships can be hard to keep. 【小题5】

Do you have good friends? Do you sometimes feel so close to them that they are like family to you?

It turns out that this isn’t just an expression. A study by Yale University and the University of California, San Diego, has found that you and your friends have more genes in common than strangers do, the Guardian reported.

Researchers looked at the genes of 1,932 people and compared them in pairs of unrelated friends and strangers. They found that friends have 1 percent of genes that match.

“One percent may not sound like much to the layperson (外行), but to geneticists (遗传学家) it is a significant number,” Professor Nicholas Christakis of Yale University told Discovery News. In fact, this is the same amount of genes you share with your fourth cousins, those who have the same great-great-great grandparents as you.

So is it a coincidence that you become friends with people who share your genes? Not at all. In fact, it is evolution that brings you together.

People who share certain genes also share skills and have similar likes and dislikes, researchers said. In ancient times, it was critical that people who were alike stayed together. For example, people who had a similar susceptibility (易感性) to the cold were more likely to help each other build a fire, giving them a better chance to survive.

Researchers also found that among all the genes studied, those affecting sense of smell were the most similar in friends. This is probably because people who smell things in the same way are more easily drawn to similar environments. For example, people who like the smell of coffee may hang out at cafes more often and are therefore more likely to meet and become friends with each other.

Based on their findings, the team has developed an interesting test called the “friendship score”. It calculates how big the chances are that two people will be friends by studying their genes.

So, here is a question for you: would you like to take this test and know in advance who your friends are going to be, or would you still prefer to figure it out by yourself and let time be the judge?

Having friends is obviously good for countless reasons. And showing the world that you have lots of friends, for example on social media, seems like a winning strategy. If that is the truth, your goal is to expand your social network. Once people see how popular you are, they'll want to join that popular circle, perhaps in the hope that some of your popularity will rub off on them.

Nevertheless, can a person even have too many friends at the same time? It’s always been a misconception that if you have more friends, people will be more likely to want to be friends you.

In fact, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that having too many friends may work against you. In a series of experiments. the authors prove that people usually prefer to befriend those who have fewer friends than they do, rather than those with more friends. The authors call this phenomenon the “friend-number paradox(悖论)”, which is also the title of their new paper.

Social ties are obviously important. Having more of these connections suggests greater social value, and more potential possibilities. So it seems reasonable to assume that people will focus their social energies on befriending people who have lots of friends already.

But the problem is that these social ties are only valuable if there’s reciprocity(互惠) involved. Friendship goes hand in hand with certain responsibilities and expectations. And people with lots of friends may not be able to fulfill those responsibilities—especially those with too many friends.   

In other words, “friendship quality” matters as much, if not more, than only the number of friends you have. Having lots of friends means your precious social resources become dilute (稀释了的), making you less able to be a good friend. And other people take that into account consciously(有意识地)or unconsciously when deciding whether to befriend you. They don’t want to spend their valuable social resources on someone who is unlikely to pay it back.