It is that time of the year again. Up and down the country, thousands of students stay in the library, attempting to cram(死记硬背)the information necessary to get through finals. I am one of them — a Cambridge finalist, attempting to deal with the Oxbridge stress in the only way I know: caffeine hits and reclusion(遁生活) Whether you love or hate Oxbridge, the fact that these two universities provide unique learning environments is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, students have access to some of the best education in the world; on the other hand, the pressure that comes with this can prove damaging to them and can't be swept under the carpet for they have to face it eventually.
Many Cambridge students find themselves trapped in a pressure of expectation, whether this comes from their supervisors or tutors, their director of studies or even from themselves. The drive towards achievement is either the key to success or to possible serious personal issues, as Mark Phippen, head of the University of Cambridge's Counseling Service said, ''There are plenty of perfectionists in Cambridge, but it can work two ways: it can push them to accomplish and to achieve, or it can get out of hand, disabling them. ''
Many students say that they can’t handle it any more while working in certain libraries which are filled with other students hard at work. The competition and paranoia(疑)are more common than what we realize or question: you can feel as if you are being judged for how much time you spend on Facebook or YouTube, or how little time you spend reading.
Too many students feel almost frustrated by the pressure to achieve but feel unable to speak about it. As everyone seems to be coping, they must also pretend to cope too. The only thing students have: tutors and supervisors regularly encourage students to avoid extracurricular activities, urging them to focus on their studies to such an extent that many find it hard to handle it. One current Cambridge tutor has been known for checking up on the activities of students involved in extracurricular theatre by searching for them on the camdram.net website, which details who is involved in certain plays each term — just in case it affects the student’s work output.
Problems arise when the pressure produces mental health issues. Problems have been brought to attention in articles primarily from Oxford's Cherwell and Cambridge's The Tab. The attention has made the Cambridge University Student Union set up Students Deserve Better — a campaign to handle complaints about supervisors and tutors lacking the ability to provide proper spiritual support. ''When I told my supervisor about my problems with anxiety and therefore about my worries surrounding the workload she was suggesting, she said that I would probably feel less anxious once the work was done, '' a finalist student called Jane said. ''It shouldn't be an accepted response in one of the world's best universities. Their responses only worsened any feelings I had concerning my final year. ''
Phippen said, ''At this point the exams seem like the most important thing in the world. However, two years down the line you’ll realize that the exams you did at university aren't very important at all, as what then becomes more important is what you have done within those two years afterwards. Finalist exams can become depressing for students studying at any university. All you must remember is that you are not alone and you are good enough, and that a few years down the line, your ability to recount the plots of Euripides' nineteen plays will no longer matter. So why worry? ''
1.The underlined part ''be swept under the carpet'' in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ''______''.
A.be covered up B.be dealt with
C.be given up D.be figured out
2.What's Mark Phippen's attitude towards the pressure put on the students at Oxbridge?
A.Critical. B.Doubtful.
C.Objective. D.Ambiguous.
3.What can we know from Paragraph 4?
A.Extracurricular activities fail to appeal to most students.
B.Some tutors and supervisors push their students too hard.
C.There is a lack of communication between students and their supervisors.
D.Some students don't speak about the pressure because they think they can handle it.
4.What Jane said in Paragraph 5 suggests that she ______ .
A.didn't get her problems across to her supervisor
B.had expected better spiritual guidance from her tutors
C.was dissatisfied with her supervisor's delayed responses
D.was glad that Students Deserve Better was set up to help students like her
5.Which of the following would be the best title for this passage?
A.Oxbridge pressure: the key to students' achievements
B.Oxbridge finals: the toughest exams in the country
C.Oxbridge graduates: the strongest competitors in the job market
D.Oxbridge success: the result of teacher-student interaction
Cooperation at work is generally seen as a good thing. The latest survey by the Financial Times of what employers want from MBA graduates found that the ability to work with a wide variety of people was what managers wanted most. But managers always have to balance the benefits of teamwork, which help ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal, with the dangers of “groupthink” when critics are reluctant to point out a plan’s drawbacks for fear of being kept out of the group. The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was a classic case of groupthink. Skeptics were reluctant to challenge John F. Kennedy, the newly elected American president.
Modern communication methods mean that cooperation is more frequent. Workers are constantly in touch with each other via e-mail messaging groups or mobile calls. But does that improve, or lower performance? A new study by three American academics, tried to answer this question. They set a logical problem (designing the shortest route for a travelling salesman visiting various cities). Three groups were involved: one where subjects acted independently; another where they saw the solutions posted by team members at every stage; and a third where they were kept informed of each other’s views only intermittently.
The survey found that members of the individualist group reached the premier solution more often than the constant cooperators but had a poorer average result. The intermittent cooperators found the right result as often as the individualists, and got a better average solution. When it comes to ideal generation, giving people a bit of space to a solution seems to be a good idea. Occasional cooperation can be a big help: most people have benefited from a colleague’s brainwave or (just as often) wise advice to avoid a particular course of action.
Further clues come from a book, Superminds, by Thomas Malone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says that three factors determine the collective intelligence of cooperating groups: social intelligence (how good people were at rating the emotional states of others); the extent to which members took part equally in conversation (the more equal, the better); and the cooperation of women in the group (the higher, the better). Groups ranked highly in these areas cooperated far better than others.
In short, cooperation may be a useful tool but it doesn’t work in every situation.
1.The author cites the example of The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in paragraph 1 to _______.
A.prove that team players are skilled at communication
B.show that teamwork cannot always be beneficial
C.prove that critics are unwilling to challenge anybody
D.show the danger of groupthink is not very serious
2.The underlined phrase “the intermittent cooperators” in paragraph 3 refers to _______.
A.those who do not cooperate but reach the best solution
B.those who are seldom informed of other’s views
C.those who cooperate with others occasionally
D.the constant cooperators with a poor average result
3.Which of the following factors makes a team cooperate better?
A.Group members cooperating all the time.
B.Group members in a good emotional state.
C.Equal distribution of men and women.
D.Equal participation in the communication.
4.Which can be the best title of the passage?
A.When Teamwork Works B.What Teamwork Is About
C.How Teamwork Operates D.A Useful Tool: Cooperation
On a recent sunny, dry fall morning, I found the last outdoor table at my favorite café. Reading ______ I nibbled my breakfast, I was enjoying the feeling of the cool breeze and the warm sun when a table next to me ______. A woman who had been standing nearby, ______ waiting for a seat, stepped toward the table. But from the other ______, straight from the parking lot, came a man who got to the table first.
The woman, with a ______ on her face, explained that she’d been ______ that table for several minutes and had been on her way over. The man, also smiling but ______, told her she was out of ______; he had happened upon the table first. “You snooze(不注意), you lose!” he said cheerfully.
She stood off to the side, clearly disappointed, and ______ her friend with the frustrating news. I sat at my table, ______ the scene, when suddenly it occurred to me—I had a(n) ______ here to be kind.
I stood up and ______ her over to my table. Quietly, I told her I had seen what had happened, and I was happy to give her my table. I was only going to be there a few more minutes ______, so I was happy for her and her friend to have the ______.
“But where will you sit?” she asked. I was almost done eating, I said, and I would find a seat at the counter ______. She thanked me and beamed(堆满笑容) as she ______ for her friend to sit down.
Thinking about it as I finished up, I realized that whether or not the woman had fair ______ to the table was unimportant. The emotion of the situation—the look of hurt on her face—had ______ me, and I had the ability to do something about it.
That isn’t always the case with every feeling, situation, or injustice we ______ unexpectedly in our days. But as the early 20th century writer Orison Swett Marden once said, “Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. ______ common occasions and make them great.”
I just hope that woman’s morning at the café was great. I know mine was.
1.A.till B.after C.as D.before
2.A.closed up B.opened up C.looked up D.showed up
3.A.hesitantly B.clearly C.seemingly D.steadily
4.A.entrance B.angle C.gate D.direction
5.A.smile B.shock C.glare D.gaze
6.A.monitoring B.watching C.minding D.wandering
7.A.firm B.impatient C.elegant D.reluctant
8.A.order B.luck C.shape D.place
9.A.served B.compared C.loaded D.greeted
10.A.taking down B.taking up C.taking in D.taking over
11.A.scene B.opportunity C.access D.passion
12.A.followed B.guided C.signaled D.rushed
13.A.anyway B.someway C.somewhere D.anywhere
14.A.floor B.spot C.moment D.kindness
15.A.downstairs B.upstairs C.outside D.inside
16.A.gestured B.headed C.waited D.sent
17.A.passage B.claim C.approach D.admission
18.A.shamed B.surprised C.struck D.scared
19.A.repeat B.hate C.tolerate D.meet
20.A.Mark B.Hold C.Celebrate D.Seize
I can’t get my car _____ on cold mornings, so I have to try ______ the radiator with some hot water.
A.run; to fill B.running; filling
C.running; to fill D.ran; filling
Alipay, which currently has over 520 million users, is a powerful ____ of payment tools, financial services and marketing platforms.
A.indication B.representation C.observation D.combination
— ____ the doctor was murdered?
— It was in the art gallery _____ famous paintings were on display.
A.Where it was that; that B.Where it was that; where
C.Where was it that; where D.Where was it that; that
