2. 外语
  3. Vicky — beautiful, talented, very bright, voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in college — got a promising job with a large company a

Vicky — beautiful, talented, very bright, voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in college — got a promising job with a large company a

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问题     Vicky — beautiful, talented, very bright, voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in college — got a promising job with a large company after graduation. Then, after two years without promotions, she was fired. She suffered a complete nervous breakdown. "It was panic," she told me later. "Everything had always gone so well for me that I had no experience in coping with rejection. I felt I was a failure." Vicky’s reaction is an extreme example of a common phenomenon.
    Our society places so much emphasis on "making it" that we assume that any failure is bad. What we don’t always recognize is that what looks like failure may, in the long run, prove beneficial. When Vicky was able to think coolly about why she was fired, for example, she realized that she was simply not suited for a job dealing with people as a copy editor, she works independently, is happy and once again "successful".
    16. ____________
    Obviously no one can be brilliant at everything. In fact, success in one area often precludes success in another. A famous politician once told me that his career had practically destroyed his marriage. "I have no time for my family," he explained. "I travel a lot. And even when I am home, I hardly see my wife and kids. I’ve got power, money, prestige — but as a husband and father, I am a flop."
    Certain kinds of success can indeed be destructive. The danger of too early success is particularly acute. I recall from my childhood a girl whose skill on ice skates marked as "Olympic material". While the rest of us were playing, bicycling, reading and just loafing, this girl skated — every day after school and all weekend. Her picture often appeared in the papers, and the rest of us envied her glamorous life. Years later, however, she spoke bitterly of those early triumphs. "I never prepared myself for anything but the ice," she said. "I peaked at 17 — it’s been downhill ever since."
    17. ____________
    Success is also bad when it’s achieved at the cost of the total quality of an experience. Successful students sometimes become so obsessed with grades that they never enjoy their school years. They never branch out into tempting new areas, because they don’t want to risk their grade-point average.
    Why are so many people so afraid of failure? Simply because no one tells us how to fail so that failure becomes a growing experience. We forget that failure is part of the human condition and that "every person has the right to fail."
    18. ____________
    The trouble with failure-prevention devices is that they leave a child unequipped for life in the real world. The young need to learn that no one can be best at everything, no one can win all the time — and it’s possible to enjoy a game even when you don’t win. A child who is not invited to a birthday party, who doesn’t make the honor roll or the baseball team feels terrible, of course. But parents should not offer a quick consolation prize or say, "It doesn’t matter," because it does. The youngster should be allowed to experience disappointment — and then be helped to master it.
    Failure is never pleasant. It hurts adults and children alike. But it can make a positive contribution to your life once you learn to use it. Step one is to ask, "why did I fail?" Resist the natural impulse to blame someone else. Ask yourself what you did wrong, how you can improve. If someone else can help, don’t be shy about inquiring.
    19. ____________
    Success, which encourages repetition of old behavior, is not nearly as good a teacher as failure. You can learn from a disastrous party how to give a good one, from an ill-chosen first house what to look for in a second. Even a failure that seems total can prompt fresh thinking, a change of direction.
    20. ____________
    Though we may envy the assurance that comes with success, most of us are attracted by courage in defeat. There is what might be called the noble failure — the special heroism of aiming high, doing your best and then, when that proves not enough, moving bravely on.
    [A] A friend of mine, after 12 years of studying ballet, did not succeed in becoming a dancer. She was turned down by the ballet master, who said, "you will never be a dancer. You haven’t the body for it." In such cases, the way to use failure is to take stock courageously, asking, "What have I left? What else can I do?" my friend put away her toe shoes and moved into dance therapy, where she is both competent and useful.
    [B] When I was a teenager and failed to get a job I’d counted on, I telephoned the interviewer to ask why. "Because you came ten minutes late," I was. "’We can’t afford employees who waste other people’s time." The explanation was reassuring and helpful, too. I don’t think I’ve been late for anything since.
    [C] As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "A man’s success is made up of failures, because he experiments and ventures every day, and the more falls he gets, moves faster on ... I have heard that in horsemanship — a man will never be a good rider until he is thrown; then he will not be haunted any longer by the terror that he shall tumble, and will ride whither he is bound.
    [D] Most parents work hard at either preventing failure or shielding their children from the knowledge that they have failed. One way is to lower their standards. A mother describes her child’s hastily made table as "perfect!" even though it’s clumsy and unsteady. Another way is to shift blame. If John fails math, his teacher is unfair or stupid.
    [E] Success that comes too early is also damaging. The child who wins a prize for a carelessly-written essay, the adult who distinguishes himself at a first job by lucky accident faces probable disappointment when real challenges arise.
    [F] People are generally prone to what language expert Hayakawa calls "the two-valued orientation". We talk about seeing both sides of a question as if every question had only two sides. We assume that everyone is either a success or a failure when, in fact, infinite degrees of both are possible. As Hayakawa points out, there’s a world of difference "I have failed three times" and "I am a failure". Indeed, the words failure and success cannot be reasonably applied to a complex, living, changing human being. They can only describe the situation at a particular time and place.
选项
答案A
解析 在该空白段的前一段结尾处谈到“Even a failure that seems total can prompt fresh thinking，a change of direction．”而选项A中，作者讲到自己的一个朋友如何从学习ballet 的失败中激发起新的思想，转到dance therapy。依照这一线索，A为正确项。
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