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TEXT E
First read the following question.
31. In the passage Bill Gates mainly discusses ___.
A. a person’s opportunity of a lifetime
B. the success of the computer industry
C. the importance of education
D. high school education in the US
Now go through TEXT E quickly and answer question 31.
Hundreds of students send me e-mail each year asking for advice about educa tion. They want to know what to study, or whether it’s OK to drop out of colleg e since that’s what I did.
My basic advice is simple and heartfelt.“Get the best education you can. Take advantage of high school and college. Learn how to learn.”
It’s true that I dropped out of college to start Microsoft, but I was at H a rvard for three years before dropping out-and I’d love to have the time to go b a ck. As I’ve said before, nobody should drop out of college unless they believe they face the opportunity of a lifetime. And even then they should reconsider.
The computer industry has lots of people who didn’t finish college, but I ’m not aware of any success stories that began with somebody dropping out of high school. I actually don’t know any high school dropouts, let alone any successfu l ones.
In my company’s early years we had a bright part-time programmer who threa tened to drop out of high school to work full-time. We told him no.
Quite a few of our people didn’t finish college, but we discourage droppin g out.
College isn’t the only place where information exist. You can learn in a l i brary. But somebody handing you a book doesn’t automatically foster learning. Y o u want to learn with other people, ask questions, try out ideas and have a way t o test your ability. It usually takes more than just a book.
Education should be broad, although it’s fine to have deep interests, too.
In high school there were periods when I was highly focused on writing soft ware, but for most of my high school years I had wide-ranging academic interests . My parents encouraged this, and I’m grateful that they did.
One parent wrote me that her 15-year old son “lost himself in the hole of t he computer. ”He got an A in Web site design, but other grades were sinking, sh e said.
This boy is making a mistake. High school and college offer you the best ch ance to learn broadly-math, history, various sciences-and to do projects with ot her kids that teach you firsthand about group dynamics. It’s fine to take a dee p interest in computers, dance, language or any other discipline, but not if it j eopardizes breadth.
In college it’s appropriate to think about specialization. Getting real e x pertise in an area of interest can lead to success. Graduate school is one way t o get specialized knowledge. Choosing a specialty isn’t something high school s t udents should worry about. They should worry about getting a strong academic sta rt.
There’s not a perfect correlation between attitudes in high school and su c cess in later life, of course. But it’s a real mistake not to take the opportun i ty to learn a huge range of subjects, to learn to work with people in high schoo l, and to get the grades that will help you get into a good college.
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