出自:山东第一医科大学英语（4）
After practicing as a surgeon for several years, Dr.Ginoux decided to apply for membership in the American College of Surgeons(美国外科医生学会), a highly selective and distinguished professional organization.
As part of the application procedure(手续), Dr.Ginoux was asked to prepare a list of the operations performed in the previous seven years. Slowly, as she worked on the long list, she began to feel uncertain. She began to question some of her decisions. Had she used the best technique in that case? Maybe, in this case, she should have run one more test before operating? On the other hand, maybe she should have … Would the doctors on the selection committee understand that, as the only trained surgeon in the area, she usually could not get advice form others and therefore, had to rely completely on her own judgment? For the first time, Dr.Ginoux felt lonely and isolated.
The longer Dr.Ginoux worked on the application forms, the more depressed she became. As hope faded, she wondered if a “country doctor” had a realistic chance of being accepted by the American College of Surgeons.
On my way to work one morning, I met Rudy Ruettiger, who is now a motivational speaker. He has grown up in Joliet, listening to stories about Notre Dame and dreaming of one day playing football there. Friends told him he wasn’t a good enough student to be admitted. So he gave up his dream and went to work in a power plant.
Then a friend is killed in an accident at work. Shocked, Rudy suddenly realized that life is too short not to pursue your dreams.
In 1972, at the age of 23, he enrolled at Holy Cross Junior College in South Bend, Ind. He got good enough grades to transfer to Notre Dame, where he finally made the football team as a member of the “scout team”, the players who help the team prepare for games.
Rudy was living his dream, almost. But he wasn’t allowed to suit up for the games themselves. The next year, after Rudy requested it, the coach told Rudy he could put on his uniform for the season’s final game. And there he sat, on the Notre Dame bench during the game. A student started shouting, “ We want Rudy！” soon others joined in. Finally, at the age of 27, with 27 seconds left to play, Rudy Ruettiger was sent onto the field and made the final tackle (拦截). So his team won the game.
When I met Rudy 17 year later, it was in the parking lot outside Notre Dame stadium (体育场)， where a camera crew was filming scenes for Rudy, a motion picture about his life. His story illustrate that there is no limit to where your dreams can take you pursue our vision with stubborn (顽强的) consistency. The biggest difference between people who succeed and those who don’t is not usually talent but persistence.
Martin Luther King. Jr. was born in Georgia in 1929. When was(1)a boy Martin learned that his people, the black Americans, were(2)treated differently from most of theirfellow Americans. Many could not attend good schools,(3)good jobs, or live in nice houses because of the color of their skin. Martin knew that in a free country this was(4). He wanted to help his black brothers, sohe decided to go to school andbecomea minister. He became a pastor (牧师)in Montgomery, Alabama . This is(5)Martin Luther King.s "peaceful fight" first began. Dr. King worked (6) equality in other cities. He knew that the onlyway people could win their rights was to remain peaceful,(7)in face of danger. Dr. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his achievements andcourage. The whole nation (8)the terrible event that happenedon April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King, Jr, was shot. The man who had preached (倡导) nonviolence (非暴力) died (9). But Dr. King.s dream can never die. Many Americans are still (10)to make that dream come true.
An autobiography (自传）is only " a sort of life" --- it may contain less errors of fact thasn a biography（传记）, but it is necessary even more than selective: it begins later and it ends too early. If one cannot close a book of memories on the deathbed, any conclusion could be made and I have preferred to finish this essay with the yers of failure which followed the acceptance of my first novel. Failure too is a kind of death: the furniture sold, the drawers emptied, the removal truck waiting to take one to a less expensive destination （地点）. In another sense too a book like this can only be .a sort of life. , for in the course of sixty-six years I have spent almost as much time with characters in my imagination as with real men and women. Indeed, though I have been fortunate in the number of my friends, I can remember no stories of the famous -- the only stories which I more or less remember are the stories I have written. And the purpose for recording these events of the past? It is much the same purpose that has made me a novelist: a desire to reduce a great disorder of experience to some sort of order, and a hungry curiosity. We cannot love ourselves, and curiosity too begins at home. There is a fashion today among many people to treat the events of their past with irony 讽刺. It is a method of self-defence. .Look how stupid I was when I was young. keeps away cruel criticism, but it gives false account of history. We were not Eminent Georgians. Those emotions were real when we felt them. Why should we be more ashamed of them than of the indifference of old age? I have tried. however unsuccessfully, to live again the foolish things I did and to feel them, as I felt them then, without irony.