"This I Believe" Second Draft

            I believe that you should say “I love you” as much as possible. You will never regret saying it, but you will always regret not saying it. I know I regret not saying it enough. My grandmother was my best friend, I told her everything. We would talk on the phone every Sunday night for hours about how our weeks had gone. She knew everything about me, she knew me better than anyone else. I loved her so much, and I know she loved me too. We talked about my future all the time, graduating high school, starting college, getting married; we had my whole life planned out.  She wanted to be there for it all, and I always thought she would be.

As I got older, I stopped talking to my grandma as much, I thought calling my friends or the boy I liked was “cooler” and more important than calling my grandma. That was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. My grandma was a smoker and she was getting worse and I didn’t realize it because I was too busy to talk to her. I had no idea how sick she really was. When I had finally gone to see her for Christmas I was in shock at how frail she had become. She could no longer do anything for herself. I had to go home early that year because she couldn’t take care of me. That was the last time I saw her or talked to her. She passed away a couple days after I got home. I was too scared to call, and now I wish more than anything that I had called her so I could say “I love you” one more time.

            Having my grandma pass away is the hardest thing that I have ever had to deal with, and every day I regret that I stopped talking to her, and that I never really got the chance to say goodbye to her and that I did not get the chance to tell her that I love her one last time. Now I say it all the time to everyone. I want to make sure that everyone I love knows it because you never know when the last time you’ll get the chance to say it will be.  

This I Believe First Draft

I believe that you should say “I love you” as much as possible. You will never regret saying it, but you will always regret not saying it. I know I regret not saying it enough.

            My grandmother was my best friend, I told her everything. We would talk on the phone every Sunday night for hours about how our weeks had gone. She knew everything about me, she knew me better than anyone else. I loved her so much, and I know she loved me too. We talked about my future all the time, graduating high school, starting college, getting married; we had my whole life planned out.  She wanted to be there for it all, and I always thought she would be. But, my grandma was a smoker, and she just would not quit, no matter how much I begged her. She just kept on smoking, and the more she did the sicker she got. She acted like she didn’t care, so I did the same.

            As I got older I started hanging out with my friends more and our weekly phone conversations became fewer. At the time I did not see it as a big deal. Now, looking back, it is one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made in my life.  I wish so much that I could go back and change things. I wish that I did not stop talking to her. I wish so much that I could just tell her that I love her and that I always will. Just after Christmas in 2006 she became very, very sick. I was there that year visiting, and I had to go back home early that year because she did not want me to be there when she passed away.

            Having my grandma pass away is the hardest thing that I have ever had to deal with, and every day I regret that I stopped talking to her, and that I never really got the chance to say goodbye to her and that I did not get the chance to tell her that I love her one last time.

Diagnostic Essay

Technology is an important part of everyday life. We have our cell phones, iPods, and laptops. We constantly check our email and update our facebook status and follow our friends and favorite celebrities on twitter. With technology being so present its time for schools to start incorporating it into all classrooms to help students study and learn. But, it should not be the only way to study and learn. Students still need to interact with their teachers and other students. They also need to still use real books; an electronic kindle cannot replace the feeling of a real book. It’s just not the same thing. They still need to know where the library is and how to use books for studying, and research papers. They need to know who the great authors are and what their writings are like. “With an Internet connection, you can gather the latest stuff from all over, but too many American high school students have never read one Mark Twain novel or Shakespeare play or Wordsworth poem, or a serious history of the U.S.”


The Cushing School in Ashburnham, MA has gotten rid of their entire library to replace it with a digital “learning center.” Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.” It’s great that they want to help students, but they should have combined this “learning center” with the library. Very few students will read a book on their own for fun, and now those few probably will not because they do not a have a library to check books out of. Electronics are not the most reliable things either. They do break and malfunction, and if you spill a liquid on them they usually do not work after that. But a book will never malfunction and if you spill your drink on it it’s going to be ok. Books will also last a lot longer than an electronic. Things become outdated so fast because they are always coming out with a newer, better version. It’s a great idea to have books available on-line, but that should not be the only place that books are available.

Technology should be a tool to help us; it should not be replacing what we have. A lot of my college classes uses technology to help us, but they do not use technology to replace what they are teaching us. My college history professor records his lectures and puts them on iTunes for us to download. This does not mean we can skip the class and just download it. What if we have a question, what if we do not understand something, we would not be able to contact the teacher. It’s a tool to help us study and understand things better. Technology is a great thing, it should just not be used to replace what we have in schools, it should be used to make schools better and to help the students excel.