Life is filled with regrets. As we get older, we often look back and wish that we (make) better choices in our life before. So what can we do (avoid) future regrets? The following are a few tips that you might find (use).
Make plans in advance. If you start to do something, you need to make a plan before doing it. The (early), the better. You should know what comes first and what comes last. Even if something unexpected(happen), you can have more time to deal with it.
Live more active life. More outdoor activities can keep you healthy both(physical) and mentally.
Make good friends. Everyone needs friends. Friends are people with we share joys and sorrows. Make friends with optimistic people, and you'll also think positively if you (surround) with them.
Never fear failure. Everybody fails, even the greatest people in the world. We should not fear failure. Instead, we should take failure a chance to learn and improve ourselves.
Life is so good. Why should we always live in our past and regret what we have done?
Proudly reading my words, I glanced around the room, only to find my classmates bearing big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes. Confused, I glanced toward my stonefaced teacher. Having no choice, I slowly raised the report I had slaved over, hoping to hide myself. "What could be causing everyone to act this way?''
Quickly, I flashed back to the day Miss Lancelot gave me the task. This was the first real talk I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. Since my idea of history came from an ancient teacher in my home country, I had never heard of that name before. As I searched the name of this fellow, it became evident that there were two people bearing the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts, while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice: flip (掷) a coin. Heads — the commander, and tails — the peanuts guy. Ah! Tails, my report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.
Weeks later, standing before this unfriendly mass, I was totally lost. Oh well, I lowered the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear, "My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American Revolution." The whole world became quite! How could I know that she meant that George Washington?
Obviously, my grade was awful. Heartbroken but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to Miss Lancelot, but she insisted: No redos; no new grade. I felt that the punishment was not justified, and I believed I deserved a second chance. Consequently, I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, that chance unfolded as I found myself sitting in the headmaster's office with my grandfather, now having an entirely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the embarrassing moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster informed me of my option to skip the sixth grade. Justice is sweet!
US student Vanessa Tahay stands out from the other teenagers in her school. Her skin is dark, her accent is thick, and if you ask her, she will tell you these are the things she is proudest of. Tahay is a poet, and at 18 she was considered among the best in Los Angeles.
When she is on the stage, audiences often go silent. They also laugh, shout and cry. But this doesn't come easily for someone who comes from a village that sits at the base of a huge mountain range in Central America. When she first appeared at school, she was teased by others for being short and different. She never spoke, so they called her “mouse”.
“How do I defend myself?” Tahay thought. “I don't know how.”
“Keep going,” her mother would tell her. “At some point, you'll learn.”
She spent hours after school and on weekends watching the same DVDs: English without Barriers.
Tahay's elder brother, Elmer, persuaded her to go to the after-school poetry club. In the last six years, her English teacher Laurie Kurnick has turned Cleveland Charter High School's poetry program into one of the most respected in the city. Her team draws from the likes of D.H. Laurence, Pat Mora and Kendrick Lamar to create poems about their own lives. The poems focus on many things —some funny, some painful.
The first time Tahay read the group's poems, chills went up her spine (脊柱). “I wish I could write like that,” she thought. “I want to say something.”
She wrote her first poem about her first year in America. She called it Invisible. The day her turn came to recite in front of the team, she broke down crying. She cried for 15 minutes. “I had so much held in,” Tahay said. “I couldn't even finish it.”
But she kept at it despite her less-than-perfect grammar, spelling and diction (措辞). Still, she wouldn't tell her friends about her poetry because she worried they would make fun of her.
But with time, her poems changed her. “They gave me pride,” Tahay said. “They told me that I'm worth something.”
“She had this innocence,” Kurnick said. “This willingness to be genuine and show you things you don't ever see.”
