In not more than 4 sentences write about an activity that you practice that has taught you some valuable life lessons

There are so many lessons I wish I had learned while I was young enough to appreciate and apply them. The thing with wisdom, and often with life lessons in general, is that they’ve learned in retrospect, long after we needed them. The good news is that other people can benefit from our experiences and the lessons we’ve learned. Life is a learning process. You can learn important life lessons by reading, watching educative videos, or through experience. You can save a lot of time and energy by learning from other peoples’ experiences. 33 Lessons in Life You Need to Learn Here’re important life lessons you should learn early on: 1. Money Will Never Solve Your Real Problems Money is a tool; a commodity that buys you necessities and some nice “wants,” but it is not the panacea to your problems. There are a great many people who are living on very little, yet have wonderfully full and happy lives… and there are sadly a great many people who are living on quite a lot, yet have terribly miserable lives. Money can buy a nice home, a great car, fabulous shoes, even a bit of security and some creature comforts, but it cannot fix a broken relationship, or cure loneliness, and the “happiness” it brings is only fleeting and not the kind that really and truly matters. 2. Pace Yourself Often when we’re young, just beginning our adult journey we feel as though we have to do everything at once. We need to decide everything, plan out our lives, experience everything, get to the top, find tr...

We usually show our gratitude to others when we feel indebted to them, when we have benefitted from their actions, and when we want to make our feelings towards them known. Showing gratitude is sometimes a required or expected thing, but at other times, a spontaneous “thank you” to someone who has unknowingly made our day. On most occasions, we show gratitude to bring the good feelings we have been gifted back to the gifter. While it is admirable to want to share our gratitude and good feelings with others, we rarely stop to think about what giving others our gratitude does for us. As it turns out, it does quite a lot for our brains and mental wellbeing. Before you continue, we thought you might like to This Article Contains: • • • • • • • • • • • • • Research shows that • Help you make friends. One study found that thanking a new acquaintance makes them more likely to seek a more lasting relationship with you. • Improve your physical health. People who exhibit gratitude report fewer aches and pains, a general feeling of health, more regular exercise, and more frequent checkups with their doctor than those who don’t. • Improve your psychological health. Grateful people enjoy higher wellbeing and happiness and suffer from reduced symptoms of depression. • Enhance empathy and reduces aggression. Those who show their gratitude are less likely to seek revenge against others and more likely to behave in a prosocial manner, with sensitivity and empathy. • Improve your sleep. Pra...

Learning Objectives • Understand the expectations for reading and writing assignments in college courses. • Understand and apply general strategies to complete college-level reading assignments efficiently and effectively. • Recognize specific types of writing assignments frequently included in college courses. • Understand and apply general strategies for managing college-level writing assignments. • Determine specific reading and writing strategies that work best for you individually. As you begin this chapter, you may be wondering why you need an introduction. After all, you have been writing and reading since elementary school. You completed numerous assessments of your reading and writing skills in high school and as part of your application process for college. You may write on the job, too. Why is a college writing course even necessary? When you are eager to get started on the coursework in your major that will prepare you for your career, getting excited about an introductory college writing course can be difficult. However, regardless of your field of study, honing your writing skills—and your reading and critical-thinking skills—gives you a more solid academic foundation. In college, academic expectations change from what you may have experienced in high school. The quantity of work you are expected to do is increased. When instructors expect you to read pages upon pages or study hours and hours for one particular course, managing your work load can be challengi...

Writing Concisely What this handout is about This handout helps you identify wordiness in your sentences, paragraphs, and essays and offers strategies for writing concisely. Identifying and addressing wordiness in sentences If you are a student, pay close attention to your instructors’ comments on your essays. Have they written things like “wordy,”“passive voice,”“filler” or “irrelevant”? By learning to write concisely, you will be able to fill your papers with more substantive information. Getting to the point promptly can help you become a clearer thinker and a more engaging writer. Outside of school, writing concisely can help you create more effective business letters, email messages, memos, and other documents. Busy readers appreciate getting the information they need quickly and easily. Here are some strategies to help you identify wordiness and decide whether, and how, to revise it. At times, you may choose to keep a sentence just as it is, even though there are more concise ways to express your idea: you might, for example, use repetition to emphasize a point or include a redundant pair of words (a subject we’re just about to discuss) to create a certain rhythm. What’s important is that you make a conscious choice. 1. Eliminate redundant pairs When the first word in a pair has roughly the same meaning as the second, choose one. Common examples of redundant pairs include: full and complete, each and every, hopes and dreams, whole entire, first and foremost, true and...

In this section: • • • • • • • • • Only a small percentage of English words have irregular spellings and letter-sound relationships. This means that nearly all English words can be read by applying knowledge of letter-sound relationships and blending sounds together to form a whole word. To learn more, see Being able to decode words effortlessly (convert spelling into speech sounds) means children are able to focus their attention on comprehending what they read. Beginning phonics lessons Regardless of grade, start phonics lessons with consonant letter sounds that are easy to pronounce and less often confused with similar letter sounds. This enables students to master one letter sound before having to learn a similar letter sound. For example, students may confuse the letter sounds for t and d. Since the letter t is more common, instruction should introduce t many lessons before introducing d. Learning sounds for letters is basically rote learning, and for rote learning, the use of memory cues can be very helpful. For instance, for short a, children can learn that the letter a looks like an apple with a broken stem, and short a represents /a/ as in apple. Multi-sensory activities, such as repeatedly tracing the vowel letter and saying its sound, are often useful as well. Start explicit phonics instruction with short vowel words because these vowels have one predictable spelling (with few exceptions) and are the most commonly occurring vowel sounds in English. Because the s...

What is sentence combining? We’ve all read pieces of student writing that go something like: “I walked to the park. I went down the slide. I played on the swing. I heard the ice cream truck. I ran to get in line …” Inexperienced authors tend to write a series of short, choppy sentences that follow a similar — or even identical — sentence structure. Sentence combining is a technique for “smoothing out” choppy writing by varying sentence structure and making a piece of writing more engaging for the reader. In the “I went to the park” example, simply joining pairs of sentences by adding a conjunction (“I went down the slide and played on the swing. I heard the ice cream truck and ran to get in line.”) makes the piece more readable. Over time, students can progress from joining two short sentences to more sophisticated sentence combining strategies. Why teach sentence combining? • It helps students make their writing more readable and engaging. • It creates opportunities to teach grammar and punctuation in a meaningful context. • It shows students how and why to revise their writing. • The process encourages interesting word choices and transition words. How to teach sentence combining Experienced writers know when to combine choppy sentences — and break up run-on sentences, too — without giving it much thought. Beginning writers, on the other hand, need to be explicitly taught. Since the most straightforward way to combine sentences is to merge two simple sentences into a com...

Have you ever wanted to bring more mindfulness into your life, but struggle to make time in your chaotic schedule? Or do you set the intention to go about your day more mindfully, only to fall into the trap of snacking unconsciously or responding to emails on autopilot? It’s not easy in the beginning, and there will be bumps along the path toward a committed mindfulness practice. This article will guide you through various ways and resources to help introduce mindfulness in your life so that you are well prepared to start your journey. Before you read on, we thought you might like to This Article Contains: • • • • • • • • • • • • How to Begin Practicing Mindfulness If you are a complete beginner to mindfulness, I’d recommend our article At its core, mindfulness is an activity that needs to be practiced regularly and with intention. With these cornerstones in mind, let’s consider a few ways to introduce mindfulness into our daily lives. Start with a daily routine The first step is to introduce a daily routine. Like any exercise, mindfulness benefits from regular practice. Researchers often use a mindfulness intervention plan that takes place across many weeks (Mackenzie, Poulin, & Seidman-Carlson, 2006; Hofmann, Sawyer, Witt, & Oh, 2010). Decide on an uninterrupted time of day that you can set aside to practice mindfulness, and keep that time in your schedule. Mindfulness is a way of perceiving, thinking, and behaving You would be forgiven for thinking that mindfulness is j...

To practice their skills and develop their craft, writers need lots of opportunities to write for authentic purposes. By varying writing assignments, we can ensure that our students have the chance to write in a variety of genres, for different audiences, and to deepen their command of written language. In this section: • • • In one elementary school, a fifth-grade teacher exclaimed, “All my students can write about ‘small moments,’ but they can’t write in anything other than first person!” Her exasperation prompted a school-wide review of the writing tasks students were given. The process revealed that in every grade, students wrote personal narratives based on a small moment in their lives, but were rarely asked to write reports based on research, to generate persuasive essays, or to solicit information by writing formal letters. By expanding the audience for our students’ writing — beyond themselves, their classmates, their teacher, and their parents — we give students authentic reasons to consider and adjust to their readers. Whether students create a brochure or pamphlet for the local recreation center, a children’s book for the school library, a travel guide for a relative, or a letter to an elected official, they must consider what the readers already know, what they need to know, and what genre and voice would best serve the purpose. To learn more: • • • Looking at writing from real kids In any classroom, there will be a range in the quality of work that students g...

TABLE OF CONTENTS (click to skip ahead) • How to Decide Which Extracurricular Activity to Write About • How to Structure Your Extracurricular Essay • The Narrative Approach (via The Elon Musk Exercise) • Extracurricular Activity Essay Example: The Catalyzing Creativity Club • Extracurricular Activity Essay Example: Earthquakes • A Step-by-Step Guide to Brainstorming and Writing a Narrative (Challenges-Based) Extracurricular Essay • The Montage Approach (via The Uncommon Connections Exercise) • How to Stand Out on Your Extracurricular Essay If Your Topic and Achievements Are Common • Extracurricular Activity Essay Example: Santur • Extracurricular Activity Essay Example: Switch Side Policy Debate • How to Write a Super Extracurricular Essay • Seven Tips for the 150-Word Extracurricular Essay • Five More 150-Word Extracurricular Essays I Love If you’re applying to selective colleges, chances are you’ll be asked to write about how you’ve spent your time outside of school. While these questions are sometimes worded differently (see examples below in the FAQ), they generally sound something like this: Tell us about one or more of your extracurricular activities. In this post, I’ll share some practical tips for how to write about your extracurricular involvement in your college essays. But first, answers to a few commonly asked questions. Q: Why do so many schools ask about extracurricular activities? A: Simply put, they’re a great way to learn about the skills/qualities/values/...

In this section: • • • • • • • • • Only a small percentage of English words have irregular spellings and letter-sound relationships. This means that nearly all English words can be read by applying knowledge of letter-sound relationships and blending sounds together to form a whole word. To learn more, see Being able to decode words effortlessly (convert spelling into speech sounds) means children are able to focus their attention on comprehending what they read. Beginning phonics lessons Regardless of grade, start phonics lessons with consonant letter sounds that are easy to pronounce and less often confused with similar letter sounds. This enables students to master one letter sound before having to learn a similar letter sound. For example, students may confuse the letter sounds for t and d. Since the letter t is more common, instruction should introduce t many lessons before introducing d. Learning sounds for letters is basically rote learning, and for rote learning, the use of memory cues can be very helpful. For instance, for short a, children can learn that the letter a looks like an apple with a broken stem, and short a represents /a/ as in apple. Multi-sensory activities, such as repeatedly tracing the vowel letter and saying its sound, are often useful as well. Start explicit phonics instruction with short vowel words because these vowels have one predictable spelling (with few exceptions) and are the most commonly occurring vowel sounds in English. Because the s...