The Best Lesson

The best lesson my grandparent (or parent or any relative) ever taught me was..

"Always be honest". The best lesson my grandfather has ever taught me. This sentence is almost his signature, and since I was a child, he tries his best to make this be also my own signature. You don't need a religion in order to be a good person, all you need is to be honest with everyone at anytime. The advantages that this will bring to you are infinite.

If you always pay your debts, you'll never be on a negative balance, but you need to be honest to yourself also, and recognize how much you can afford to pay. Always be honest about your feelings. If you don't like someone or something, tell them clearly, that will be better for both parts. The same applies in the case you like someone, go for it with no fear. If you have to fight for something, do it.

Finally, as stated by Thomas Mann (1996), "A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.". It doesn't matter how much the truth can hurt, it is still the only way to precisely express your feelings and make it possible to fix what is wrong.

Stretching your positive mind

1.)  Write about your life now as a student at MEI in all negative descriptions.  Write only facts.  Do not make up information.  Write only negative facts.  Write a complete paragraph.  Include ALL the details about your life at MEI.  Include as many details as you can, make them all negative, include as much as possible.

We have so much homework, and I hate doing homework. The writing class is too hard for me, because I really don't like writing, also because I'm bad at it. The food in the dinning hall is always the same, I'm starting to get tired of it. They make the food in weird ways. Why do they have to put pepper on everything? Don't they know how to make tasty food without burning everyone's mouth? I hate mornings. I hate having to wake up between 7 and 8 am to go to class. Why can't I have night classes? Everything here is so expensive! Students already have all the tuition fees and other college expenses, things should be cheaper for us.

2.)  Write about your life now at as a student  MEI in all positive descriptions. Write about the same subject but write only facts, and write only positive statements.  Include as many details as you can, make them all positive, include as much as possible.

The life in the US is good. I live in a nice room in the dorms, and my roommate is a cool guy. I'm learning a lot at MEI, and I'm also really improving my english skills. I'm learning how to write essays (something I did not knew even in portuguese). I love american breakfast with eggs, bacon, chocolate milk. I'm happy that I'm in the 004c class, because that means my english is not as bad as I tough it was, since I've never studied english before. My life here is relatively easy since the brazilian government is paying for everything and I don't have to worry about a work or overloading my family with my expenses.

3.) Stretch: Write about the same subject using completely different information. Do not repeat ANY of the previous information.  It can be negative or positive.

I don't like having a quiz every week on the listening and speaking class, but that's better because we don't have to study a heavy load of information before the quiz. The weather here is nice and hopefully we'll have snow once the winter comes, and I'm really excited about it. I have classmates from all over the world, and that's really awesome since I can learn a lot about different cultures and even some words in different languages. I'm trying a lot of new things and all those new experiences are great and I keep learning more and more every day.