Start With: Life takes some funny twists and turns.
“Life takes some funny twists and turns. When you wake up in the morning you never know what kind of day it’s going to be. You may wake up on the wrong side of the bed and end up having a really good day. Or you may wake up with a smile on your face, but everything that can go wrong will.
“It all depends on how you look at life. It all depends on how you think. If something is going wrong, think positive, happy thoughts as best as you can. If something is going right, keep thinking those positive, happy thoughts. If you’re going to look at things with a negative perspective, then you’re setting yourself up for a back day. You’re setting yourself up for failure…”
Mimi’s chin was resting on the surface of her desk fighting for her eyes to stay open. She was beginning to tune out the speaker standing in front of the classroom.
She had woken up late this morning causing her to miss the bus to school. Since Mimi’s parents leave for work before she leaves for school, she had to walk. She missed her entire first period class. As a result, her first period teacher gave her the work and notes she missed in addition to some extra credit. Mimi’s teacher said it was because she was missing so much due to being tardy that she was beginning to fail. Mimi assumed it was just a punishment because she had been late so many times.
Yes, Mimi is late a lot to school. When she was late this morning, the principal stopped her on her way in and scolded her for it. She got a detention because this was her seventh tardy that month… and they were only 15 days into the month.
Mimi had to explain she couldn’t stay that day because she had a dentist appointment. She hated going to the dentist, especially since she needed to get a cavity filled. Where the cavity came from, she’ll never know. She barely ate any sweets and was a vegetarian. She was going to have to spend her detention after school tomorrow. There were two things wrong with that.
For one, lacrosse practice was tomorrow, but the principal didn’t see that as a valid excuse. She was going to have to miss a practice in which case her coach was going to be angry with her. Mimi was all ready on thin ice with her coach because she didn’t have very good grades in two of her classes. She was on the verge of failing them and if she did she wouldn’t be able to play until she brought the grades up. She was the best player on the team, so not only would her coach be upset, but all her teammates would be frustrated with her as well.
Second, tomorrow was a Friday. Mimi didn’t even realize students could serve detention on Fridays. Didn’t the teachers want to leave early on Fridays to start their weekends, too? If Mimi was going to stay after on a Friday she wanted it to be because of lacrosse practice.
Mimi yawned and sat up taller in her seat still trying not to fall asleep. She was only in her second period class. There were five more classes to go. How in the world was she going to get through it all?
She stared at her teacher trying to tune back into the lecture.
“So, we’re all going to write mini personal essays about something recent that has gone wrong in our lives. You’ll then explain what you did to turn it into something positive. If you didn’t stay positive, explain why and also explain what you should have done to turn the situation into something positive. Everyone understand?”
Mimi smiled. This was probably the best thing to happen to her all day. It was probably the only positive thing that was going to happen to her all day.
Mimi didn’t like English very much and she was terrible at writing essays. But she looked on the positive side: this was going to be the easiest essay she had ever written.
Modified from “The Write-Brain Workbook” by Bonnie Neubauer