Fast Food: A Fast Way to Get in Trouble

    Imagine that you are a high school student. Every day, you eat lunch with your friends at the fast food place near your school. You order your usual double cheese burger with French fries and go to sit down with your friends. They are standing by the wall, waiting for another group to get up so you can sit at your usual table by the vending machine. Ten minutes go by before the group finally leaves. When you sit down and look at your cell phone, you realize that you have only three minutes to get to class! You scarf down your double cheese burger and manage to squeeze in if your French fries before you hastily start for the door. You try to put on your coat; it is a rather blustery day, but it won’t zipper up all the way and fits you much more snuggly than it used to. Now you have a mere two minutes to cross the street and race up the stairs through the throng of students. When you finally get to class, the late bell has already rung, and you are out of breath. Your teacher decides that taking five points off your essay due today is reasonable punishment. Students are to stay away from fast food restaurants during a school day due to them serving unhealthy food, delaying students from school, and lacking enough space.

     Fast food is extremely unhealthy. Eating foods with such high fat content everyday can cause health issues such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. A double cheese burger from a popular fast food chain contains 421 calories and 21 grams of fat! In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of teenagers who struggle with obesity. Students with health issues have difficulty with their school work and are often unable to participate in all the activities that they wish to. For example, according to www.americansportsdata.com/obesity stats. asp, between 1962 and 2000, the number of obese American grew from 13% to an alarming 31% of the population. 63% of Americans are over weight with a BMI in excess of 25. The most shocking of all is that obesity is responsible for over 300,000 deaths nationwide each year!

     In addition, students return late to class after eating at the fast food place across from school. When students come to class late, they are not only taking away from themselves, but they are disrupting the students who were on time. Students who are not punctual are often unprepared as well. They may have forgotten about an assignment because they are too concerned with spending time with their friends. Teachers get annoyed with students who are not punctual and careless. Also, class time is taken advantage of when teachers are forced to discipline students for their tardiness instead of educating.

     Not all students can fit into the fast food place at once. This leads to long lines, disputes, and shambles. Teenagers often become rowdy due to their lack of patience. Nobody wants irritated kids hanging around. Students will often crowd around the outside of the restaurant, disrupting the daily traffic. When lots of people are confined in a small area, problems will most likely arouse. For instance, on the popular television show 'Survivor', people are forced to live together for 39 days in basically the middle of nowhere. Many disputes occur after being stock together for so long. When there are too many high school students in one small restaurant they will not get along.

     In conclusion, students should be prohibited from going to the fast food restaurant during school hours since fast food is extremely unhealthy, students return late to class, and there is not enough room for everyone. Nobody wants to witness another generation of young America deal with obesity and struggle through their schoolwork. The future of this nation needs to be healthy and well-prepared to take on whatever challenges they may face, and a fast food restaurant will most certainly not help that cause.  

The Internet: Pros and Cons

     The amazingly rapid development of the Internet has provided people with multiple uses they did not previously even dream of. The imperfections of this revolutionary technology are equally valuable for individual users, companies, and institutions. The Internet is a unique information resource for scholars who can use it as an efficient tool for research work. Business people cannot function without it, as they benefit largely from marketing and promoting services on the Internet. Physicians log on to acquire knowledge about diseases and the latest medications. Ordinary people find the Internet a really effective channel of communication with other users around the globe. They establish new relationships online, both personal and professional. Some are even reported to have found their future partners on the net while others take advantage of shopping, banking, or bill-paying possibilities. In short, the Internet has opened up the door to a completely new reality. 

     The Internet channels run in many directions, and users never know where their journey will end. What many of them often ignore is the dark side of such a captivating invention. Problems crop up when the computer world takes over the real world. Some users develop out-of-control behavioral pattern that may threaten their regular lives. Many have attributed it to Internet addiction where user's attachment to his or her computer overshadows and replaces reality. Computer addicts prefer to relate to their silent machine rather than their families and friends. While expanding their electronic horizons, they automatically isolate themselves from real-life relationships. As a result of such Internet abuse, friendships may weaken, family ties may fall apart, and promising careers may collapse.

     The most frequent cases of Internet addiction are home users. On average, they spend about forty hours a week online, absorbed in non-academic or non-business search. It is believed that obsessive net surfing can be as addictive as other popular activities, including smoking, gambling, and shopping. Once they are "hooked," Internet addicts display typical symptoms of addictive behavior, such as loss of control over limiting the time they spend on the net.

     In contrast to addiction, the Internet has its positive and negative sides. However, the borderline between them seems to be almost invisible. The most exciting aspect of Internet communication revolves around the fact that the user's identity is kept unknown. The user feels free and comfortable, acting in a way he or she would never do in real life. Many users usually gain a sense of acceptance from people they have never met before. Those with low self-esteem or those who feel unattractive or shy find it very easy to build their self-confidence and have a sense of importance online.

Pro-Con Essay: Shopping Trends

     Nowadays, more and more small local shops are closing down because a great majority of people prefer to drive to huge shopping centers. According to some surveys, about 60% of families regularly do their weekly shopping in very large chain-stores famous worldwide. Such a tendency raises the logical question: Why is shopping at hypermarkets so popular?

     Many people consider shopping a pleasant way of spending their leisure time in fashionable places. Families usually go to shopping centers on weekends and spend long hours walking round, examining items, looking for bargains, comparing prices, drinking refreshments, or having their meals at the store cafeteria.

     Hypermarkets are well-stocked with all sorts of products. They offer a wide choice of well-exhibited goods,arranged in specific departments where customers can easily find almost everything they are looking for. They can buy food, clothes, shoes, cosmetics, sports, equipment, toys, books, household appliances, and many other products-all under one roof with no waste of time at all.

     Furthermore, goods in hypermarkets are generally fresher and at better deals than those in small  local shops. Due to the fact that large quantities are sold, they are immediately replaced with new products. A lot of them are sold off at lower rates. Bargain hunters can save a lot of money on things which are on special offers. If customers buy something they are not satisfied with, they have the right to return it and get their money back. They can also choose the method of payment: either in cash, by checks, or by credit cards. In most hypermarkets, it is possible to buy an article by regular installments. This means that people can make monthly payments for it over a period of time.

     Hypermarkets are open until late in the evening all days of the week. Some of them remain open day and night. This is very convenient for people who work late as they can simply do all their shopping in one place after working hours without moving from one shop to another.

     With all the above advantages, it is not surprising why hypermarkets attract more and more shoppers. Yet, hypermarkets, by all their nature of business, will never provide shoppers with one thing: intimate relations with customers. Those shoppers, who are in favor of such service, should stick to their local small shops.

Cause-Effect Essay: Student-Teacher Relationship

    Student-Teacher relationship has always been that complex and controversial issue among different experts in education and psychology. As a result of such complexity, different problems and complications between the two (teacher and student) always impose themselves and embitter the relationship which has to be solved through respect, love, and understanding.

    To begin with, disciplinary problems are a main cause for an unhealthy relationship between the teacher and his students. The former feels irritated as his students cause chaos and trouble in class. The latter feel bored, disengaged and totally disinterested. In this sense, lack of attention and concentration seems to be a logical outlet for them. After all “any compulsory knowledge will never stick in the brain”. To solve this problem, a teacher has to motivate and activate her/his students in the class. Instead of lecturing, the teacher should interact with students and let them be the center of the learning teaching process. Here, every one shares, innovates and feels important.

    Personal and social problems might be another cause of conflict between teachers and students. A student may have different personal and family problems that impede him from being attentive and creative. Every now and then, a student might feel distracted and illusional. Here starts the role of the teacher who has got to be father and a friend whose role is to infuse the student with confidence will-power, respect, and care. And it is so evident that a helpless student will highly appreciate his teacher’s love and care and will definitely change and become better.

    Finally, by depending on traditional, old fashioned methods, some teachers create educational problems with their students. In other words, these teachers do not use the proper methods and teaching styles necessary to motivate students and “put them under a totality of effect.” Consequently, classes become boring. If teachers observe and evaluate themselves every now and then, it will be very possible for them to create a lively and healthy class atmosphere where every one is more or less motivated and activated.

    In all, teaching is an art, a creative one, where teachers and students blend together to create harmony and balance if they interact in a loving and understanding atmosphere.

Cause-Effect: The Generation Gap

    To put it in simple terms, the generation gap-a broad difference between one generation and another, especially between young people and their parents-leads to a problem which is as old as the hills. One may wonder why this problem has been unresolved throughout the ages. There are some reasons for that.

    Psychologists believe that most young people experience conflict during their adolescence. They are neither children anymore nor yet adults, but individuals who are desperately searching for self-identity. As they grow up, they adopt values that differ from those held by their parents, and develop an unfavorable attitude toward the adult world because it symbolizes “the skin they hope to shed away.”

    Conflicts actually arise because young people feel that they have a right to be independent. They look at parents as “enemies” who do not let them live the way they want to-staying out late, wearing fashionable clothes, or choosing their own friends. What makes things even worse is that teenagers suffer a sense of incapability and rage as they realize that financially they still depend on their parents, and they would not have a nice party or a holiday without their parents’ approval and support.

    The period of adolescence is closely connected to making important life decisions, such as choosing a career path. That is precisely where the trouble lies. Young people are told that they have the world at their feet, that dazzling future opportunities are just waiting to be seized. However, when they finally decide that they want to work, say, as music players instead of majoring in medicine or law, their parents tear out hair and seem to be heartbroken.

    Difficulties in relationships with parents may in certain cause lead to such serious problems as drinking alcohol or taking drugs, refusing to attend school, running away from home, or even turning to violence. In such cases, parental threatening and yelling usually don’t work. It seems that the best way to put matters straight is to take a middle course. Parents should take the initiative to start a calm, serious discussion with their children in which they treat the latter more or less as “partners” in decision-making. They should also keep in mind that if teenagers feel neglected in the most agitated time of their lives, they may lose them altogether.

Paragraph Unity and Coherence

Paragraphs should have both coherence and unity. A paragraph with unity develops a single idea thoroughly and links it to the rest of the paper. Paragraph coherence is achieved when sentences are ordered in a logical manner and when clear transitions link sentences.

Paragraph unity:

• Develop a paragraph around a major idea. Express this idea in the topic sentence.
• Make the relationship between the main idea of the paragraph and the thesis of the paper clear. Don’t assume that the reader will “get it.” Spell it out for him/her. 
• Support the main idea of the paragraph with details.
• Create separate paragraphs for those details that explore your topic from different perspectives.
• Eliminate sentences that do not support the main idea. Alternately, you may revise the main idea to include those sentences.

Look at the following examples from a paper that has the thesis: “Despite the amount of foreign aid pouring in, social conditions in Zeeland remain bleak because the aid is used for military purposes.”

Example 1 (without unity)

Robert Bee wrote, “The Zeeland massacre illustrates the need for greater control and vigilance.” This is related to the thesis. Some 20,000 people disappeared from the villages. Financial mishandling can lead to great misfortune. Corruption in the government was exposed repeatedly to no avail. A police force, under orders to eliminate suspected terrorists, grabbed political dissidents and their families.

Example 2 (unified)

The pogrom of May 3, 1987 exemplifies how foreign aid funds were appropriated for repressive rather than social development purposes. On that day, some 20,000 people were abducted from villages in the countryside, charged as traitors and summarily executed. Then governor-for-life Zeely Zeelafsun had recently used $5 billion in aid to create a standing paramilitary police force. Without some restrictive control over the aid, human rights organizations were unable to prevent the buildup and unleashing of this disaster. Robert Bee, the director of the Development as Freedom Foundation wrote, “The Zeeland massacre illustrates the need for greater control and vigilance.”

In the first paragraph it is hard to tell what the topic sentence is, let alone how all the sentences belong together. The reader is not informed who Robert Bee is. The words “related to” in the second sentence don’t give the reader any sense of what the relationship is. The second paragraph provides a tight topic sentence that links the main idea of the paragraph to the central argument of the paper. It eliminates details that do not fall under the topic and adds details that are relevant to the reader’s understanding of the events and their relation to foreign aid.

Paragraph coherence:

Decide on an order for your sentences that will best develop the paragraph’s main idea. Your supporting sentences are raw materials. They will not make sense to a reader unless they are put in order.

This order could be based on several factors:

• Chronological sequence. This is useful for describing a sequence of events.
• Modified chronology. Sometimes a major idea presented early in a paragraph can be supplemented with necessary background information.
• Spatial position of different objects. This method is useful for description. ‘Conversation’ between different experts. By moving between a series of key positions, a writer can establish a sense of dialogue and develop a complex argument.
• Logical form of argument. Some form of logical proof, like a syllogism, can serve as the basis for order.

Once you have put your sentences in order, express the connections between them with transitional words or phrases. Think of these as signposts to guide the reader through your paragraph. They should be clear.

Examples (transitions in bold):

1) Chronological sequence

Topic sentence: Our journey was filled with misfortune and luck.

• After the car broke, we had to walk several miles.
• Having eaten little for lunch, we were soon wearied. 
• While we wanted to continue toward town, we had to rest. 
• It was at that moment that a trucker offered us a ride.

2) Expert Conversation

Topic sentence: Karl Marx and Michel Foucault produced influential and superficially similar but ultimately conflicting understandings of the way that power struggles determine truth.

• Marx, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, asserted that truth was the product of conflicts between classes, or groups of people positioned differently in historical economic power arrangements.          
• While agreeing with Marx’s recognition of the way that power struggles and history alter truth, Foucault was more skeptical about Marx’s identification of classes as the primary actors in the struggle.
• Instead, Foucault suggested that an examination of the claims made about sexuality and appropriate punishments revealed a complex give and take between various social groups and interests, all of which sought to establish dominance by controlling meaning.
• Marxist critics of Foucault argue in response that removing the focus from class eliminates a broad view of social conflict necessary to seeing how economic and political changes shape our everyday understanding.

Essay on "A Person Who Influenced Me The Most"

My Grandma

    Have you ever imagined how your life would be different if a key person were not in it, like a mother, father, spouse, or child? Some people are so integral to making us who we are that without them, our very identity would be changed. My grandmother is a key figure in my life who has left an indelible impression on me. She is a woman of great influence because of her stability, her work ethic, and her independent spirit. 

    Grandma is the matriarch of our family. Because she has a close relationship with us and a great deal of wisdom, her seven children and sixteen grandchildren often seek her out for advice. We look to her for advice on everything from how to potty train a toddler to how to break up with a boyfriend. Grandma relishes the fact that we ask her for advice, but she never offers it without being sought out. She is like a rock: never-changing. My own parents got divorced when I was twelve, but I always knew that Grandma's house was a source of stability when the rest of my world seemed tumultuous. This sense of security has helped me face other challenges as they come along in life, like when we moved during my freshman year of high school. 

    Grandma also inspired me to pursue my goals. Because of the trials she faced without shrinking back, I am able to have the strength to work hard and try to realize my dreams. Grandma didn't have it easy. Because she was a single parent from a fairly young age, offices to save for her children's college educations. She received no help from the outside and was totally independent from her own family's help. Grandma always stressed the importance of education to all of us in achieving our goals. Grandma's example of hard work and her emphasis on education have strengthened me to pursue a college degree, and eventually a PhD. Even though I will have to work to get through school, I know that if Grandma worked while raising seven children alone, I can handle taking care of myself. Her tireless example is truly inspirational. She has also encouraged me in my chose career, teaching, because she feels it will blend well with family life when I eventually have my own children. 

    Perhaps the most significant legacy Grandma has left me is her example of always voicing her opinion despite what people would say behind her back. In an age where segregation in social circles was common, Grandma's dinners after church on Sundays would look like a United Nations meeting. She would include all races and nationalities, and became close friends with a very diverse group of people. If someone tried to put down another race, she would quickly voice her disagreement. This refusal to be swayed by "popular" opinion had a huge impact on me, and is a guiding principle in my life today. 

    I certainly would not be the person I am today, inside or out, without the influence of my grandmother upon my life. I can only aspire to imitate her stability, her work ethic, and her refusal to be silenced by other people's disapproval.  
              

Persuasive Essay: Gardening for Community Needs

    Have you ever wondered where your food comes from? Say you ate a tomato at lunch today. That tomato was probably grown on a farm in another state, planted and harvested by a farmer you do not know. The farmer was paid for each tomato he or she sold. Then, the tomatoes were driven in a truck cross-country to a grocery store that is owned by someone else you don’t know. By the time that tomato reached you, it had passed through hundreds of hands and collected lots of germs and unhealthy pesticides. It is extremely important to know where your food is coming from. Making space for a community garden is essential because it would encourage unity in the community, save money, and promote a healthy lifestyle. 

     First, a community garden is an easy and effective way to encourage community bonding. You probably walk by the same people everyday on your way to school, but you don’t have any reason to talk to them. If there were a community garden, you would share experiences with other people to work towards a common goal of harvesting fruits and vegetables. Many of my friends live in my neighborhood, but if there were a community-wide project, then I could meet people from other neighborhoods too. A community garden would also provide a safe space to interact. It is important for people from different backgrounds to work together to create something. A community garden is exactly the type of thing that unites a community. For example, when I was eight years old, some people wanted a new playground at the elementary school. Instead of hiring a company to install it, the community came together to build an amazing wooden playground. We not only saved lots of money and materials, but we became the only school on the north side with a wooden playground. Students from other schools came to play and I made many new friends this way.

     Another reason to have a community garden is to save money. The mayor of Lilburn, Eleanor Markin, is in favor of a community garden. She says,”Not only is a community garden a perfect way to build goodwill between people, but it is extremely economical.” Instead of paying other people to grow our food, we could do it ourselves. The initial cost for clearing out the space and getting materials and tools may seem high, but research shows it really isn’t. We will spend less than two-thirds of what we would spend hiring other people to do this work for us. If we save money this way, we could invest more in other programs.

     In addition to making the community more close-knit and money-saving, a community garden also promotes healthy eating and a better lifestyle. Food grown in a community garden is very healthy and natural. It is much healthier than fast food, which a lot of people eat because it is cheap. If there were a garden that people in the community were responsible for, then healthy food would be readily available for a fair price. According to Randal Leekhelm, directer of the Community Garden Coalition,”When people are connected to their food, it encourages them to eat healthily.” Gardening is a simple and easy way to promote good eating habits. Also, the U.S Center for Disease Control and Prevention released statistics that say 40% of adults and 23% of children do not get enough exercise. Exercising is a very effective way to stay healthy. Caring for the garden would require a lot of bending, lifting, and shoveling. What better way is there to exercise than working in the garden?

     The goal of a community garden is to make people more active and aware of what they put into their bodies. If people got into the habit of working into a garden, it would quickly become a favored way to spend their time. Come to the garden on Saturday, October 4. Demand that the city council make space for a community garden. It is important to bring the community together and promote a healthier lifestyle. 

Narrative Essay: A Terrifying Adventure

    Fear can change a person; here is how it changed me when I was ten. It was my friend Phil’s birthday. A few of our friends were planning to spend the night camping in the forest behind his house. The mid June air had grown humid earlier in the day, and the evening brought little relief. Soon, dusk approached. 

     We pitched our tent in a soft, grassy clearing surrounded by several towering trees. This spot was about a quarter mile from Phil’s house.

 “This is the perfect spot,” Phil explained. “The ground will be really comfortable for us to sleep on.”

 “Looks good to me,” I said as we loaded our sleeping bags and supplies into the tent.

     We pictured ourselves as fearless adventurers in a deep jungle, spending a night in the forest by ourselves. 

Little did we know our bravery would soon be called into question. 

Starting up at the roof of the tent, we could see the outline of the trees that stretched above us. After dark the forest stirred with a bit of activity. Otherwise, the night remained very peaceful.

     Later, we decided to tell scary stories about creepy monsters. With each story the idea of an entire night in the woods grew scarier, too. Suddenly, we heard a soft whoosh, followed by a loud thump! A mysterious shadow flashed onto the top of our tent. Screaming in terror, we scrambled out of our sleeping bags. Sprinting furiously back towards Phil’s house, we felt certain that we had narrowly avoided an attack.

 When we arched the house safely, Phil’s father set out to search the area.

 He returned with some surprising and embarrassing news. 

 “What was it? Did you find it?” we inquired anxiously.

 “Yes, I think I found the culprit,” he said smiling. “ When I got their, the neighbor’s cat was climbing up into the tree above your tent,” he chuckled.

 “She must have fallen out of the tree and given you a scare.”

 “Oh. How strangely hilarious!” Phil exclaimed.

     The mystery had been solved. However, we all sheepishly admitted that we had no desire to return to the tent. We slept safely and peacefully inside the house. We were the brave survivors of a harrowing adventure. In conclusion, I learned an invaluable lesson about the causes and effects of fear. 

Argumentative Essay: Unrivaled Teaching Methodology

    Has the thought of replacing books in schools by tablets ever occurred to you? Have you ever imagined how using a tablet in class could improve the performance of students? Do tablets actually help students academically instead of distracting them? It has been proven that 73% of students have shown improvement in their academic work since the introduction of tablets in their classes. Allowing the use of tablets in classrooms rather than books is a controversial issue that some people agree to, while others don’t. Substituting books by tablets is a privilege that would show an immense improvement in classes.

     The use of tablets in classrooms instead of books offer students many facilities and features that books are limited to. Tablets provide millions of ebooks rich with information that could never be found in one book. Also, tablets supply students with images, videos, audio, and interactive features, not to mention that they allow students to highlight texts, take notes in margins, and even access a dictionary directly within the book itself. This way, tablets are surpassing everything a traditional book can offer. For example, if a student has a certain research, he would be obliged to go to the library, look up several books, waste a lot of time. However, when using a tablet, he could get what he needs with one click!!

     On the other hand, tablets enormously improve learning. Students are attracted to technology, so studying from a tablet would attract them to the lesson. In addition, students would become more engaged in classroom discussions when using a tablet as well as participate more. Facts state that 60% of school faculty thought that students were motivated by lessons that incorporate the tablets than those that didn’t. Moreover, 69% of students feel that using the tablets motivate them and that they work better with tablets than without them. Also, 73% of students feel that tablets help them improve the quality of their work.

     It is claimed that tablets harm student’s health when used recurrently. Students might suffer from eye strain, back pain and wrist pain. It is true that tablets hurt the eyes and cause other health problems. However, books cause bigger ones. When a student is bending over to read from a book, his back and neck are being exposed to danger. Also, when a student is lugging a bag full of books back and forth from class to home everyday, he is thoroughly causing the defection of his back and spinal cord. Furthermore, many books offer texts with a very small font that would eventually hurt the eyes of students. Almost, 70% of students suffer from back pain as a result of carrying books, and bending over them, and almost 30% of those are scarred for life...

     In conclusion, tablets are a great evolution to the schools academic systems since they offer several features as well as amend student’s learning. School administrations must take into consideration what is best for their students which is definitely introducing tablets as a way of education, for who knows, might tablets be the light of a bright future education?  

Essay on Books

    Books are of different types. Some of them are useful and delightful while others are not. The exact value of books is greatly related to their content and purpose. 

     Francis Bacon, a famous English essayist, classifies books into three categories in his formal essay “Of studies”: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.” In other words, some books should be read in parts; others hastily, without much concentration and attention; and some few thoroughly and steadily.

    In essence, books are used as a source of knowledge and information; they are also used as a source of pleasure and amusement. As a source of knowledge, books are considered valuable stores and treasures of information, wisdom and moral advice, for they widen the horizon of the reader’s thoughts, deepen the meaning of his life and enrich his experience. By reading a useful book in the field of history or science, for instance, one can learn a lot about past generations and live with the most honest people of past centuries. In fact, a valuable book is to the mind as nourishing food is to the body. As a source of delight, there is no companion like a good book, specially when one feels lonely and sad. One can drive evil thoughts, anxiety and boredom out of one’s mind by reading an entertaining book. This certainly relates to the positive side of books.

    As regards the negative side, there are books that are very dangerous to read, for they poison the reader’s thoughts and spoil his character. Examples of such books are those on crimes, violence and immoral or indecent behavior. Books of this category are a waste of time, specially to our children; they may instill evil thoughts in their minds and, subsequently, affect their behavior adversely. Consequently, parents should be very careful and cautious when selecting books for their children.

    In conclusion, books, if well selected, can be regarded not only as faithful friends but also as unfathomable wells of knowledge. Although they cannot control the length of our lives, they, undoubtedly, can control their width and depth, thus rendering them more meaningful and enjoyable.

Essay on Happiness

     All  people struggle in their lives for the attainment of a single cause, namely happiness. Happiness is defined in Webster's dictionary as the state of well-being and satisfaction. Out of this definition, which seems to be too general and comprehensive, people tend to offer their own interpretations. Some people believe that happiness exists wherever there is money. Others disagree, maintaining the view that the supreme and ultimate source of happiness lies in the prosperity and glory of one's country where the citizen can live happily and freely. A third group of people holds the view that true happiness lies in the acquirement of knowledge, high diplomas and social positions. As for me, I believe that true happiness exists in the power of extracting it from common things. To support my point of view, the following example may be considered a good case in point.

      Once there lived on the banks of the River Dee a miller who was the happiest man in England. He was always singing as he worked all day long in his mill. His cheerfulness made everybody cheerful.  People talked about him so much so that the king himself heard about him and decided to visit him. This visit the king wanted to pay to the miller in order to discover the secret of his joy and happiness. As the king stepped inside the dusty mill, he heard the miller singing,

"I envy no-body, no, not I!

For I am as happy as I can be;

And no-body envies me."

      When the king asked the miller about his cheerfulness, the latter answered, "I earn my own bread; I love my wife and my children; I love my friends and they love me; and I owe not a penny to any man. Why should I not be happy?" Thus, the dusty mill brought happiness to the miller, while the golden crown brought trouble to the king.

      All in all, what is happiness for one person may not be so for another. One spends his life running after wealth; another seeks glory; and a third one runs after knowledge and social positions. To the first, happiness is wealth; to the second, glory; and to the third, position. However, I believe that none of these three people is really happy. They all still complain, at one time or another, of the heavy burdens of life although they possess what they want. Does this mean that happiness is a mirage or a daydream never to come true? Undoubtedly, happiness does exist, and it knocks at every door, saying to man, "Here I am, at your service, sir. Just relax, and find me inside you."

      In conclusion, it is inside that happiness dwells. Happiness can be extracted from the simplest and commonest things in life. One finds it if he does his work honestly driven by a noble motive. One finds it when he opens his heart to people in sincerity, love and trust, as well as when he proves to be dependable, responsible, conscientious and cooperative. Then jealousy, hatred, dishonesty and all other bad traits that poison one's life will disappear, and will give way to happiness that dwells there in peace.