This I Believe: Life Lessons Read Online Free PDF

That’s exactly what it was like for me to learn how to read. Letters and words were scrambled and out of sequence. Nothing made sense, because I’m dyslexic.
    Solving the Rubik’s Cube has made me believe that sometimes you have to take a few steps back to move forward. This was a mirror of my own life when I had to leave public school after the fourth grade. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I still couldn’t consistently spell my full name correctly.
    As a fifth-grader at a new school, specializing in what’s called language processing disorder, I had to start over. Memorizing symbols for letters, I learned the pieces of the puzzle of language, the phonemes that make up words. I spent the next four years learning how to learn and finding strategies that allowed me to return to my district’s high school with the ability to communicate my ideas and express my intelligence.
    It took me four weeks to teach myself to solve the cube—the same amount of time it took the inventor, Erno Rubik. Now, I can easily solve the 3 × 3 × 3, the 4 × 4 × 4, and the Professor’s Cube, the 5 × 5 × 5. I discovered that just before a problem is solved it can look like a mess, and then suddenly you can find the solution. I believe that progress comes in unexpected leaps.
    Early in my Rubik’s career, I became so frustrated that I took the cube apart and rebuilt it. I believe that sometimes you have to look deeper and in unexpected places to find answers. I noticed that I can talk or focus on other things and still solve the cube. There must be an independent part of my brain at work, able to process information.
    The Rubik’s Cube taught me that to accomplish something big, it helps to break the problem down into small pieces. I learned that it’s important to spend a lot of time thinking, to try to find connections and patterns. I believe that there are surprises around the corner. And, that the cube and I are more than the sum of our parts.
    Like a difficult text or sometimes like life itself, the Rubik’s Cube can be a frustrating puzzle. So I carry a cube in my backpack as a reminder that I can attain my goals, no matter what obstacles I face.
    And did I mention that being able to solve the cube is surprisingly impressive to girls?
    William Tyler Wissemann was raised in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He will graduate from Bard College with dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in computer science and photography in May 2012. Mr. Wissemann was honored to be asked to present his essay and demonstrate the Rubik’s Cube at College Night at the Walters Art Museum in 2009.

I Have to See the World

    Veena Muthuraman
    Saint Augustine once said, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” Me, I want to read the entire library.
    I believe in going places. I believe in getting out of my apartment and into my car or a plane and going to see a totally new place. I want to see the world in all its glory, with my own eyes and in the flesh; television and Google Earth just won’t do. I believe that travel opens one’s mind to new cultures and perspectives; it affords one a broader vision of life, a vision that does not come by sitting within the four walls of one’s home.
    I grew up in a small city in southern India. I was all of seven years old when we went to visit my grandparents for my monthlong summer vacation. Until then, my world consisted of our small apartment and our bustling city surrounded by pristine beaches, coconut groves, and misty mountains. I was aware of the existence of a different world beyond home, but surely I didn’t want to spend my vacation in some backward village in a rural district of an alien state. We boarded a state transport bus, and I sat by the window, sulking.
    Soon I noticed the wetlands giving away to parched land. The cities we were passing now were more crowded than the ones we left behind; people were