Assuming Things Creates Many Problems

Author’s Note: This piece is my spring district writing assessment. The topic that I am writing about is how as humans, we can’t assume anything in life. I am going to be connecting several life scenarios to a short story in literature. Look for an overall improvements in this piece from my district piece in the fall. I am going to work on the correctly using commas and colons in my writing. 

Our brain is contently taking on many different tasks. Sometimes they are very large tasks and sometimes they are small. When the brain takes in several smaller tasks at one time, it sometimes bypasses the task and just assumes that someone knows how to do the specific task or that it will get done on its own. Often times in life people assume things when they shouldn’t. Sometimes the thought of assuming can turn out to be a good thing, but most of the time it goes wrong. Assuming that something will get done or that you are right is a poor habit that many people in this country have, and due to people assuming things major events have occurred that have ended up costing people their lives.  

In our country, the President is a major political figure and popular name. In office, the President has a major responsibility on his hands: he has to take care of our country through good times and bad. Some people aren’t happy with how the President runs the country, and that causes people to make threats on the life of the President.  Today these threats are taken very seriously, but back in the 1800’s they weren’t. Though, back in the mid 1800’s, we assumed that the President was safe and that no one would want to assassinate him. It was not until 1865 when the first assassination of a President occurred.  Within the next 40 years, two more Presidents would be assassinated in office.  The assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 was the turning point of security for the President.  From this day on, lots of money would be spent to help keep the President safe wherever he is.  Assuming that the President is safe has caused a lot of trouble; four lives have been taken, but the security has improved and now we know that the President is safer than ever.   

The safety of the President is always something that people used to assume, but for a while people assumed that sporting events and local places were safe too. It was back in the day when people could go to a professional sporting event or to the local gathering place and not have to worry about anything.  But now because of all of the violence in the world, you cannot go to a professional sports game without being searched for some sort of weapon. Just recently, there were the bombings at the Boston Marathon. This tells you that supporting a runner on the streets of Boston isn’t safe anymore. Also, threats have been made of bombing the Olympics, so there has been an increased amount of security at these events.  Plus fans have gotten beaten up and shot after sporting events, and the injuries have been very severe and sometimes fatal. Recently there was a shooting outside the Empire State Building in New York City. Several people were injured and killed.  This occurred in broad daylight on the streets of the most populated city in our country.  Times have changed, the development of weapons has changed, and now many places that we love to go to are no longer safe.  

The short story “Humans are Different” has the a similar theme of don’t assume anything. The story is about a robot who is on a field trip to an inner planet.  There, the robot meets the last human ever to exist. The robot and the human grow to become good friends during their time together.  But one day the human gets sick. The robot said that he would try to fix the human. So the robot tried to fix him as if he was a robot, by performing the steps of fixing the robot on the human. The robot jammed a needle into the back of the human’s neck, the human turned off, like the robot planned. Then the robot opened the human up and realized that the human was built different inside. The robot ended up killing the human, when he didn’t mean to. The robot assumed the human was built the same way he was, so he tried fixing him as if he was a robot, and it ended up costing him a good friend.   

In our daily lives, there are too many times that people make assumptions. Whether they assume that someone else will get the report done, or make the catch in baseball, they assume that the specific task will get done by another person. Too often your brain gets overwhelmed with thoughts that are both big and small. Your brain makes assumptions with the smaller thoughts, so it can make room for the more important tasks. It is always important to confirm that you are right instead of assuming, because if you don’t something could go wrong.