You're a college student. Your grades haven't been very high, but now you want to get better grades so that you can graduate with honors. You're talking to your academic advisor. You say:
Hopefully I can bring my GPA up to at least a 3.0 this semester.
You're talking to someone at a party. You start to talk about what subjects you studied in college. You studied Political Science, but after you graduated you didn't find a job related to that field. Instead, you have a low-paying job as a waiter. You want to express a little regret that you studied Political Science, so you say:
I wish I'd studied something a little more practical.
Your department is working on a long-term project that is supposed to be completed two days from now. One of your employees comes to your office to tell you that there is a problem, and he thinks the project will be delayed an extra 3 or 4 days. You are angry because you think that someone should have warned you of the delay before this point. You tell him:
I wish you'd told me sooner.
I wish it would stop raining.
rain, small talk, weather, wish 