It still sticks with me. If I have a problem expressing a sentence, I sometimes get out of it by asking myself "How would I diagram this sentence?" And it always helps me sort out subject vs. object nouns and pronouns. I don't say this publicly out of a desire not to seem arrogant, but my general attitude is "If you don't know how to diagram your own sentence, then you don't know what the fuck you are saying."
It still sticks with me. If I have a problem expressing a sentence, I sometimes get out of it by asking myself "How would I diagram this sentence?" And it always helps me sort out subject vs. object nouns and pronouns. I don't say this publicly out of a desire not to seem arrogant, but my general attitude is "If you don't know how to diagram your own sentence, then you don't know what the fuck you are saying."