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Friday 4 May 2012

Essays!

I am deeply exhausted by the sample essays I've read so far on the SAT study guide online. My classmate told me, rather optimistically that the American examiners are open and essays will not be marked based on any sort of structure. However it seems to me that most of the essays that garnered full marks often quote literature and personal anecdotes as examples, and follow an expository, one side one stand structure. This is rather against my beliefs as I am rather skeptical that 'truth' and 'wisdom' can be rationally obtained from literary writers who have innate bias-ness. To put it quite simply, books that are romanticized as truly portraying the 'human condition', do not impress me at all. Rather, learning from history and current affairs is the way to go for me. Personally, no anecdote of any individual should be considered a true and critical analysis of the 'human condition'. What a small sample size you're concluding from! And by God, from popular fiction! Granted, it is derived from observation and experience of real humans, but are these value judgements not magnified through an author's subjective lens?

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