1st Practice Essay...Feedback/Score Please!

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
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<p>So...I'm taking the SAT for the first time Saturday, and this is the one and only practice essay I've written. I'd love any feedback and a grade.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>Prompt:
Do you think that ease does not challenge us and that we need adversity to help us discover who we are?</p>

<p>Only through adversity does one truly examine his or her self. Throughout the history of our nation, African Americans have been challenged by unequal rights and racial adversity. By facing these challenges, African Americans have learned more about themselves than anyone not placed in a similar challenge. Likewise, in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," Atticus Finch faces persecution when he decides to defend a black man, but it is through this difficult decision his morals are revealed. Challenges place one on a crossroad at which he or she has to pick which path to travel, and that decision evinces one's true self.</p>

<pre><code>In 1960s America, black were thought of, at large, as a subservient class. "Separate but Equal" laws left over from the Jim Crow era equated that black men and women were to live in a separate, yet largely unequal, sphere. They faced challenge daily, whether it be in schooling, work or even routine life. African Americans could have simply accepted this as fate, but many did not. Rosa Parks declined from the rule that African Americans must sin the backs of the buses and give seats to white folks. She heroically retained her seat in the front of the bus and, by doing so, discovered not only that she was equal to white, but that she had the strength to challenge faulty laws. Had she never had to face challenge, she would never be forced to make such crucial decisions.

Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" met similar racial challenges in the 1950s South. When a black man was falsely accused of raping a white woman, he recognized the grave injustice and took it upon himself to defend the black man. He was persecuted for taking this stance by the white people in his area, yet he did not step down. Through this tough challenge, Atticus Finch discovered he would not simply abide by racial law, and that his morals come before appeasement.

Truly, challenges teach each one of us greater truth about ourselves. It would be easy for a white man in the South to have declared he'd defend the "right," but only when he is faced with the adversity this defending brings with it can he really learn his true morals. It'd have been easy for Atticus Finch or Rosa Parks to have accepted the system, yet the fact that they didn't displays the true strength of their characters. Through these heroic figures negative experiences, their true persona is revealed not only to bystanders but also to they themselves.
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<p>Please? Any feedback at all would be really helpful!</p>

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<p>If you grade mine, I'll grade yours!</p>

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<p>Im no expert on essays, but I've heard that a lot of people use the civil rights movement in their essay and so it might be better to try something different so the graders are more intrigued.</p>

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<p>Does intriguing the readers really matter? I've always heard that they grade like a machine, so what your topics are doesn't really matter at all.</p>

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<p>11 due to some errors in word usage, so it can't be a perfect 12</p>

<p>however, logic and analysis are all there
you related everything back to your thesis</p>

<p>until i got to your 3rd paragraph, i thought, uh-oh, s/he didn't deal with the other half of her thesis (ease) when explaining each exmple. But then you dealt with "ease" with the two together, so that was nice.</p>

<p>I liked the contrast between Rosa and Atticus, two sides of the same era in history. Two from differnt races yet saw fit to challenge.
If you knew even more about Rosa's bio, you could also include that she was by personality a mild-mannered individual who worked for the NAACP as their volunteer secretary. She might have also learned other character=building traits this way, because she didn't act alone but with the support of others in that organization. It was also very scary...did you know, her husband's first words upon learning she'd been arrested was, "Did they beat her?" (at the police station) because that would've been expected.</p>

<p>BTW, who out there keeps teaching hs kids that Rosa sat at the front of the bus? She sat in the middle but in the last row reserved for white people. At the time she sat down, had no other whites boarded she could have kept that seat but as it got more and more crowded, her row suddenly "flipped" so that she had to give it up. The driver came back to yell at her.
The challenges certainly predate the day of the not-giving-up-the-seat. Like other blacks in those times, Rosa had to get onto the bus, pay her fare up front, get off the bus and reboard from the center of the bus.
That particular bus driver kknew her, and was in the habit of letting her get off onto the street after paying and then driving away! So she'd have to pay again to the next bus...
That was the same driver (whom she knew, and knew how nasty he was personally) who was driving her regular route. Isn't it amazig that she still held her ground, knowing that he was the same driver.</p>

<p>It is a more progressive way to describe Rosa to understand that she did all this as part of a group, a local chapter of the NAACP, who was ready to challenge the situation. She was not a stranger to the ideas of civil rights. She knew she had a circle of support.</p>

<p>Nonethless, it can be mighty scarey to face down a bus full of people plus the bus driver telling her to MOVE.</p>

<p>As more evidenc e of how challenging it all was, as the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court, she found it necessary to leave her home community and move to Michigan, where she worked for a progressive congressman until she died of old age. It was with great regret that she left the community, especially her brother, and it was due to the many threats against her as the case worked its way up the courts.
A whole other aspect of Rosa is her connection to Martin luther King, of course..but that's another story.
I always liked Atticus Finch. I would have liked it if you'd painted the picture a bit more, that he was an established lawyer in his community with young children and no wife, so everything depended on his success as a young lawyer. He, too, had a lot on the line when he bucked the system to defend the black client. Rosa had everything to gain, but Atticus had everything to lose.</p>

<p>And, yeesh, I can't imagine why one wouldn't write about the civil rights movement! I do think there is more detail to had on Rosa...her autobiography is out, and much written on her.
If you want to use her again, have some new details that might surprise the scorer (use some of mine above, if you wish, but better yet someday read her wonderful book, "Rosa Parks: My Story" might be the title.</p>

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<p>Thanks, paying3tuitions! That was helpful and very interesting. I honestly know relatively little about Rosa Parks (I'm in AP US History and we're only to 1930), so your post gave me a lot more insight into the entire issue. If I use the civil rights movement again on Saturday, I'll definitely throw in some of your facts. I'll also take your advice and read that book. I never had considered just how complex her story is.</p>