<p>Hey guys.</p>
<p>I've been prepping for the ACT for about two months now, but I haven't actually written an essay. Thus, today I found a prompt and set myself to writing. Except I'm not sure how to grade it. So I typed it here, and I was wondering if you guys could provide some feedback. Thanks!</p>
<p>Essay:</p>
<p>In an age of information feeding in from all directions, it is easy to get overwhelmed. For high school students especially, the internet, social media, and other distractions are incredibly detractive to focus and productivity. Indeed, dividing their attentions between multiple activities is too distracting for students when they are doing homework.</p>
<p>In China, there’s a story about a little kitten who goes fishing. Wanting to be a better fisher than his mother, he initially waits patiently for the line to catch. But he is soon distracted, and goes off to catch butterflies while his mother continues reeling in their dinner. In the end, the kitten only succeeds in catching a fish after his mother tells him to focus on one task at a time and do the activity at hand wholeheartedly or not at all. The same can be said about homework: either do it with all of one’s concentration, or don’t even attempt it.</p>
<p>While we’re not all fable characters that teach kids lessons, many other examples in the real world prove the same point. There is a funny little test, for instance, that involves patting one’s head with one hand and rubbing one’s belly with the other. Most times, the result is that the subject will involuntarily begin either rubbing their head or patting their belly, and everyone gets a laugh out of it. But the trick proves a point: human minds are trained to only be able to focus on one activity at a time. This idea also applies to students doing their homework. When their minds are divided among multiple tasks, students will still only be able to focus on one activity, the other taking the backseat. Thus, even if they believe they are multitasking, students are still only concentrating on one task, and the other often is done sloppily and halfheartedly.</p>
<p>In application, the number one distraction for teenagers in today’s world is the internet. With sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it is extremely tempting to hop on and check what new updates there are. I personally find myself periodically browsing the web, even when I am in the middle of a math problem. Then, when I resume work, I have already lost my train of thought, and the rest of the problem is done poorly. Many of my classmates are even worse off, with their browsers perpetually open, their phone in hands and buzzing every few seconds, their earbuds in blasting music, and even the tv on in the background, creating even more distractions. It is no wonder then, that they often go to bed well beyond midnight, their homework still not completed.</p>
<p>All in all, too many tasksd being done at once detracts from the quality and quantity of work done. Like water split between many cups, students only have so much focus and dividing it hurts all. So maybe it’s sometimes needed to just put aside the phone, unplug from distractions, and just pour all effort into one place.</p>