<p>I know everyone is just waiting around for more SAT essays to read, so here's mine. Please grade on the 6 point scale. Thanks!</p>
<p>Prompt:
PR 11 SAT tests #4
A quote from an educator about "the true test of a person's character lies in what he or she chooses to do when no one is looking." blah blah...In your opinion, what two options are the most difficult to choose between? Use support, etc. yada yada</p>
<p>Response:
Each day in the life of an average person is fraught with countless decisions and the need to make difficult choices. Many such choices require painstaking deliberation between multiple options which all have advantages and disadvantages. However, the most difficult choices I have encountered throughout my life are those that involve a decision between what is socially acceptable or "popular" and what I personally believe to be the correct course of action.
Peer pressure is a well-known force that constantly tests the moral and personal fortitude of people throughout their lives. Alost everyone finds difficulty in denying the earnest pleas of a close friend or refusing to take part in actions or behavior that are undertaken by a large group. In fact, the choice between jumping on the "bandwagon" or remaining true to one's personal beliefs and principles can prove to be the most difficult decision in life. Ultimately this occurs because the decision to go against the social norm can leave a person feeling entirely alone, isolated, and abandoned, an emotion very few enjoy. Yet deciding to do what is "popular" at the expense of personal principles can often leave one feeling morally compromised and shoddy. I personally have had to wrangle with this dilemma on multiple occasions. A particularaly trying example of this difficult choice occurred when I was forced to decide whether or not to participate in a "cheating ring"- a group of students who planned to collaborate in order to share answers and score well on an upcoming test. It seemed like "everyone" was involved, yet I knew that participating would mean a betrayal of my personal instincts and beliefs. My propensity for honesty and integrity could not allow me to become involved, yet the ridicule and coercing I endured certainly made the decision one of the most difficult I have made.
Another example of a dilemma between personal beliefs and social norms can be found in literature, in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. In the play, John Proctor is forced to decide between confessing to witchcraft and promoting the Salem Witchcraft hysteria, or instead sacrificing himself and refusing to tell lies and thus saving others who refused to confess to something they were innocent of. Despite immense pressures to confess, Proctor eventually decides to die before betraying his own beliefs. However, as the play shows, the decision is indubitably difficult.
In my own personal experience and throughout literature, it is clear that the most difficult decisions most people face in life involve a seemingly impossible choice between the social "norm" and personal beliefs of right and wrong.</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>