So, practicing for essay writing since I got about an 8 from my last practice test. If anyone would grade this essay (1-6), that’d be great, thanks! This one’s prompt goes a little something like this:
Prompt:
“That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value.”
Thomas Paine
Assignment:
Do we value only what we struggle for? Plan your response, and then write an essay to explain your views on this issue. Be sure to support your position with specific points and examples. (You may use personal examples or examples from your reading, observations, or, knowledge of subjects such as history, literature, science.)
Human nature is a peculiar thing. It can easily make us a herd of sheep or outshining individuals with certain circumstances, make us turn on even those we treasure most with a few words, and make us miss what we’ve valued only after it’s gone. Contrary to belief, we’re a rather greedy bunch, whether it comes to money, power, or love. It’s just in our nature. That being said, we really do only value what we struggle for. Why? Because the struggle makes it memorable.
There are few things that come into our possession without truly having to work for them. One of the things most commonly taken for granted is, for example, technology. We as a generation have slid into a new era anchored on electricity and available communication that can reach even the furthest countries. The younger half of us have even grown up with the times. Ask someone to willingly go without their phone or laptop for a day and they’ll probably laugh. The fact that everything is right at our fingertips desensitizes us to its true value, to the sheer magnitude of things that we are able to do with it because it’s not new to us. We already know, the magic’s already lost.
Now to the other side of the spectrum. Let’s talk money. A percent of the United State’s population is wealthier than any of us can ever imagine. The rest of us? Well, the rest of us are climbing that ladder of chaos trying to get there. For most of us, we haven’t inherited billions of dollars from our ancestors selling property or playing the stock market. Most of us have had our parents work for their money, and in turn, so do we. We come to a point where we keep track of every cent spent and saved, because there’s that chance that even one slip up will cause it all to flow away. It’s the same dollar that the aforementioned one percent has- so why the micromanagement? Because we struggled for it. Because if that money goes to waste, it’s basically the equivalent of our blood and sweat going to waste as well; and that is where the sense of value comes from.
There are other things that apply to this theory as well: love, promotions, material possessions, and the likes. Want not, waste not. The value comes from the struggle- as unpleasant things such as working more than one must is more deeply engraved into the brain than the pleasure of lazing about. Again, to have that go to waste, to have done all of ‘that’ for nothing is inexcusable. Something to be abhorred. And so we keep what we have earned through that struggle and treasure it.