<p>I timed this and it was much more difficult than I thought. I had to plan along the way and just, sort of wrote about whatever I could think of. I'll be a junior this fall and I recently just started preparing for the SATs. This essay section took me by surprise. Any comments/advice?</p>
<p>Prompt (CB Blue Book, Practice Test 4 Essay):
The old saying, "be careful what you wish for," may be an appropriate warning. The drive to achieve.../...lives are worse once "success" is achieved than they were before.</p>
<p>Can success be disastrous? Plan and write an essay...</p>
<pre><code> Success, quite frankly put, is a product of one's motivation, ability, and most importantly, hard work. If these factors are skewed to begin with, then certainly this long awaited "success" may indeed bring more consequences than the ideal circumstances one aimed for initially. This notion can be seen remarkably in modern politics and several key literary works.
Today, many see the president Richard Nixon as an immoral leader whose success challenged the democratic principles America was built on. The infamous Watergate Scandal was merely a product of his grotesque ambition and undoubtedly brought a dire consequence, the first ever resignation of a US president. Nixon's skewed ambitions brought skewed results; his highly successful political career would not have crumbled if his methods were noble to begin with.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby further supports this notion that success is disastrous only if its contributors are ill motivated. Jay Gatsby goes as far as to join a corrupt money scheme solely for his lifelong love, Daisy. Gatsby did end up a wealthy man, but only to find Daisy unwilling to marry. His less than ideal methods of becoming rich ended up hurting him.
When one mentions "noble success", however, many allude to the iconic Aesop's fable of The Tortoise and the Hare. In the well known verses, the overconfident and bombastic hare challenges the modest turtle with good intentions to a race. As the hare takes a nap halfway through, the turtle wins by going at a steady pace, using the hare's pompousness and his own personal desire to win effectively. The turtle's noble intentions reaped a noble reward.
Success indeed brings much "baggage" along with it. To put it in layman's terms, what is inside this "baggage" can either be whole and intact or in shambles depending on the way one handled it. If it was handled with care, certainly the contents would be safe as initially planned. Likewise, if success is achieved through honest hard work and noble intentions, the result should be just what one hoped for.
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