<p>Prompt:</p>
<p>The old saying, "be careful what you wish for," may be an appropriate warning. The drive to achieve a particular goal can dangerously narrow one's perspective and encourage the fantasy that success in one endeavor will solve all of life's difficulties. In fact, success can sometimes have unexpected consequences. Those who propel themselves toward the achievement of one goal often find that their lives are worse once "success" is achieved than they were before.</p>
<p>Assignment: Can success be disastrous? blah blah instructions</p>
<p>Even successes that were most fought for and most desired can make the lives of the "successful" people even worse. As demonstrated in the short story The Other Woman, the involvement of women in the black civil rights movement in the 19th century, and the experience of many students with tests, short term "success" is not always a good thing, nor does it lead to long-term happiness.</p>
<p>Sherwood Anderson's story "The Other Woman" begins by introducing a man who has recently won an award for writing and who is about to marry a lovely woman. He is "successful" in the conventional definition of the term--wealthy, talented, having a wife--and indeed, he is very pleased with himself. However, the pressure of his success, and the accompanying expectations, drive him to cheat on his wife with a poor, mysterious stranger. This only happened because of his frustration that his life with his new wife would not be perfect. His very success led him to expect perfection, and act inappropriately when he could not achieve it.</p>
<p>Another example shows how success can be different than what you wished for. In the mid-1800s, many women were involved in reform movements, especially abolitionism. These women often put their own dreams on hold to fight for freedom for black slaves and, later, the right to vote. They were then shocked when the 15th amendment gave the vote to everyone regardless of race or nationality--but not regardless of gender. The woman abolitionists had technically been successful, but what many of them had really wanted the most (rights for women) had been lost precisely because they had channeled all their effort into success in the black rights movement.</p>
<p>Finally, success may turn out to not be worth the struggle for it. I once spent over a week hysterically stressing over a history test. Although I knew the material, i continued to review over and over, convinced that one lunch spent without flashcards would cause me to fail the test and ruin my grade. When I finally took it, of course, I did fine, but so did my friends who had studied less and had been calm.</p>
<p>These examples show that success may lead to failure, may turn out to be something you didn't expect, and may not always be worth the effort to attain it.</p>
<p>...Um, yeah, I kind of ran out of room. And made everything up. Ugh, I hate this; I'm a slow writer and a fanatic perfectionist but I know they can't be looking for something stellar produced in 25 minutes...anyways, do you think this is good enough for a 10?</p>