<p>This prompt was taken from the official practice test on the collegeboard website. My instructor said she liked it but I wasn't very satisfied because I thought the main points didn't connect well, and I took too long in writing. Tell me what you think :)</p>
<p>Ps: I've noticed a lot of posts advising to use classic American literature as examples, but I don't go high school in the US so I'm not familiar with them, and many sample essays I've read (scored 5 or 6) don't use them? Is that necessary for my score?</p>
<p>“Nowadays nothing is private; our culture has become too confessional and self-expressive. People think that to hide one’s thoughts and feeling is to pretend not to have those thoughts or feelings. They assume that honesty requires one to express every inclination and impulse.”
Assignment: Should people make more of an effort to keep some things private?</p>
<p>Privacy is a priviledge, but with the way our society is progressing, it becomes harder and harder to hide our thoughts and feelings, to the point where everyone knows everything. However, certain things cannot be disclosed publicly, and if we don't make an effort to keep it a secret, eventually it won’t be a secret anymore.</p>
<p>To understand privacy, we have to know the opposite. Honesty, of being honest, means telling the truth, but telling the truth doesn’t mean telling everything. We are allowed to filter out our words to our liking, only saying part of the truth and not the parts we don’t want, as long as we don’t make anything up. For example, when I had to stay off school for several days to attend my grandfather’s funeral, I told my classmates that my family was going through some hardship and I simply couldn’t make it to class. After everything was over, I did tell my friends the whole truth, but only to the few I’m close to. I didn’t want to let people know that someone in my family had died because I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me, which would make it harder for me to move on. None of them wanted to know more, because they knew I wasn’t going to tell them anyway. By doing that, my friends respected my privacy, and I was able to keep things private without lying.</p>
<p>While some people, like my friends, respect others’ privacy, some can be so intrusive that they will go out of their way to expose you. While it can be accounted for people’s natural curiosity, it is never nice to invade others’ privacy without their consent. When you lose your privacy, you lost your reputation, having to maintain a perfect image under constant watching eyes. An interesting example of this is Britney Spears’ music video “If You Seek Amy”. Although the title of the song, which relies on wordplay, can be seen as inappropriate to some, it wasn’t about Britney asking other people to have sex with her. Instead, it was referring to her private life being “dissected” by the media. This idea was reflected in the video, where Britney is seen having a huge, wild party inside her house, where all of the windows are boarded up and all the partygoers are dressed up in provocative clothing. However, when Britney comes out of the house, she has changed her clothes to that of a conservative housewife, standing next to actors posing has her “family”, having her picture taken and being interviewed by the paparazzi. The video shows that Britney Spears, like every other person, has to make an effort to distinguish between her public persona and her private one, in order not to be judged. Behind what others see every day, there is a whole other world inside our heads that we would like to keep to ourselves, and ourselves only.</p>
<p>To conclude, it is very important to maintain privacy in certain aspects of our lives. Prividing that you don’t harm anyone, you can do what you must to keep it from being threatened.</p>