<p>I am soo bad at the essay section, got an 8 on my first time taking, hoping for a 10 this time. Would this cut it? (From a practice test)</p>
<p>Prompt:Do we ourselves cause change in our lives by making certain decisions, or are we acted upon by things around us?</p>
<p>People cause change in their lives by the decisions they make. Examples from both history and literature show that a person's character matters more than their surroundings, and that people make their own fate.</p>
<p>As shown in the book A Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel, readers learn that people can only change their lives by making their own decisions. He was a prisoner in a concentration camp in World War II, but was a philospher before the war. He observed his fellow inmates sufferings, such as being sick with typhus, or being told one's family was dead. At one point in the book, he recounts a speech he makes to a bunk of dying prisoners. He tells them that they have a choice to live, and to do that, they must have a meaning in life. For one man, it was an old lover he wanted to marry;for another, it was an uncompleted science experiment. Nevertheless, Frankel drew the conclusion that one cannot pity oneself in the surroundings full of death, but on must find meaning for himself and change his life in that way.</p>
<p>Next, we can look upon the example of Dr. Juan Hernandez, to show that the decisions one makes is based on who we are. He was born in Mexico, and spent his childhood picking cotton. No one in his family had ever been to college, but he decided that he would change that. He hopped the fence to America, ad then got a job as a farmer in California. While he worked on the farm, he also got a high school degree, and saved up money. After a few years, he applied and was accepted to Harvard. He then went on to Stanford medical school and became a neurosurgeon. Currntly, he is one of the most respected doctors in the field. Dr. Hernandez made the choice to go and have a new life, to not simply do what everyone around him was doing. His example shows us that we have to be the ones woh change; we cannot just go along with our surroundings.</p>
<p>Finally, an ancient Chinese Proverb tells us that we must make our own fate. In Confucious's book Analects, he writes, "We are not the river, but rather the rock in the center." By this, we can understand that we must not go along with where we are, but make a change--to be that rock in the flowing river. Chinese culture has always been very conformist, but from this we can learn that Confucious, a great philosopher, wants each of us to try to be different.</p>
<p>Indeed, people can only cause change by the decisions they make. We can learn from both literature and history that tells us we must make out own fate.</p>