<p>Hey! This is my first time posting here, so here's a big hello to all of you. I have the Princeton Review: Cracking the SAT 2008 edition, and I just took a practice SAT test. Can anyone grade me on my essay, from a 1-6? I'd be much obliged. Also, I'm not sure if this is too long or not because I wrote it on looseleaf, rather than the standard lined paper.</p>
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<p>EXCERPT: "The more critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life become. When reason is overvalued, the individual suffers a loss. Relying more on facts and rationality than on imagination and theory detracts from the quality of a person's intellectual life."
- Adapted from Carl Jung.</p>
<p>ASSIGNMENT: Is knowing facts as important as understanding ideas and concepts?</p>
<p>Imagine a world without creativity. Without imagination. Without individuality. That is a world where reason and rationality rule over understanding and theory. That is a world that no one should want to live in. Attempts to control creativity and encourage a senseless acceptance of the facts have been made before, by people named Lenin and Stalin. As depicted by history, it didn’t work. The same concept does not work for individuals either, be it on a global level or on a personal level. As Carl Jung once said, “When reason is overvalued, the individual suffers a loss.” This statement holds true for everyone, in every situation.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, communism was on the rise. In an effort to, supposedly, eliminate caste systems and ensure equality for all, people in various locations all over the world were subjected to the same mindless system: work all day, go home, sleep all night. What they were told, they were to believe. What they were told to believe were the only things they could believe. Education was a luxury. Art, nonexistent. Individuality, a thing of the past. In this situation, acceptance of the facts was more important than understanding them. But, as history as shown, this was not acceptable. A society with no color, or vivacity, is not a utopia, but a dystopia. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 proved one thing: creativity and imagination are just as important as reason and rationality.</p>
<p>I learned that very lesson on my own, when I entered high school. I was taking a music class for the very first time. My instrument? The guitar. It was the first time I had ever held one in my hands, and I loved it. All the guitarists in my section were told to learn the same song for our final exam: Mary Had A Little Lamb. It seemed simple enough, at first. Oh, how quickly things change. As I set myself to memorizing the chords in the provided book, I realized that I didn’t like the key the song was in. I thought it sounded better in a deeper tone. “Just do what the book tells you to,” my friend whispered to me. “Don’t try to be a hero.” When final exam day rolled around, I had learned the song in two different keys: the accepted version and my version. And when it came time for me to play the guitar, I knew what I had to do. I played my version. It was dark, bluesy, beautiful. In my opinion, Mary Had A Little Lamb never sounded so good. And because I succumbed to my own imagination, rather than my teacher’s, I received an A+. Creativity trumps reason any day.</p>
<h2>So, in any situation, big or small, here or there, then and now, understanding something and finding one’s own way in infinitely more important than accepting what is given to you and plodding about like just another face in the crowd. History has proved that many times before, and the future will prove it many times to come.</h2>
<p>There it is, with all its grammatical and spelling errors. 25 minutes of pure, mindless worry. Grade, please?</p>