<p>Is it truly no problem to make up an example to support a point on the essay?</p>
<p>Here is my thought in particular. Suppose I know of an historical event that supports the argument I'd like to take and I know the history well, but I know the essay would read better if I knew a biography of a person who experienced that event to make it all read more concretely. For example, suppose I want to talk about an African-American man who was lynched in the South during the late 1800s, but I'd rather discuss the life of a particular case rather than the concept in general and I'm not too familiar with any. </p>
<p>How problematic would it be to invent a story of someone who is consistent with the history?</p>
<p>You can make up all your examples. However, I’d suggest that you arent going to get a very good grade. </p>
<p>First off, you merely need to read CC essays to see that when people make up examples 80% of the time they are transparently not real. How well does it impress the grader when they know you are taking them for a fool?</p>
<p>Secondly, you see a lot of made up examples from personal life. Thats a mistake I think. If you arent able to come up with a single example from history, science or literature that doesnt give the impression of a high school student who who actually knows much about the high school curriculum. The SAT is supposed to predict your college success and you really want to give the impression that you learned <em>nothing</em> in high school?</p>
<p>Finally, I am going to assume that you have been awake in Science, History and English classes for the last 3 or 4 years. You already know dozens of examples! Why not take hour or so to write some brief summaries of things you already know? People are spending a lot of time coming up with template strategies to avoid a relatively trivial amount of time organizing what they already know and how it would work with prompts. </p>
<p>Thinking to yourself “oh I’ll just make up examples when the time comes” means you are intentionally failing to plan. </p>
<p>If you had a specific case where you needed a third example to prove the thesis you already started writing you’d be justified in making up a detailed example rather than wasting a lot of time trying to think of something real. I think thats a world different from going in with the strategy of just making up three things when the time comes.</p>
<p>Hypothetical essay topic on relationship between money and happiness:
(Something like how important is money in determining happy?)</p>
<p>Body paragraph 1 - </p>
<p>Over the course of history, access to greater economic opportunities arguably increased happiness, as was arguably the case in the westward migration of mid-nineteenth century Americans towards California. John Sutter is a well-known example of one such California migrant during the San Francisco gold rush who unquestionably improved his and his family’s happiness by migrating and seeking greater wealth. Sutter descended from a long lineage of wheat farmers in Virginia, a crop that was never particularly lucrative on their small plot of land, and whose earnings was unstable no less due to its dependence on climate conditions. In Virginia, no Sutter ever received any education or visited a doctor; in fact, all of the Sutter children worked on the farm by the age of 6, and each Sutter seldomly rested while wheat crop was in harvest and the climate allowed for them to work. When Sutter learned at church one Sunday about the potential opportunity for wealth in San Francisco, he immediately packed his family’s belonging and took the strenuous journey to California with his wife and all seven children in tow. Striking rich rather quickly, for the first time in John’s family was a Sutter able to afford to take summmers off from working, to send his youngest children to a school to become literate, and to visit a doctor at the onset of any illness or public health crisis. Nearly all of John’s children continued to live in California during their adult years and lived a comfortable life that bore little resemblance to that of their wheat farming ancestors, none of whom lived particularly long lives. While migrants may not have enjoyed the rapid degree of success that John and has family had, history is rife with examples of increased their happiness by migrating within or to the U.S. and pursuing better paying jobs, including the migrants of many poor Italian farmers to New York and former slaves to Chicago.</p>
<p>Dont you really have like 2.5 real examples there? As far as I remember the second one is correct- Upton Sinclair write The Jungle, those are the characters names and they bought a house but were swindled.</p>
<p>There was a Qing Dynasty and they had a lot of expansionist wars, including invading Taiwan. I dont know about the specific names or if there was a spy. </p>
<p>Joseph Kennedy did have a fortune, and he did pull most of it out before the Crash and it is commonly suspected that it was based on insider trading. </p>
<p>So most of your information is correct. This isnt three invented examples. </p>
<p>Have you seen what people are producing when they make things up? It being taken as a short hand for not properly preparing, and its nothing like 2.5 real examples.</p>
<p>rowerruns: you have to assert happiness. You gave a ton of detail but forgot the main issue. Dont leave it upto the reader to infer that pubic education and health care made for Sutton’s happiness.</p>
<p>argbargy and jkjeremy: Point well taken that I should shorten the details and connect to happiness a bit more obviously. </p>
<p>My initial point in asking, however, is whether that example is ok. It is more or less consistent with actual U.S. history, but John Sutter is a hypothetical person than a factual example. </p>
<p>well if you actually read my thread, you’d see that the actual events that take place are completely real (Penghu War and Black Tuesday), I just make up the details that occur then to prove the prompt.</p>
<p>and I can assure you the essay is completely legit. I took pictures of it and tried to get it onto a google doc but it didn’t work. I copied it word for word.</p>
<p>jkjeremy: I’m not sure I’m following your point? Are you suggesting that instead of writing about a particular person, I should have discussed how people, in general, who migrated westward made more money and that increased their happiness? That is, do not take a particular hypothetical person, but rather, speak in general terms, in terms of the event?</p>
<p>satman1111: Are you implying that the amount that I made up is ok or not? I could not quite tell what you are getting at. In my case, people did migrate westward to California. And the other stuff I wrote is consistent with the experiences of many families with the mid-19th century.</p>
<p>sorry @rowerruns, I didn’t even see your post, my posts were kinda just generally about fake examples, not anything about what you wrote</p>
<p>But after reading it, I think you’re on the right track, you may just have to cut down the length of it, because you want to have at least 2, or even better, 3 of those in an essay.</p>