In her novel Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen wrote, “It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.” Now Austen may have been writing somewhat tongue in cheek, for she attributes these sentiments to the excessively romantic Marianne Dashwood, whose extreme sensibility or emotional susceptibility gets its comeuppance by the novel’s end. Nonetheless, the point that young Miss Dashwood makes is valid. N o amount of time spent in another person’s company can guarantee that the two of you will become friends.
ASSIGNMENT: What are your thoughts on the idea that neither time nor opportunity can determine intimacy? What causes two people to become friends? Compose an essay in which you express your views on this topic. Your essay may support, refute, or qualify the views expressed in the excerpt. What you write, however, must be relevant to the topic under discussion. Additionally, you must support your viewpoint, indicating your reasoning and providing examples based on your studies and/or experience.
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Mutual understanding, compassion and empathy breed intimacy. It is by discovering the different positive and negative aspects of a person’s character that we become intimate with them.
For instance, I maintained a relationship of rivalry and bitterness with the person who I now identify as my best friend; it was only after years of competing that we began to understand each other, and that understanding paved the way to a friendship filled with love and trust. This proves that time can not determine intimacy, but in order to develop the trust and understanding that upholds intimate relationships, time is necessary.
Similarly, even if there are opportunities to develop intimacy, people do not always seize them. In the popular soap opera “Glee,” two of the protagonists, Rachel and Santana, ignore countless opportunities to become friends, and insist on maintaining a relationship of hatred and distrust. However, quite unpredictably, after suffering the loss of a close friend, they begin to accept and understand each other, going on to become good friends. From this example, it is evident that due to the unpredictable nature of humans, opportunities can not quite determine intimacy.
It is impossible to say what actually determines the level of intimacy between people; in order to develop intimacy, time and opportunity is essential, but given adequate time and opportunities, intimacy does not always develop. In conclusion, humans are unique and unpredictable; all that can be said about human relationships is that they arise from compassion and empathy
**I’m taking the SAT for the first time on Saturday, this is the first practice test essay I’ve written 
Open to all sorts of criticism. Tell me what I’m doing wrong, or not doing at all. If I’m doing something terribly wrong, be as mean as you want to be.
Thanks!