Taking the SAT

These are sample SAT prompts.  I wandered upon them today when I was looking for something to spur my writing.  Conveniently, for your sake, I have put my answer below each question. 

Do we benefit from learning about the flaws of people we admire and respect?

Maybe.

Is it best for people to accept who they are and what they have, or should people always strive to better themselves?

Both, it’s not a duality.

Can common sense be trusted and accepted, or should it be questioned?

Both, it depends. 

Can knowledge be a burden rather than a benefit?

Sure, it can be both.

Is conscience a more powerful motivator than money, fame, or power?

Maybe, it depends on the person.

Do we need other people in order to understand ourselves?

I think so, but I also long for a silent retreat in the southwest. 

Can success be disastrous?

Two words: Lindsey Lohan.

Is the world changing for the better?

In some ways.

Is there always another explanation or another point of view?

More than likely.

Is deception ever justified?

Sure, but it depends on what the person is being deceptive about.     

Should heroes be defined as people who say what they think when we ourselves

lack the courage to say it?

If you want to define heroes that way.

Do you think that we need adversity to help us discover who we are?

Yes, at least in my case.

When I think about who I was at seventeen taking the SAT, I knew nothing about the flaws of the people I admired.  Nor the potential burden of knowledge or what may or may not define heroism.  I had been deceptive, but had no gist of its toxins. I barely knew myself and had not had enough intimate or intense exchanges with people to see if and how they might influence me. Adversity?  What did I know of adversity?  That comes after late night calls, slippery roads in the winter, emergency surgery.  Your boss, skunking around, asking if you could come into her office.

It strikes me as so irrational that a gaggle of high school juniors would be locked in a room for hours and asked to answer these really sophisticated and ambiguous questions.

I bet, back then in 1978, I just took a stance -- yes or no -- and set up a five paragraph essay (topic, three supports, closing) to demonstrate my writing ability. I’m sure I made an effort to use some degree of mature language and transitional phrasing.  Thus, we can only conclude the myriad affects of success on the lengthy lfespan of an individual. 

Yada, yada.  Puke. 

At seventeen, you should be asked one question: Who are you and how did you get to be you?

Or maybe: who do you love and why?  Perhaps: What was the most influential event of your life to this point? Explain.

But weighing and measuring questions that take a lifetime to truly consider?  These questions?  They are for us.  Us, gathered around a night fire.  Hunkered down in a coffee shop.  Circling an airport four thousand feet in the air next to a stranger.  These are late night, in-the-dark questions. These are table-slapping salon questions.  These questions need some of the meat and gristle of living. They need the pitter and the pat of one person speaking with another.  The pausing, the rethinking, the sharing of story.  And the beautiful truth of “I’m not sure” hanging sweetly on the vine.