Azhir

Hey guys,

just curious to see how many other people got the promt which asked:

Do people put too much emphasis on winning?

Seems like not many people here on CC got that one. I did, and wrote a good two pages, however, i had a hard time figuring out what examples to use.

Anyone else have this prompt? What examples did you use? Did you think it was easy or hard?

Vaishu12

how come you guys had a different essay prompt than us? our essay prompt was: how do past incidents influence the present?

gamayshark

i said yes (obviously) and said that this was because many times winners get to where they are because of flaws in the system or through cheating. I used the examples of the 2000 presidential election (where gore won the popular vote, but bush won the electoral college), kids cheating in school, and steroids in baseball. I didn't exactly give myself time to tie all these together as well as i'd have liked, but i'm shooting for a 10 or so.

fireman

Mine was that one... I said that it has both postive and negative aspects to it..

Postive: It fosters competition. EX: science, race to find cure for cancer, perfection of stem cell reasearch. Leads to progress.

Negative: Can turn catastrophic. EX: World War I, victors took all the loots of the war at the cost of the vanquished. Germans thought it unfair and rose again in WWII. Wilson warned about this and called for "peace without victory"

Hopefully i did alright

giantsfan

i said that people do care too much about winning.


in my intro i had a quote from napoleon bonaparte. I said how his conquest for a french empire led to a european coalition against him, and he eventually was defeated

then for the body paragraphs
1- i talked about competition over jobs that led to race riots in chicago and la in the early 1900s
2- vietnam war. US desire to win led LBJ to send troops into a stalemate, resulting in unnecessary deaths.
3-personal experience. my baseball coach was overly competitive and yelled at me whenever i made an error, and this led me to dislike baseball (lol i made this up)

then in the conclusion i summed that up, then included the adage "who needs to win if u have fun?"

sunburn

I really like this prompt though the one I got about past influencing present wasn't bad either!

snow_white

I also got the winning prompt. As a competitive swimmer I talked mainly about my own experiences and that of those around me. My main point was that in sports we should focus more on fun and friendship than on first place ribbons. Course when I get in the pool I am very competitive, but I thought I could write a much better essay if I didn't mention that.