Hello everyone!
I was just wondering if someone could grade my SAT essay for me on a scale from 1 to 12 as a SAT scorer would. I’m very worried because I tend to use the typical five paragraph format with three examples and I’d like to get at least a 10; I’ve read a bunch of 11/12 essays, and rarely do they use the three example format. I’ve love any advice as well!
(Note: I filled up both pages, down to the last line.)
Prompt: Do you believe in the notion that more knowledge makes one happier?
Happiness is derived from one’s satisfaction with life. Although some people, such as scholars, may gain pleasure from learning, it does not itself bring happiness to people. As demonstrated by Sonmi in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, my grandfather’s struggle with cancer, and Carol Greider’s research in genetics, more knowledge does not necessarily bring happiness.
When Sonmi, a character in the novel Cloud Atlas, ascends and learns about her environment, she becomes dissatisfied with the world she lives in. As a fabricant–a clone keep docile with mind-numbing “Soap”–she is ignornat of the fact of her enslavement, essentially working like a robot for the wealthy. However, when she gains the ability to think as a normal person, she becomes deeply unhappy with her mundane and repressed life, seeking more fulfillment. This search eventually leads to her execution at the hands of her masters. Sonmi’s despair after learning about her actual state shows that knowledge can bring sadness.
A month before my grandfather died, he was diagnosed with lung cancer that had already spread to various other organs, including his brain. This diagnosis and the treatment caused a month full of pain and unhappiness on my grandpa’s part, as his bleeding ulcers prevented the nurse from giving him pain medicine even as his legs welled in reation to the cancer treatment. In the end, the suffering he had to go through after gaining the knowledge that he gad advanced-stage cancer only brought misery; without this knowledge, he would have died peacefully at home without having to suffer through the treatment.
In addition, Carol Greider, a Nobel Laureate in Medicine for her discovery of telomerase, became more and more troubled as she realized the implications of her work. Since her research found a genetic factor in aging, she became entrenched in a moral dilemma over what
Knowledge can bring happiness and unhappiness in equal measure; it does not bring only happiness. Instead, it depends on how it affects one’s satisfaction with oneself and others.
