<p>The e-rater of the sat online course gave it a 6. I know the e-rater is NOT to be trusted though…
I can also type faster than I write. I’m gonna post a handwritten essay as well later on.</p>
<p>Essay Prompt</p>
<p>Think carefully about the information presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.Many people believe that “closed doors make us creative.” These people argue that obstacles and restrictions are necessary, for without them we would never be forced to come up with new solutions. But “closed doors,” either in the form of specific obstacles or a lack of opportunities, often prevent people from reaching their full creative potential.</p>
<p>Assignment:
Do closed doors make us creative? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>My Response</p>
<p>Creativity may often be a result of our desperate need to overcome an insurpassable obstacle, to cope with the most arduous conditions or to find new opportunities. In other words, pure creativity and inspiration are empowered by “closed doors”, meaning hard obstacles that stimulate our imagination in a variety of ways. Archimedees, the great Greek mathematician and inventor, manuafactured some of his greatest inventions in a period of war, when his home city was endangered by the Roman army. What is more, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, the founders of Google Inc., based the google search engine on an entirely new function that had never before been applied, in order to eliminate their main competitor, the altavista search engine.
Almost two thousand years ago, in the city of Syracuse, a greek colony in southern Italy, Archimedes, an ingenuous mathematician, was conducting his theoretical studies in geometry and calculous. At that time, the various people of the Italian peninsula had all began to succumb into Roman rule. The expansionist Romans, who had already conquered a significant part of Italy, now wished to annex the prosperous hellenic cities in southern Italy. Syracuse was one of their potential targets. When the mighty Roman army as well as the giant imperial fleet surrounded the city of Syracuse, Archimedes was alarmed, and sought to help the king of the city in organizing defences. The siege was a long one, so Archimedes had the chance to apply his knowledge in the field of geometry to make terrifying war machines that would repel the roman attack. Archimedes built giant cranes that could capsize enemy ships, as well as huge mirrors that concentrated sunlight onto the roman army and navy, thus scortching them in a fiery hell. Archimedes’ inventions are still considered revolutionary. However, despite the tremendous success of thees machines, the city was conquered, and Archimedes was killed. His name though is still remembered and honored. This great scientist designed some of the best machinery of ancienty times at a critical period of his life. His inspiration was driven by his fear and his will to cope with a challenging invasion.
Another example where “closed doors” made people creative, is the story of Google Inc. Google, known today as one of the greatest internet firms in the world, started as a minor search engine built by two friends, Larry Page and Sergei Brin. The success of google was limited in the beginning. It was extremely hard for the founders of the enterprise to attract clients, as altavista, the greatest search engine back in the 90’s, had enstablished an internet search monopoly. Thus the two friends employed their creativity and their mental potential to write a new formula, that would rank web pages depending on their relativity and populatiry, in opposition to the traditional search function that ranked websites according to the name typed by the searcher. Google soon grew to a large company, thanks to this revolutionary technique. Today, google is an internet benemoth, a company that contributes to knowledge and telecommunications on a worldwide level. The company’s success was greatly influenced by its founders’ creativity. And the inspiration for the building of google’s radical search system was a result of its their will to overcome the great obstacle of internet competition.
All in all, insurmountable odds and challenging obstacles make us think critically and stimulate our imagination, thus making us come up with brilliant ideas that take us one step closer towards our dreams and aspirations. Thus, it is these “closed doors” that bring out the best in us. Both the story of Archimides’s brilliance during the Roman siege of Syracuse and the growth of Google at a time when other search companies were dominant demonstrate the validity of this statement.</p>