Collaborative GRE Analytical Writing scoring
I just took my first Princeton Review CAT practice test for the GRE. I took two written practice tests earlier this summer but I’m glad I took this one as I totally boffed the first antonym question, not realizing that it was an antonym question (this is what I get for practicing first thing in the morning).
Though I got my score spit back out at me immediately (1420! My target goal of 8000 is within striking distance!) I didn’t feel like paying to get the essay portion graded. So, here, people. Parse these bad boys and let me know if there’s anything you think I should be mindful of moving forward.
Essay one: 45 minutes (completed in 25)
Only once one has known real sadness can one feel true happiness.
Does one must know real sadness in order to “feel true happiness”?
The challenge with feelings, besides from having to endure their existence, is that they are difficult to pin down with a measuring stick. Even the pain scale that’s standard practice within the medical establishment is fraught with normative challenges: does Bob’s 3 equal Nancy’s 3? What about Bob’s 3 after watching a comedy? Is it the same as Bob’s 3 after seeing his favorite football team receive a bruising? Alas, we cannot stick our heads inside of a machine and spit out an objective document that tells us how much pain we are currently enduring.
All of which is to say: what is “real sadness”? This seems a concept subjective and impossible to measure. So, here we have the first difficulty with trying to determine is “real sadness” is a prerequisite for “true happiness”.
The second difficulty with a statement such as “Only once one has known real sadness can one feel true happiness” is, as you may have guessed, the challenge with defining “true happiness”. Again, who am I to say that the slovenly man noshing Doritos in front of a sitcom is not truly happy? I have no more right to impose my definition of happiness onto him than he has a right to strap me into a La-Z-Boy and force me to watch South Park (egads). And so, trying to figure out if “real sadness” is required for “true happiness” ends up sounding like:
“Only once one has known ’some entity we cannot objectively define and/or measure’ can one feel ‘another entity we cannot objectively define and/or measure’.”
This is true not only within a person (again, Bob Pain 3 may not always equal Bob Pain 3, depending on the situation), but also across people. Just as these conditions are not fixed or measurable within a human, they are similarly in flux across people. “One man’s treasure is another’s trash,” says a familiar maxim. Take divorce, for example. For some it might bring great devastation; for others, liberation.
Not only is it hard to compare these conditions across humans, to complicate matters further, even within humans a moment of “trash” can also be a moment of “treasure”! And it is true: how many of us can recall a moment of pleasure bringing about a moment of sad, or vice versa? “Oh no, not me,” you might think, but take a deep breath and think again. If you ever suffered a scrape as a kid, through the tears and snot was it not also lovely to have your mother soften and embrace you? Was it not, through this sadness of injury, also a moment of happiness to have someone, normally distracted, turn her attentions and love towards you? The Buddhists do not have a monopoly on dhukka (the slight undercurrent of sadness in moments of happiness); not only are our feelings conflicted as we try and compare then across people, but even as we try to compare them within ourselves.
Who or what is to be the arbiter of “real sadness” or “true happiness”?
I will allow that perhaps in moments of self-defined “true happiness” we can each reflect back on the moments of “real sadness” and think to ourselves, “Wow, this victory tastes that much sweeter remembering the earlier bitter loss.” But the assumption that trueness of happiness is inversely related to reality of sadness is predicated on states that cannot be truly measured within man or across men.
Within the ecosystem of the self, perhaps as new events that are sadder than ever experienced previously help us to appreciate the events that bring happiness. But we all have moments of sadness and happiness alike to reflect upon, and to judge and calibrate across men who has felt “real sadness” in an attempt to hand out ribbons that declare who has the right to feel “true happiness” is a deeply simplistic model that not only fails to appreciate the complexity of our fellow man, but also takes a reductive approach to appreciating the complexities of our self.
All of us have a right to feel true happiness, no matter how trivial we may perceive our claims to sadness and no matter how much worse everyone else around us may have it. Happiness is not a function of previous sadness, nor is it a function of the feelings of everyone else around us, nor is it a function of anything else outside of the self.
Perhaps, then, the way to approach matters of happiness prerequisites is: “Only once one stops looking for it can one feel true happiness.”
Essay two: 30 minutes (done in 22)
We have decided to institute a policy of all-day kindergarten, instead of half-day kindergarten, for all students at Greenwood School . All-day kindergarten will help all our students achieve at their highest levels. The classes will be ‘tracked’ so that average students are together, but high-achieving and low-achieving students will be put together in classes. In this way, the high-achieving students will be able to help pull the low-achieving students up to their level, so that no student falls behind. The all-day kindergarten classes will cover the same material previously covered in the half-day kindergarten classes, but will go at a slower speed to accommodate learning differences. In addition, the students will receive extra instruction in music, art, and physical education. One of the greatest benefits of the plan, however, is that students will be in a structured environment for longer hours, reducing the numbers of hours that otherwise would be wasted at home or in day care.
According to the principal of Greenwood School, a new policy of all-day kindergarten has been instituted with the stated intention of helping all our students achieve at their highest level. While this may be true, the argument for the policy, as delineated in the letter sent to the parents of all incoming kindergarteners, is deeply flawed. There is no cogent argument supporting the claim that all-day kindergarten will cause “all our students” to “achieve at their highest levels”.
The letter states that “high-achieving and low-achieving students will be put together in classes” so that “the high-achieving students will be able to help pull the low-achieving students up to their level, so that no student falls behind.” Falls behind what? Is there proof that high-achieving students will not suffer negative externalities from being in a classroom with low-achieving students? Would Michael Jordan have been the basketball phenom he was had he limited his basketball-playing to a court full of third-graders?
The letter continues that the “all-day kindergarten classes will cover the same material previously covered in the half-day kindergarten classes, but will go at a slower speed to accommodate learning differences.” Is there any evidence that this slower speed will not negatively impact students who might become bored, disinterested, or fatigued? Is there any evidence that the existing pace is flawed or suboptimal and in need of tweaking?
While the letter does not state this explicitly, the “extra instruction in music, art, and physical education” in addition to the fact that twice the amount of teaching staff will be needed (assuming that the teacher : student ratio will not be compromised with the move from half-day to full-day kindergarten) will cost money. These additional costs will be shouldered by all taxpayers in the Greenwood School district evenly, while the disproportionate benefits will be seen (assuming that this move is a benefit which, as detailed above, may not necessarily be true) by the citizens whose offspring are in kindergarten. Is this move to full-day something for which the district’s taxpayers have shown support?
Finally, the letter’s final sentence reads as follows:
“One of the greatest benefits of the plan, however, is that students will be in a structured environment for longer hours, reducing the numbers of hours that otherwise would be wasted at home or in day dare.”
Let us set aside the notion that doing in eight hours what previously only took four is not a waste of time, a point which is arguable. So, assuming that classroom time is not wasted, this assumes that hours at home or daycare are not structured or, even more troubling, that structured time is superior to unstructured time when it comes to helping our students achieve at their highest levels. Is there any evidence to support the claim that structured time at this age is the best way to help our students achieve their best?
In sum, the move to full-day kindergarten classes is deeply worrisome. It is predicated on a number of claims that do not appear to have any grounding in evidence, which may not be terrible in a silo but is very problematic as it involves allocation of taxpayer dollars — taxpayers who may not necessarily have shown support for this policy.
For all the reasons above, institution of this policy should be put on hold until the concerns above can be addressed in a public forum. Perhaps the claims are correct and can be bolstered by evidence. Until that time, however, it does not seem prudent to proceed as detailed in the principal’s letter.
