stirlingb12

Thank triscia! Let me know if I can critique one of yours. My conclusion could definitely be better. I ran out of time. I've heard that it's better to have a one sentence conclusion restating a thesis than none at all. You're other suggestions are definitely helpful.

Claim: Even though young people often receive the advice to “follow your dreams,” more emphasis should be placed on picking worthy goals. Reason: Many people’s dreams are inherently selfish. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim AND the reason on which that claim is based. Life is like map with missing pieces, which is confusing for trying to follow the "correct" destination. People will try to fill in blanks of this map by plugging in goals, but following dreams is just as important. People should follow their dreams, and having selfish dreams does not matter for the overall purpose of achieving dreams or goals. Life is usually not as simple as choosing one avenue over another. Often roads intersect or disperse, connect at a same or different destinations. In relation to the claim and reason, dreams and goals are intertwined and are not mutually exclusive. Dreams can quite possibly give rise to goals. A young child could have a dream of one day walking on the moon, so he/she shapes his/her life with daily goals such as picking certain classes or majors, attending a university with a well-established astronaut program, in order to achieve this dream. While this dream may be considered selfish, it does not discount the effort he/she makes in making short-term and long-term goals for himself/herself. And, it does not mean he/she will not make an important contribution to the world. Making a great impact is just one of many reasons why people may have a certain dream or goal. While many people's dreams could be inherently selfish, they could also be unselfish. As with dreams, goals could also be selfish or unselfish. The reason for the claim, that young people should be told with more emphasis on placing worthy goals than following their dreams, thus has no logical basis. People may donate to charity or help out at a local soup kitchen because it makes them feel better about themselves. This can be viewed by some as selfish, but it is making an important contribution for the betterment of society. Therefore, people should still follow their dreams and should not worry about whether or not they are selfish dreams or not. While following dreams is a vital piece at achieving success, goals are important as well. Sometimes dreams can be unrealistic, such as a child dreaming of one day becoming a president. The likelihood of that ever happening is extremely minuscule, perhaps close to the chance of winning the lottery. However, having this dream can often give rise to other dreams and goals. Maybe the child began dreaming of becoming a president, but then he/she realized that he/she has other interests as well as mold his/her life with goals to attain this new dream. Thus, goals are still important for children to follow, but they should not be placed with more emphasis than dreams. Children should not be told to place more emphasis on picking goals than dreams, and the reason that dreams are selfish does not justify the claim.

The following appeared in a letter from the faculty committee to the president of Seatown University: A study conducted at nearby Oceania University showed that faculty retention is higher when professors are offered free tuition at the university for their own college-aged children. Therefore, Seatown should institute a free-tuition policy for its professors for the purpose of enhancing morale among the faculty and luring new professors. Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument. Oceania University's policy of offering free tuition for its professors' college-aged children is a sound idea for keeping faculty around as well as enhancing morale and luring new talent. However, there is evidence that needs to be brought to light in order to see if this policy actually does what the president of Seatown University is assuming. Once this evidence is uncovered, the president would then have a better idea if he/she wants to enforce this rule at Seatown University. The first illogical assumption made in this letter is that faculty retention does not necessarily imply high morale, and it most certainly does not infer that chances of luring new professors have increased. Seatown University would need to look at the overall happiness of the faculty as well as the number of application for jobs at Oceania University to have a better understanding if the free tuition policy has any merit. If happiness and application numbers are high, then it is possible that may have something to do with the free tuition policy, but more evidence is needed to bolster the president's suggestion. Not only does faculty retention not logically imply high morale or a better ability at attracting new talent, Seatown University also needs to look to see if the faculty retention has changed at Oceania University since the advent of the free tuition policy. If the retention rate was significantly higher after the policy was enforced, then it is plausible that the policy may been the reason. However, it is also vital to look at the retention rate over time. Perhaps the retention numbers jumped significantly within the first few years after the policy was brought about, plateaued, then dropped even lower than where it started, and then rose significantly higher than before the policy was enacted. Therefore, not only is important to study the retention rates before and after but also to assiduously study the trend of retention rates surrounding the time of when the policy was enforced. Gleaning this information brings the president that much closer to understanding if he/she should enforce the tuition policy at Seatown. Last but not least, it is of utmost importance to look other factors at Oceania University besides faculty retention. Perhaps its professors have an average higher salary and better benefits. Maybe they get more vacation and personal leave. Furthermore, it is possible that they do not have to work as many hours per week. The agglomeration of these reasons begs for more information that just the retention rate. A thorough statistical test analyzing these factors across time before and after the enactment of the free tuition policy will give Seatown University a more lucid understanding if the policy has caused an increase in Oceania University's faculty retention. If the other factors had remained relatively constant and retention significantly increased since the policy began, it is likely that the policy was the cause of this. Overall, the president of Seatown University has made some unwarranted assumptions about Oceania University's free tuition policy and its affect on enhancing faculty morale and luring new professors. To back up his suggestions, he needs evidence connecting faculty retention to high morale and number of job applications, if faculty retention has changed since the policy began, and to see if other factors had any affect on it as well. aside: I ran out of time before I could fix grammar mistakes, so I apologize.

Thanks! You are much kinder than I would be to myself. I think I'd give my essay a 4, maybe 4.5 if I was lucky. For any others, I'd appreciate feedback as well. I'll give feedback on your essays too.

The third weakness, I meant "without using words"

Thank you for your critique. What score would you give mine? I ran out of time for a contention paragraph, so I merged my contention point with the conclusion paragraph. + Clearly stated thesis + Solid reasons and examples, except for the "Lastly" paragraph. I think you could've left this and the next paragraph out and come up with a contention paragraph instead. I'm finding it hard to distinguish the "point of view" paragraph you are describing. + Stays on topic - Intro paragraph would be more powerful if used different words than the prompt, in your own words. It would also be better if your thesis was not the first sentence. - Grammar: Commas left out: "Their approach is not a sure way to avoid bad decisions, however it can lead to some truly great decisions "i.e., logic". I'm not quite sure if the hyphen is used properly before it. - Beginning of paragraphs: While I'm not completely sure, I think your writing style will be more powerful if you chose to start paragraphs with using words like "Furthermore, lastly, interestingly, etc". It's a bumpy approach for transitions. - Restate your thesis in the conclusion. Also, artist/philanthropist don't necessarily correlate strongly with emotion and engineering/businesswomen could use a lot of emotion. My score for you: 4.0

An international development organization, in response to a vitamin A deficiency among people in the impoverished nation of Tagus, has engineered a new breed of millet high in vitamin A. While seeds for this new type of millet cost more, farmers will be paid subsidies for farming the new variety of millet. Since millet is already a staple food in Tagus, people will readily adopt the new variety. To combat vitamin A deficiency, the government of Tagus should do everything it can to promote this new type of millet. Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation. Vitamin A deficiency is a troubling problem and one of its primary symptoms are vision issues such as night blindness. The nation of Tagus is suffering from this epidemic and thus it's important to alleviate and hopefully eradicate this health problem. The international organization has developed millet high in Vitamin A, but before the government promotes this, a number of questions need to be answered related to costs, tastes, and farming practices. The amount of disposable government money for solving the vitamin deficiency needs to be elucidated. The government will increase spending on subsidizing farmers as well as advertising the novel, more highly nourished millet. Moreover, this is not a short-term problem as the vitamin A deficiency happened for a reason other than the type of millet that Tagus consumes. Thus, spending is likely to rollover to the long-term and the government needs to calculate whether or not it can afford this practice. If it can without sacrificing other important government spending options, then there is nothing to worry about. If, however, there may be a problem with money, perhaps there is another option to consider that would result in a more permanent fix for the vitamin A deficiency. Another question to answer relates to the taste of the millet. For the people of Tagus to readily adopt this new variety, they should at the very least enjoy how it tastes. If it tastes worse than the previous variety of millet, people may be discouraged from buying the new millet even if it has more health benefits. A similar analogy is white rice versus brown rice. While some experts say brown rice is healthier, white rice is still consumed in much larger quantities than brown rice despite the lack of health benefits. And most people would say it is because brown rice doesn't titillate their taste buds, so to speak. Therefore, it's important to know how the millet will taste because that will likely affect the buying habits of the people of Tagus. Last but not least, it's vital to know if this new millet variety requires different farming practices. Perhaps there's a disparity about the type of soil it requires, the length of time before burgeoning, how much care it requires, the appropriate geographical environment such as elevation and weather patterns, and more. One specific crop cannot grow everywhere in the world, so this new type of millet could be different enough that it could require an environment outside of the Tagus nation. Thus, before recommending this new type of millet, the government should test to see if it's not only viable to be grown in Tagus but also if the farmers will be willing to grow it if the millet requires different farming procedures. Solving the Vitamin A deficiency of Tagus is of upmost importance. The idea to introduce a popular Tagus food, millet, with a higher Vitamin A content is commendable. However, there are a number of questions that need to be answered before the government promotes it. The government needs to elucidate if it can afford it in the long run, if the millet's taste will change, and if it requires different farming practices. With these questions answered, the government should have a better understanding if promoting this new variety of millet is best the best option for solving the vitamin A deficiency.

People who make decisions based on emotion and justify those decisions with logic afterwards are poor decision makers. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position. Humanity is known for the ability to have feelings, expressing emotions to each other, making people feel alive. Life, however, is complicated. There are situations that require people to make difficult decisions and sometimes emotions could interfere. People who make decisions under the influence of emotions rather than logic are bad decision makers. Emotions are a subjective experience in that they are based on feeling and are difficult to measure. Logic, on the other hand, is correlated with objectivity and can be measured. The scientific method is all based on logical reasoning and objective measures. A scientist derives a hypothesis, from which he/she conducts an experiment to answer this question. Using statistical measures, the scientist can conclude with a certain amount of confidence if his/her hypothesis is correct or incorrect. Others then have an idea whether or not they would agree with the scientist's conclusions. Let's pretend, for example, that the scientist performed experiments with emotions and subjectivity, lacking any sort of valid measures or statistics. The scientist could feel indolent and disregard using statistics to back up his/her claim, making others not believe him/her. Or, the scientist wouldn't have a structured approach to the experiment, feeling the need to achieve results fast and sloppily rather than slow and meticulous. This could lead to inaccurate results as a result of making poor decisions throughout the experiments. If the scientist were to remain objective and conduct the experiments with logic, there would be a more hopeful outcome of a proper experiment. Making decisions based on logic are even more important when others are relying on the decision maker. One of the most influential people of the world, the president of the United States, must operate with logic at all possible costs as his actions could affect the entire world. The job requires a high level of stress and a low level of sleep. These two factors can ferociously impact emotions. The president is trained, or at least innately able, to operate with making decisions based on logic rather than emotions, to not let these two job requirements affect his ability to think lucidly. Currently, President Obama must be extremely angry at ISIS in Iraq, for their inimical decisions on harming hundreds of innocent civilians. Based on these emotions, he must feel compelled rage war in Iraq, guns blazing and put an end to this atrocity. However, there's a high chance that could harm more innocents and U.S. soldiers in the process. He must think logically to minimize the risks. This logical reasoning is what makes him a good decision maker. If he were to operate primarily on emotions, it would be poor judgement on his end and would harm his country. This all being said, emotions are exist for a reason. Emotions drive behavior such as falling in love, choosing an appropriate career path, making lifelong friendships. When making decisions, however, they can cloud judgments and and lead to poor decisions. It's important to keep emotions in check, to learn how to use them for the advantages they have. Letting them interfere with situations that require objective reasoning, like scientific experiments, or situations in which others are dependent upon, such as the decisions of a president, could have harmful consequences due to poor decisions.