I write here whenever I feel like, unlike the GRE where I have to (else my AWA score will be zero). Since I took a mock test last week to assess where I stand, I feel I should share my essays here. These are two essays written as part of Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) in the very first hour of the GRE.
Issue Essay
Statement: Men and women have different body structures and attributes, hence are not suitable for all jobs equally.
My response:
I agree that men and women have different physical and biological attributes, albeit not to a large extent. We stumble upon bit-sized trivias in notebooks and adverts quoting a thing or two about these 'differences'. For example, "Men have larger brain size, whereas women on the other hand have greater nerve cell density", "Men have higher muscle mass and women surpass when it comes to bone density", etc.
However it is time-tested that with proper training and regular practice, many occupations previously assumed to be suitable only for men have seen the participation of women too. For instance, Indian Air Force inducted the first ever women pilots into the fighter squadron a couple of years back. Similarly, Indian Army is now considering inducting women into the border frontline areas guarded by BSF. These examples, though accept the inherent physical differences between the genders, refute the unsuitability of a gender for many tasks.
In contrast to the above discussion, there are some occupations that are gender specific, given the kind of implicit personalities of a gender which are involved in carrying out the task. A nurse working in hospital is almost always a young women. Women are generally seen as compassionate and caring, which draws parallels with a mother tending to her child. Patients ailing on beds are always mollified by nurses no matter how deadly their disease is or how badly they are injured. On the other side, a hunter in stone age is always pictured as a man with spear or bow and arrow. In this scenario men gather and hunt for food. They need to be aggresive and tactical. Women here are seen as caretakers of their offsprings, waiting till dusk for the men to arrive with the bounty.
There are always exceptions which break stereotypes associated with a certain occupations, be it racing, guarding borders, etc. The occupational requirments here do not largely depend on their respective physical attributes of the genders but rather mental temparament associated with each gender. Hence, men and women are generally suited for all tasks and occupations, provided neccesary training and pre-requisites are met which overshadow the previously held notions.
Score: 3 (0-6)
Argument Essay
Statement: A lot was discovered and learned about other planets by sending robotic spacecraft at a fraction of cost of what it takes for manned space exploration. Hence, it is safer spend resources to send unmanned missions only.
My response:
The opinion stated in the latter sounds pragmatic and if folllowed, can be absolutely safe for humans. We can gather all the needed information from unmanned space probes to study what it is like on the other planets and regions in our solar system and beyond. But one needs to ask: Why are we doing this in the first place? Why do we spend billions of dollars just to study what it's like on mars when there are millions on our own planet suffering from drought, energy and food crisis?
The success rate of unmanned space probe missions kept increasing in recent decades. This can be attributed to the lessons hard-learned from mistakes we have done earlier. Every mission has tons of data to scour through and a lot of valuable lessons to learn from regarding stages from mission planning, resource allocation, plan execution, probe design and testing, launch, target approach and of course, the destination (planet or asteroid). This development has been key in sending not just robots, but humans too into outer space. We on the Earth never shied away from adventure. Exploration led us to discovering America, scaling everest and completing expeditions to both the poles.
It should be noted that with passing time and with the events mentioned above, we perfected ourselves in making these processes safe for humans as well. I agree that manned space flight is expensive. But it has become less dangerous than before and it still keeps doing so. As we know more about our neighbouring planets viz. the atmosphere, surface, magnetism, compositions, etc., it becomes imperative that the next step is nothing but stepping forward and reaching out to that planet. Apollo missions exemplify this idea. We learned a great deal about moon by bringing back surface samples and studying them at a larger scale than just doing it in situ. Unmanned probes can only do so much.
Developing technologies needed for manned space flight helped in making pathbreaking discoveries and gave us several spinoff tech, esp. drastic improvement in solar cell efficiency, improved velcro straps. water recycling systems, etc. The opinion stated above ignores the technological leaps we made in processes associated with handling life systems as we built unmanned probes. These are now as reliable as the previous tech we used and it can be concluded that manned space flight now is safer than ever before.
Score: 1 (0-6)
Overall AWA score: 2 (0-6)
Which is not good. I need to improve.
I Will be posting new essays and their scores after every GRE mock I take. Each of my essays deserve to be posted here :). After all, that's what a blog is for!
Goutham
