For Writing Test 1, you will read a short article, then create an extended paragraph in which you develop a main idea and take at least one example from the reading.

From the two attached articles, one will be chosen for the test.

Attachment(s):

Its Not About You

David Brooks

Over the past few weeks, Americas colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.

But, especially this year, one is conscious of the many ways in which this years graduating class has been ill served by their elders. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.

More important, their lives have been perversely structured. This years graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.

Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did. Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.

Worst of all, they are sent off into this world with the whole baby-boomer theology ringing in their ears. If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front.

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments to a spouse, a community and calling yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

Todays graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self.

Most successful young people dont look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimers and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasnt in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

Most people dont form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, its rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. Its the things they did to court unhappiness the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. Its excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

Finally, graduates are told to be independent-minded and to express their inner spirit. But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself. As Atul Gawande mentioned during his countercultural address last week at Harvard Medical School, being a good doctor often means being part of a team, following the rules of an institution, going down a regimented checklist.

Todays grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, theyll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and cant be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but its nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. Its to lose yourself.

(First published in The New York Times, May 30, 2011)

Ikigai

James Gunn.

Follow your dreams, no matter what, we are told, on a near daily basis, by celebrities and sports stars and self-empowerment gurus.

But I dont think this is always the best advice.

People don't find career happiness chasing dreams. They find it discovering what they're good at and doing that for the benefit of themselves and their fellow human beings.

Our dreams are, generally, us imagining ourselves from the outside, not the inside. This can never be experienced and, because of that, following ones dreams is usually a necessarily fruitless activity. Even in the best of circumstances, it is not a source of well-being or comfort.

And although were often told, You can do anything you set your mind to!, its just not true. People CANT do anything they set their minds to. The physicality of my vocal chords make it so that I will never sing like Adele. My height precludes me from being a basketball star. My age and ethnicity prevent me from ever being a member of South Korean boy band BTS, no matter how much I set my mind to it.

I mean, Im making an educated guess. Maybe I could do one of those three things if I set my mind to it, but definitely not all three.

Self-belief and perseverance are important for success, perhaps necessary, but so are natural ability and talent. People often focus solely on what they want instead of what theyre good at and how they can benefit others. In that way, the follow your dreams philosophy is part of the self-centered culture of our modern world.

If there is one thing missing in many people's development, it's a period of true, honest, and open self-examination and discovery, experimenting with what you're good at, with how other people see you, and what your limitations are. This is an exciting exploratory phase most people skip in a perfect world, I think most people would be served by focusing on this in their late teens and early twenties. But you can do it at any time.

If you discover what youre truly good at, and what you enjoy doing, and its something you can potentially make a living at well, that, to me, is a much richer life than following your dreams, which are not only unfulfilling, but they shift and change throughout your life anyway. Because to achieve a dream is one thing, but to live inside a dream that you discover moment by moment along your path, where you grow stronger and wiser, and enhance the lives of those around you - well, that's a much deeper, more fulfilling life.

In other words, "following your dreams" is bullshit. Instead, discover your dreams in real time and actually experience them.

I was writing about all this yesterday on Twitter while answering questions, and someone sent me this graphic of the Japanese teaching Ikigai. I had never heard of this, but I think it shows how I perceive a healthy path to career fulfilment more than anything Ive ever seen.

Anyway, I hope this is of some inspiration or assistance to some of you, and good luck to all of you no matter what.