Writing Feedback / Do we value only what we struggle for? - SAT practice [3]

I've been prepping myself for the SAT and here's one of the writing essays that I practiced with:

Prompt:
"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value."
Thomas Paine

Assignment:
Do we value only what we struggle for? Plan your response, and then write an essay to explain your views on this issue. Be sure to support your position with specific points and examples. (You may use personal examples or examples from your reading, observations, or, knowledge of subjects such as history, literature, science.)

My essay:

What we struggle for is inevitably what we value. The more effort and thought put into something, the more space that idea of what is being struggled for occupies the mind.

Thomas Paine's life was dedicated to making life better- he was constantly struggling for the American and French Revolutions. He wrote the book, Common Sense, in which he urged others to take up the duty that he felt to serve his nation and make her liberated. Risking his life to do all this, this was indeed the purpose that he struggled long and hard for.

In Harper Lee's book, To Kill a Mockingbird, the main character- Scout, struggles with her understanding between the differences of black and white people. With her father being a successful lawyer who later decides to defend a black man amidst the racial differences, Scout begins a several year long journey traveling between the lies and truths about the racial issues in her community before deciding for her what she believes.

I am part of the first generation in my family born in America. The process in which my parents emigrated from China to America was quite difficult. They both sought the opportunity in America in which I and my brother thrive in today through much struggle and hardship.

In these cases, our inner and outer struggles make up our values- in another way, a part of who we are. This is a point that we have discovered through obtaining freedom and our way of life above all else.