Writing Feedback / Being underrated gives you the advantage of a no-pressure situation [3]

It is better to be underrated by people than to be overrated by them

ASSIGNMENT: What are your thoughts on the statement above? Do you agree or disagree with the writer's assertion? Compose an essay in which you express your views on this topic. Your essay may support, refute, or qualify the view expressed in the statement. What you write, however, must be relevant to the topic under discussion. Additionally, you must support your viewpoint, indicating your reasoning and providing examples based on your studies and/or experience.

Underdogs who have been able to achieve success against much fancied opposition will readily agree with the statement,"it is better to be underrated by people than to be overrated by them". I also agree with the statement and the reasons are as follows:

Being underrated gives you the advantage of a no-pressure situation so it is easy to keep calm during a task as compared to someone who is overrated. Not just that, being underrated can serve as a form of encouragement. For example, imagine there is a boy whose friends and close ones don't expect him to succeed in life. He takes that as a challenge and uses it to drive him on and succeed.

Moreover, being overrated can lead to complacency and stress. Recently, a friend of mine took part in the IELTS exam. He is an intelligent boy and everyone expected him to ace the test. But the results did not reflect the expectations everyone had of him. Because he was overrated, he became over-confident and complacent and took it a little too easy. If he had not been burdened by the pressure of everyone's expectations, he could have done a lot better in the preparation and ultimately the exam.

Lastly, during a competition, if you are underrated by the people or the opposition or both, you have a much better chance of winning because will not know of what you might be capable of. You could use those low expectations of you to beat the opposition; you could use it to your advantage.

I believe being underrated is a big advantage, because then, you have nothing to lose but everything to gain.

Writing Feedback / "Success in not final, failure is not fatal; it is the will to continue that counts" [3]

"Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education"

What are your thoughts on the idea that failure is necessary for education to take place? Compose an essay in which you express your views on this topic. Your essay may support, refute, or qualify the views expressed in the excerpt. What you write, however, must be relevant to the topic under discussion. Additionally, you must support your viewpoint, indicating your reasoning and providing examples based on your studies and/or experience.

"Success in not final, failure is not fatal; it is the will to continue that counts". So is the famous saying of Sir Winston Churchill. This well-known quote indicates that in one's life, he/she will surely experience shortcomings but if they decide to use it as a form of encouragement, they will succeed. I agree completely with Novelist John Hersey's idea in discussion and the following are the reasons why:

When you fail, you know your weaknesses and how to overcome them. The knowledge gained from experience is far better than that gained from sources, hence the famous proverb, "experience is the best teacher". The best example is of Steve Jobs, who was a college dropout, a fired technical executive and an unsuccessful businessman. At the age of thirty, he was left devastated after being unceremoniously removed from the company he founded. Yet, he used that to drive him on in life. He says."I didn't see it then, but being fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to me". After much work, he was taken back into the company and he made some of the most iconic products like ipod, ipad, and the iphone. He later became one of the richest and most successful men in history.

And then there is the story of Michael Jordan, who is arguably the best basketball player in history. He was dropped out of his high school basketball team and went home and cried in the privacy of his bedroom. But he didn't let his early setback stop him from becoming the most iconic figure in basketball. He even states that the reason for his success is because he has failed so many times in his basketball career.

Finally there is the example of Oliver Stone. Three time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone dropped out of Yale University to write his first novel, which was at first rejected by publishers. When it was finally published later on, it wasn't well received and had bad reviews. Stone then went to Vietnam to teach English and was also involved in the war that won him honors and inspired him for his later work and now we find him where he is.

These are but a few examples of people that have used failure to drive them on and have become successful in life. As Ralph Waldo Emerson puts,"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail", Jobs, Jordan and Stone shook off the early disappointments and rose up to be significant entities in their respective fields.