Question

im writing an essay for a scholarship about whether our constitution is still relevant. im having moral issues though because you have to play to the crowd to win. should i or should i say what i really feel and risk not winning?

Answer 1

You should risk not winning, if that's mean exposing your real opinion. But be careful, before you say it you need to be sure of it, so research a lot and be ready to answer questions from people that won't agree with you.

Answer 2

I cannot really say that I completely agree with MilindaR. While I think that it is fine to have and write about your own opinion, there is a time and place for it. There are two cardinal rules in effective writing.

The first is KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. It is extremely important to know who you are writing the piece for so that you can tailor it to fit their intellectual and cultural needs. Just for a simple example, if you were to write a paper that explains how a computer works, you would write it completely differently if you were writing it for an audience made up of middle school students than if your audience were college students. This applies to the intellectual rule. Culturally speaking, if you were to write a paper explaining the benefits of immigration reform, you would write it differently for a group of congressmen than you would for an office of public service, if at all (more on this decision in a minute).

The second cardinal rule of writing is KNOW YOUR PURPOSE. Before you even put pen to paper you must know the purpose of your writing. Are you writing to educate the read? Are you writing to persuade the reader? What is the ultimate outcome that you desire from your writing? In this case, your ultimate purpose of writing is to attain a scholarship. This ultimate purpose dictates that you cater to your audience, and this is what is creating your moral dilemma. You know your audience and their cultural and or intellectual views and you know what they would view as favorable. Unfortunately these views are in contrary to your own. So, a decision has to be made. Do you cater to the views of your audience even if you don't agree with them? Or do you scrap the whole project because you are guaranteed an unfavorable outcome? That is to say that if you know that you will not be considered for the scholarship if you express your own views, what is the point of writing the piece in the first place? You would just be wasting time and ink.

So that said I have a couple of suggestions.

First, do not be afraid to play Devil's Advocate. Just because you argue a point does not mean that you have to agree with that point. I do this all the time and it is beneficial in many ways. In this case, it would serve your purpose in that you would be arguing the point that your audience favors, but in addition (and this applies to any time you play Devil's Advocate), you are often lead to a different perspective on your argument. As humans, we are naturally very short-sighted and narrow-minded. Often it is not until we put ourselves on another's shoe that we actually see the whole truth of any given situation. This is not to say that by playing Devil's Advocate that you will change your opinion on the matter, but I guarantee it will open your eyes to a side of the argument that you may never have seen. So, do not let your morals interfere with the purpose of your writing. As I said, if your morals are that strong against it, you should not even bother writing the paper.

Second, BE SURE that you know your audience's view point on this matter. As writer, and as humans for that matter, we often make unfounded assumptions on what others think or feel. We do it all the time. Are you sure that your audience disagrees with your point of view? I suggest looking into this a little more. Define what your views are (i.e. liberal/conservative, etc) and then find out exactly (or to the best of your ability what a similar definition of your audience's views are. You may have already done this, but be SURE. Talk to others or do whatever research you can to determine what exactly your audience's opinions and views really are. You may find that they are in-line with yours more than you think.

Finally, it has been my experience that the committees and boards that judge these essays care very little about your opinion and rarely allow their own views to pervade their judging. What they care about more than your opinion is whether you can express yourself effectively. They are going to judge you on your grammar and spelling. They are going to judge you on your clarity of writing. They are going to jude you on your style and formatting. They might even jude you on whether or not you used your word processor correctly (e.g. using page breaks instead of multiple carriage returns to start a new page). Yes, I have seen judging using this criteria, but they are not likely to judge you on your opinion. There is a very important reason that this is true. Since they are offering a scholarship to anybody, there has to be a level playing field. COMPLETELY LEVEL. This means opinion cannot enter into the judging process. All applicants and judges are going to have different views and so this is not a good way to judge them. They must be judge only on things that can be consistently defined, as those that I have mentioned.

So the bottom line in my opinion is to write whatever you are most comfortable with and pay VERY close attention to your mechanics because those are what will be judged.

Answer 3

I say go for your opinion. That's why the constitution/our government has soooo many problems today, because people conform. If you talk about conformity, and say stuff most wouldn't it wouldn't strengthen your argument.
Scholarship people are looking for people who stand out, if you write about things most people wouldn't, you're more likely to win. Just be careful with wording, you don't want to insult somebody.

Answer 4

Too many times people answer in what they believe is the popular way. Stand for what you believe and answer how you truly feel.