Official Guide: Practice Test #1
To change is to risk something, making us feel insecure. Not to change is a bigger risk, though we seldom feel that way. There is no choice but to change. People, however, cannot be motivated to change from the outside. All of our motivation comes from within.
Adapted from Ward Wybouts, Planning in School Administration: A Handbook
Assignment: What motivates people to change? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Sample Essay - Score of 6
What motivates people to change is a relentless and innate desire for self-improvement. Rarely ever has history seen a man or society kick back, relax, and say “Well that about does it. Not much else to do here!”
Within every person is the potential to achieve greatness in some form; be it athletically, mentally, spiritually. This inherent potential demands that people continue to explore and change both their environments and themselves throughout their life’s course. Never should a man be idle for too long. After acknowledging the changes a man has already made to his environment, the pursuit of self-improvement will once again stir within his soul and call him to action. This internal desire, this pursuit of challenge and perfection, does not prohibit man from being happy with his status and achievements. On the contrary, the device serves more to allow the man to constantly strive for greater change, newer innovation. What motivates people to change is the ongoing need to redefine people’s lives and identities –to elevate them to higher levels of eminence and success.
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A good example of this can be seen in clinical psychology. When patients seek therapy for difficulties that have encumbered their daily functioning, they most often arrive for treatment voluntarily and willingly-they consciously accept the