SAMPLE RESPONSES: WRITING TOPIC

   

   I agree quite strongly with Hemingway that age brings increasing difficulty in finding heroes, but that one still needs them. As skepticism increases, the number of people one can admire or hope to emulate decreases.     

  An older person, having more experience and having acquired, one hopes, a more objective and realistic assessment of other people, tends to see more flaws than a younger person might. On the other hand, the older person is likely to recognize and value certain qualities such as careful reasoning, empathy, and kindness that a younger person might overlook or consider irrelevant. (Yet another problem is that a person's heroes tend to be older than herself, and the number of possibilities dwindles, but that has to be accepted.