Please review my issue essay--first try~Thanks a lot.

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31. “Financial gain should be the most important factor in choosing a career.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.


When choosing a career, people may take account of kinds of factors to help them make decisions, such as financial gain, personal interest, personal career development, etc, which weigh differently in different people's concideration. Personally, I disagree with the opinion that financial gain should be the most important factor in choosing a career. If I get a chance to choose one job from the others, I will consider my personal interest first, my personal career development next, and financial gain last.

Doing a job with great interest will make me work more efficiently and happily than doing an job with no interest which even offers a higher pay. High pay may be one source of my happiness. But if it is at the cost of my personal interest, I would rather never accept that high pay. Take two of my working experiences as examples. When I was a college student, I got two summer interships. One was working as an asistant secretary in a comfortable school office which offered high pay, the other was going to the poor rural areas to do some research studies under the direction of a social professor with low pay. Acutally, I was more interested in the second job. However, I mistakenly chose the first job as an assistant secretary because of the higher pay. After several days' trying, it turned out that the job was so boring that I could not stand spending the whole day siting before a desk keeping typing and coping sorts of documents. When in the office, I was not eager to work efficiently and did not want to talk with others. After a whole day's working, I became a dumb and unhappy person and learned nothing from the job. Therefore, I quited the job as soon as possible and then took the second job, spending all days in the rural areas doing surveys, analyzing datas and writing reports. Although it was hot outside and the work condition was very tough, it was still the happiest days in my life. I read lots of articles, exchanged ideas with my team members and learned a great amount of knowledge which benefited me a lot. Therefore, to me, personal interest is the most important factor in choosing a career.

Personal career development is another very important factor I will consider much when I need to choose a career. Just as the examples metioned above, although the assistant secretary job offered a high pay, it offered limit personal career development for me. Conversely, the second job offered me many research skills, knowledge and lots of practice even though the pay was low. Low pay today did not mean low pay tomorrow. Along with the increase of knowledge, skills and experience, low pay will concequently become high pay. Similarly, if no improvement was made during the job, high pay would become low pay.

Indeed, financial paid is also a very important factor when one need to make choise. The amount of financial paid reflects a person's value in the job. However, it is not the most important. The value of a person can be changed along with his/her working performance. To me, working with great interest on the right position in the right company which provides with large career development space, I believe I can finish my job efficiently, improve myself quickly and eventually get high pay and promotion.

To sum up, when I should make decision on choosing a job, among the three factors(financial gain, personal interest and personal career development), personal interest is the most and the financial gain is the least important factor affecting my decision.

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by VP_Jim » Sun Aug 10, 2008 10:07 am
I'll give you a 5 on this. The only reason I'm knocking you down a bit is that it's generally better to use more well known examples to back up your points. That means, try to avoid using personal examples if possible. Other than that, your writing and points are good. Keep it up!
Jim S. | GMAT Instructor | Veritas Prep