Please rate my essay & suggest improvements

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“When someone achieves greatness in any field – such as arts, science , politics and business, that person’s achievements are more important that any of his or her personal faults”
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point of view with reasons / or examples from your own experience , observations or reading.”

While author states that a person’s faults are considered less important after his achievement in his field. This position is well justified. There are several reasons that this is true. Achievement is something that often occurs as a result persistent quality in efforts of an individual throughout his career. However lot many people are very persistent and competent in their professional careers but still their works are never considered as achievements. The very phenomenon of achievement has certain characteristics to it and it is important to understand what differentiates achievements from just works in any field.

Passion for work is the very essence in an individual that becomes impetus to create extraordinary breakthroughs in different fields. Breakthroughs are the result of excellence in micro tasks which would come together to constitute the achievement or a work of almost celestial magnitude. These smaller tasks are often an interlinked chain where one task led to another and the very application of excellence and quality to these micro task modules executed over the life time of an individual comprises of an achievement. What is also very important to consider is that the larger picture being considered called achievement is not only a result of excellence in micro tasks being considered in isolation but also of in their arrangements and the sequence in which they occurred.

Discussing “faults in individual’s personality” is very subjective largely depends on assessor’s knowledge to distinguish between what is called “fault in personality” and “A creative mind”. It has been well established that a creative and talented individuals have always been criticised for their very way of existence and innovative thought by short sighted individuals who are after all not individuals at all. This can be inferred from very example of Galileo, when he proposed that it is earth that orbits the sun rather than everything else orbiting the earth he was threatened to a death sentence. Many more similar examples from history and daily life can be cited explaining a similar phenomenon.

In conclusion this can be said that often unique personality traits of great artisans, scientists are initially considered flaws when they are in their initial or intermediate stages of work because there works being very original often deviate from conventional thought schools of those streams. Later when the composition of the craftsman comes into existence as a complete picture it testifies that ‘personality flaws’ do not create ‘masterpieces’ known as achievements.

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by aj5105 » Sat Aug 30, 2008 2:30 am
The essay looks quite in line with the topic.

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by VP_Jim » Sun Aug 31, 2008 10:48 am
Not bad, but you could make this essay even better by backing up all your points with specific, real world examples, rather than general or hypothetical examples. Your Galileo example was good - aim for more like that (at least one per paragraph).

Also, watch out for grammatical issues - leave time to proofread.

I'll give you a 4.
Jim S. | GMAT Instructor | Veritas Prep