Consider the following comments on competition.
I spent years racing people who never knew we were in a race.
Comparison turns a private life into a public scoreboard nobody asked to keep.
We are taught to win before we are ever asked what the prize is worth.
We compete hardest for the things we were told to want, not the things we actually do.
There is a rivalry that sharpens you and a rivalry that simply uses you up.
Write a reflective piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your thinking and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A reflective thesis is that competition shaped me in ways I did not choose and did not always notice, sharpening me at times and hollowing me out at others, and the difference lay in whose race I thought I was running. Open with a particular memory, the sting of being outdone, the quiet satisfaction of winning something that suddenly felt empty. Then explore the tension between competition as a spur, which drew effort and focus I did not know I had, and competition as a trap, which had me chasing goals borrowed from people I was only pretending to admire. A useful structural move distinguishes the rivalry that improved the work itself from the rivalry that only fed my need to be ahead. Caution: avoid the comfortable conclusion that I have risen above comparison, since the honest reckoning is with how often I still measure myself against others.