Consider the following comments on doubt.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell
If you do not have certain doubts, you have not yet thought hard enough.
Doubt can be a thief that quietly steals every chance you never took.
Faith and doubt both are needed, not as antagonists but working side by side, to take us into the unknown.
Lillian Smith
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 might hold that doubt is double-edged in one's inner life: it can be the engine of honest thought or the brake that strangles action. Begin with a moment when uncertainty served you, perhaps sparing you from a hasty mistake. Then turn to its cost, the opportunities and self-belief that chronic doubt erodes. A third movement could explore living with doubt rather than resolving it. Caution: avoid landing on the bland conclusion that doubt is simply healthy, since the more honest reflection admits how often it paralyses.