Consider the following comments on genius.
We call it genius when we cannot bear to admit how much patient work it really took.
The word genius lets us off the hook, since we could never be expected to match a gift we were not given.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas Edison
What looks like effortless brilliance is usually a thousand failures we were not there to see.
Every age crowns its geniuses and quietly forgets the company that made them possible.
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 the idea of genius has comforted me and cheated me at once, because believing brilliance is something a person simply is can quietly excuse me from the work of becoming anything at all. Open with a particular memory, an admired figure whose talent once seemed a different species from my own effort, or a moment I dismissed a goal as belonging only to the gifted. Then work the tension: some people really do begin with rare aptitude, yet the myth of innate genius hides the years of practice, failure and unseen support that any achievement actually requires. A useful structural move contrasts genius as an excuse, which tells me not to bother, with effort as a choice, which is uncomfortable precisely because it is available to me. Caution: avoid the equal and opposite lie that anyone can do anything with enough work, since that flatters the will while ignoring the luck, circumstance and help that no amount of trying can summon alone.