SAT essay question: Do people depend on work - whether it is a job, schoolwork, or volunteer work - to determine what their daily activities and interactions with others should be?

People, by nature, are creatures of habit. Rhythm and meaning in our life is important. Throw us for a loop and watch us spin in circles, unsure of what to do. Such a need for routine is satiated by the working lifestyle, helps give us purpose, direction, a sense of fulfillment, and an environment in which we are comfortable. Humans depend on their work economically, socially and, more importantly, as individuals.

Every creature has what we call a niche, a place where they belong in an ecosystem, from whence they got their food, their shelter and the development of their characteristics/ defining traits. The human niche is the workplace, whether it be a fast-food restaurant, textile mill, rural farm or corporate office. We become who we are and define ourselves through our job. And, being people who strive to categorize just about everything (take countries, political parties, social cliques and common stereotypes for example), such definement is very important to us. We judge who we are, who we associate ourselves with, who we should marry and even our place in the grand scheme of things by our career. Why do we do it? Because it’s tangible.

Through a job, whether full-time, part-time or volunteer, we come into contact with certain groups of people. We become vulnerable to peer-pressure, traditions and ways of life inherent in that job description. People even stereotype others by their career and it’s hard not to fit the guidelines that society puts you in.

Unfortunately, we become dependant on our work and when away from it in situations that we don’t have to deal with as part of our career we feel out of our element, unsure how to act and without a frame of reference. Our work tells us what to do, who to be and most everything else down to where you eat and, as we are apt to do in our categorizing haze, we listen, follow and obey. If we don’t we are cast out of society as defective. We need our jobs to tell us who to be, to tell others who we are, but to keep us seen as a functioning member of society as well. And, as social animals, this, too, is very important to us. How many people can honestly say that they’ve stopped their daily routine to chat with a homeless man and take him out to dinner? Unless you’re a volunteer at the local soup kitchen, not many.

Jobs also give us purpose, fulfillment and a sense about ourselves. Without one we can feel wayward, helpless, useless and unfit to be seen with. This does havoc on one’s self esteem and mood and can even cause people to spiral into a world of depression and into poverty. We need our jobs to mandate our ways of life, but we also need them to keep us living. It is the way society works and who are we to argue?

This is the way of life we have made for ourselves and to remove it would send the masses into chaos.