Human Ambitions and Moral Choices
Senior 6 · English (Languages)
Human Ambitions and Moral Choices
Lesson 1 of 4
30 min
Let's begin
Ask a room of S6 students what they want to be, and most will answer with a job title. Ask them why, and the room goes quiet. The reading in this lesson is a reflective essay in which a student tries to answer that second question honestly, including the parts of ambition she does not admire. You will read it twice: first for what it says, then as a writer, to see how it is built. Then you will plan and give a short talk about your own career aspirations.
A reflective essay. The writer, Keza, is an imagined S6 student; the essay was written for this lesson.
1 When I was nine, the river below our hill swallowed my cousin's school bag. It very nearly swallowed my cousin. For about eleven weeks of every rainy season, the stepping stones we used to cross it disappeared under brown water, and the children on our side of the valley simply stayed at home. Nobody called this a problem. It was weather, like the rain itself.
2 Then, in the year I turned twelve, a team arrived with steel cables, bags of cement and a young woman who carried a clipboard and gave instructions to men twice her age. In six weeks they built a footbridge. I remember standing in the middle of it, feeling it sway very slightly under my feet, and understanding for the first time that the world is not simply given to us. Someone decides what it looks like. I decided, there and then, that one day that someone would be me.
3 I want to be a civil engineer. I have said this sentence so many times that it has worn smooth, like a stone in a stream, and I sometimes forget how strange it once sounded in my mouth. An ambition, I have learned, is not a feeling. A feeling arrives on its own; an ambition has to be fed. Mine eats mathematics homework, physics practicals I would rather avoid, and long evenings when my friends are outside and I am not.
4 It would be dishonest to pretend that ambition is always a virtue. I have watched it make people hard. A classmate of mine who wanted first place more than anything stopped sharing his notes, then stopped speaking to the people he was competing with, and finally, I suspect, stopped enjoying the subject that had made him ambitious in the first place. The higher he climbed, the lonelier he looked. Ambition that serves only the self is a bridge with one bank: it goes nowhere.
5 So I have tried to give mine a second bank. When I imagine my future, I do not see a title on an office door; I see a girl who reaches school dry on a wet morning. That picture does something a salary cannot: it tells me which compromises are acceptable and which are not. A bridge built with stolen cement still stands, for a while. I would rather build slowly and honestly than quickly and profitably.
6 I do not know whether I will succeed. Grades fall, scholarships go to others, and plans that look solid on paper crack under real weight. But I have noticed that the question "Will I make it?" paralyses me, while the question "What will I do today?" does not. Perhaps that is the real lesson of the footbridge: it was not built in a single heroic day, but one cable, one bag, one careful measurement at a time.
Definition
Key terms
Answer in full sentences. Questions 1 to 4 ask what the text says; 5 to 8 ask what it means; 9 asks what you think.
A good reflective essay is not a diary. Each paragraph makes a move in an argument, and the moves are ordered so that the reader's view changes with the writer's. The diagram maps Keza's six moves. Notice paragraph 4: by attacking ambition herself, she wins the reader's trust before she defends it.
| Device | Example (paragraph) | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Personification | "the river … swallowed my cousin's school bag" (1) | Makes the river an active threat, not just scenery. |
| Simile | "worn smooth, like a stone in a stream" (3) | Shows how repetition has made the ambition familiar, perhaps too familiar. |
| Antithesis | "A feeling arrives on its own; an ambition has to be fed." (3) | Balanced opposites on either side of a semicolon make the distinction memorable. |
| Climax (a rising sequence) | "stopped sharing … then stopped speaking … finally … stopped enjoying" (4) | Each loss is worse than the one before, so the cost of ambition grows as we read. |
| Extended metaphor | "a bridge with one bank" (4), "a second bank" (5), "stolen cement" (5) | Ties the moral argument back to the opening story. |
| Tricolon | "one cable, one bag, one careful measurement" (6) | Three parallel items, the last one longest, give the ending a firm rhythm. |
| Word (paragraph) | Word class | Meaning here | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| swallowed (1) | verb | carried away and covered completely | Figurative; the literal meaning belongs to eating. |
| sway (2) | verb | move slowly from side to side | A suspension footbridge is designed to move a little. |
| virtue (4) | noun | a morally good quality | Opposite: vice. |
| compromises (5) | noun | things given up or accepted to reach a goal | Can be neutral (a fair agreement) or negative ("compromise your values"). |
| profitably (5) | adverb | in a way that makes money | Contrasted with honestly: the writer sets money against integrity. |
| paralyses (6) | verb | makes unable to act | British spelling; American English writes paralyzes. |
| heroic (6) | adjective | very brave or grand | Used ironically: real achievement is slow, not heroic. |
Worked example
Turning an ambition into goals
Keza's last paragraph swaps an outcome question for a process question. George T. Doran's 1981 management article proposed that objectives be Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-related (SMART). Later writers often read the A as achievable and the R as relevant.
The second sentence names who acts, what, how much and by when, so you can tell on any Friday whether you are on track.
You will give a two-minute talk to the class on the career you hope to follow. A strong talk is not a list of wishes; like Keza's essay, it moves. Use this six-part plan:
| How sure you are | Formal expressions | Grammar that follows |
|---|---|---|
| Firm | I am determined to … / I intend to … / My aim is to … | to + base verb |
| Hopeful | I aspire to … / I hope eventually to … / I would very much like to … | to + base verb |
| Open | I am considering … / I have not ruled out … / I am weighing up … | verb + -ing or a noun |
| Conditional | Provided that I …, I plan to … / If I am admitted to …, I will … | present tense in the condition |
Tip
Sound sure without sounding arrogant. Pair a firm statement of aim with a modest statement about yourself: "I am determined to qualify as a surveyor, and I know my technical drawing still needs work." Listeners trust a speaker who names a weakness, just as readers trusted Keza after paragraph 4.
Warning
Practice
Sources and credits
