AP English Language — Style — Writing Drill 2

The following is a draft of a student personal essay on solitude and the modern discomfort with being alone, written for an AP English class. The teacher has asked the student to revise for style — precision, voice, sentence variety, and figurative language. [1] In today's world, people are constantly connected to their phones and other devices, and many people feel uncomfortable when they are not. [2] Being alone and being disconnected has become something that people are afraid of or try to avoid. [3] This is a problem because solitude — time spent alone without distractions — has real value that people are missing out on. [4] Research on solitude suggests that periods of unstructured alone time allow the brain to consolidate memories, generate creative connections, and process emotional experiences that the pace of daily life does not allow. [5] The neuroscientific term for this is the default mode network — the brain's activity when it is not focused on an external task. [6] The default mode network is associated with self-reflection, imagination, and the kind of meaning-making that connects individual experiences into a coherent sense of self. [7] People often fill solitude with noise because silence feels uncomfortable. [8] But the discomfort of solitude is not a sign that something is wrong. [9] It is, more likely, a sign that something is happening — that the brain is beginning to do the slower, harder work that constant stimulation prevents. [9] Critics might argue that modern connectivity has replaced the need for solitude by providing community and stimulation that isolated people historically lacked. [10] But the kind of presence required by a scrolling feed is not the same as the presence of other people. [11] It is a simulation of company that provides the sensation of connection without its substance. [12] We have made it very easy to avoid solitude and very hard to seek it. [13] The most countercultural thing a person can do in the twenty-first century may be to sit quietly in a room without reaching for their phone. [14] Pascal observed in the seventeenth century that all of humanity's problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room alone. [15] That observation has not aged poorly.