Jacky Chen

While perfectionists argue that everyone should try their best to do everything, chasing the highest tier without making any mistakes, people should be allowed to make mistakes because making mistakes is an unavoidable thing in our journey and most people can grow up from admitting their mistakes.

While perfectionists argue that everyone should try their best to do everything perfectly, being perfectly will build up your confidence and allow you to be successful easier. It is true that many big names who successful in business or other fields once announced that they are perfectionists like Steve Jobs and Kobe Bryant. Nonetheless, these perfectionists never consider the following consequences once they fail. According to the conclusion from New York University, the perfectionists are less likely to confront the failures because they instinctly regard themselves as the best. From the experiments conducted by New York University, the researchers in NYU found that the perfectionists will be less likely to motivate themselves to success when they faced the difficulties. By contrast, people who are not the perfectionists will not feel disappointed as much as the perfectionists. As a result, they will be more likely to confront the difficulties and improve themselves. The different views of difficulties by the perfectionists and the non-perfectionists show their discrepancy toward the failures. Non-perfectionists have the lower expectation compared to the perfectionists, so they will not lose as much as confidence as well as the perfectionists do, implying that non-perfectionists are more willing to deal with the difficulties. In addition, the example of Cristiano Ronaldo also illustrates the point. Ronaldo is a typical perfectionist who try to make every possible goal become a real goal. However, when he gets older, his body does not support him to goal as much as his youth. Ronaldo never admits the fact that he is older now and he is not as strong and powerful as before. He does not want to be in the substitute in the consideration of his team. Finally, his team abandoned him. Ronaldo's experience underscores that people must admit their errors and change themselves to better suit in the community. Nonetheless, the perfectionists will not do that because they will never admit their errors and mistakes, thinking themselves as the best in all time. This proud attitude will easily destroy one's life by breaking up his relationship with others and the communities. Without changing themselves when facing the failures, like what Ronaldo did in Man United, these perfectionists will ultimately be abandon by others.

Making mistakes is a common thing in our journey of life and most people who admit their mistakes can learn from that experience, avoiding making the same mistakes again. The progress is made of the failure again and again. In 1912, the first year that the planes were invented, nearly half of the aviators would die when they had a flight. Black boxes were the record system that helped the scientists analyze the reasons for crashes of the planes. Therefore, with the help of black boxes, the scientists could promote their flight system, avoiding the same mistakes happened next time. The aviators who admitted their mistakes also learned from them, acknowledging that they made mistakes and were willing to change their behaviors to avoid it. With admitting the errors and the pursuit of change, the major airlines crashes drop significantly now, noticing that only one crash will happen in 8.3 million flights. This big success is aligned with the admission of errors. Without admitting the errors the aviators make, no innovative systems can be made for reducing the accidental rates. Furthermore, Messi' experience with losing the penalty can support that all men will make mistakes, but the difference of men is hidden in the way they treat the failure. In Copa America Cup, Messi lost a significant penalty in the Final, leading to Argentina lose the champion with Chile. Before the Final, Messi never lost the penalty over 30 games. The penalty lost did not break up with his own confidence, instead, Messi trained hard with learning a new way for kicking the penalty. Finally, in the World Cup 2022, Messi got 5 penalty and he did not lose any of them. Messi's experience showcases that everyone will make the mistakes even though Messi himself, who is regarded as the GOAT of soccer, the way Messi treated failure make himself unique. Instead of blaming the teammates or giving up the trainings, Messi preferred to train harder and avoided making the same mistakes in the future. This mentality in treating the failures led to the final success in the World Cup 2022.

Ultimately, the line between a "GOAT" and a failure is not defined by the absence of mistakes, but by the willingness to yield to them. While perfectionists like Ronaldo may achieve great heights, the complexity of maintaining success lies in the balance between confidence and humility. If one's pride is so strong that they cannot admit their own decline, they will eventually find themselves abandoned by the community they once led. Teiresias's warning is that pride acts as a barrier to evolution; just as the aviation industry would have remained stuck in the dangerous era of 1912 without the data from black boxes, individuals who refuse to "repair the evil" of their errors will remain stuck in their past glory. On a broader scale, the significance of this assertion is that the true "crime" of pride is that it stops progress. Whether it is a soccer player training for a penalty or a scientist analyzing a crash, the stakes are the same: those who acknowledge their wrong course can be more successful, while those blinded by pride will ultimately be left behind by the journey of history.

In the prologue of a book written by Hope Jahren, who is a biologist, she employs scientific but conversational tone and vivid imagery to underscore how important of her literacy work, persuading her readers to read her books carefully and consider her motivation.

Jahren uses a scientific but conversational tone to convince the readers and closer the distance, engaging more with the books and being aware of the current situation about the trees. She reminds the serious situation of the trees in America by providing statistics, saying that "we've cut down than fifty billion trees" to persuade the public to take care of the trees (Line 21). Through the lens of exigence in this passage, the author wants to showcase how the trees in America are destroyed by listing a group of numbers like "fifty billion trees" and "1 percent" (Line 22-23). This is because America is losing a lot of forests that never grown each year, the situation will continue to be more severe without the policies made by the government and the awareness of protecting the forests grown in people' s minds, implying that American should take the responsibility to prevent these trees from being killed. Once the awareness and the policies are grown, this current situation of deforestation will be mitigated. The author also uses some conversational language to make the readers to realize this situation step by step. She sets a series of tasks to the readers, for example "look out your window" and "gaze on just one leaf" to make the audiences realize a truth that the number of trees is decreasing and the looking of the leaves is becoming awful. Leveraging in the audiences' perspective, they follow the humor language written by the author and they unintentionally find the fact that the environment is under the danger right now. This is because the author does not force the audiences to know this truth and force them to change it, however, she prefers to use a humor and conversational language to convey the urgent situation to protect the trees. By conveying the urgent background to protect the trees, the readers know the exigence and more concentrated on the protection.

Furthermore, the author uses vivid imagery to showcase what she will discuss in her book and make the audiences curious about it. In Line 28 to Line 32, she asks the color of the leaves by asking series of rhetorical questions, for example, "Exact what shade of ... Why?". Being aware of the consideration from the author' perspective, she wants to use plenty of rhetorical questions to show the readers how to deeply observe a leaf like a scientist. This is because she wants to prove that her work of asking questions about nature is very important and full of details. Instead of just looking at plants as background, these rhetorical questions make the readers realize that every leaf has a lot of secrets, making them understand why her work of studying plants is so important and necessary. In addition, the author makes an overview about the book saying, "you are now a scientist" and "People will tell you what you have to know math to be a scientist" (Line 34). Being mindful of the background knowledge of this book, she tells the readers they are scientists to show that her work is not far away from normal people. In the normal book about being a scientists, the readers may think they need to learned some basic knowledge of hard science like chemistry or physics to understand the work. But in the passage written by Jahren, she breaks this commonality and says that having a question is enough. By making science sound simple and telling the audience that they are also scientists, she successfully conveys that her work is important because it connects everyone to nature. She wants readers to realize that studying and protecting nature is not just the job of professionals, but a duty for all humans.

Being aware of the urgent situation where forests are being destroyed like "one France after another," Jahren's message in the prologue carries a huge significance for our real world. She shows that the stakes of ignoring plants are very high because it leads to a lonely and dying planet. Furthermore, the broader rhetorical consequence of her argument is that she changes the definition of a scientist. In the normal book about science, readers may feel that protecting the environment is only the job of experts with professional knowledge. However, by making the readers feel that they are also scientists just by asking a question, the implication is that she removes the fear of science and successfully makes every reader responsible for nature. Ultimately, the complexity of her work is that true science is not just about hard formulas or math. Instead, it is about curiosity and caring about life. By connecting scientific questions with human emotions, Jahren proves that saving the world does not start in a laboratory, but right outside our window.

Although some opponents argue that the dominance of English in publishing articles and essays is unfair to the scholars whose first language is not English, teaching these scholars English is the most useful factor to cope with the difficulties because English is the most dominant language in the scientific research compared to other used languages and it costs least money to create an academic environment.

The critiques argue that "most of the world's scientists speak English as a second language", suggesting an inherent injustice when non-native speaker must compete with native ones (Source A). While it is true that learning a new language is as "a cost of extra time and effort" for these scientists whose first language is not English (Source B), it is a reminder that this investment should not be viewed merely as a burden, but rather as a necessary "entry ticket" to the global tank of knowledge. Although the unfairness exists, the collaborative benefits of a unified language far outweigh the initial learning costs. For example, every child in China will receive a basic studies of English in primary school and junior high school, regardless of their family background. Implementing English in the basic education in China make Chinese whose first language is Mandarin, not English to have a chance to study the most influential language for free. This policy of popularization effectively closes the "knowledge gap" caused by social class. It ensures that even children who are not from elite families have the tools to access the world's most advanced research. Also, more than "60% of researchers" agree to regard "English as an international language of science" and "more than 80% of scientists" agree to set an international languages for science (Source F). This underscores how English is popular and crucial for science nowadays. Almost all the top research papers are written in English, therefore, it is essential to study English if scientists aspire to do some in-depth research. Without this shared medium, the scientific community would be fragmented into "knowledge islands," where groundbreaking research remains trapped behind language barriers. This fragmentation not only does more than just slow down communication but also actively wastes human potential. When a researcher in one country cannot read a breakthrough study from another simply because of a language gap, they may spend years accidentally repeating the same experiments. By maintaining English as a global standard, we ensure that scientific progress is a "cumulative" process — where every scientist can build directly on top of the world's most recent discoveries in real-time, rather than being stuck in a cycle of redundant work.

The academic institution should guarantee that all the scholars should receive a professional education on English and it is the least cost way to create an academic world. English is the only language that "remained dominant as the U.S. strengthen in its place in the world" ( Source B). This implicates that if every scholar switch to another language as an international language for science, obviously, more scientists will make efforts and money to learn this new language. Remained English as the dominant language in science is the most reasonable and cheapest way to create an academic platform. Switching to a new international language would trigger a global "knowledge recession" because millions of existing documents would need re-translation, and generations of scientists would need to be re-educated. This "sunk cost" is something the modern scientific world simply cannot afford. Furthermore, some universities are going to "provide free English lessons for the international students with paying more tuition than the domestic students" (Source C). This institutional support shifts language learning from a personal struggle into a collaborative development. Through this "teaching through editing" approach, academia is not just teaching a language, but a unified way of logical expression. This investment is highly efficient because it uses a very low cost to achieve real-time sharing and seamless connection of global research data.

Ultimately, the dominance of English in academia is not just a matter of language preference, but a practical necessity for global progress. If the scientific community fails to maintain a unified language, the pace of discovery will slow down as valuable research remains hidden behind localized barriers. By easing the linguistic burden on international scholars, we can ensure that the next great scientific breakthrough is defined by the quality of the research instead of the primary language of the research.