A friend of mine on Facebook evaluates SAT essays professionally. I have been fascinated to learn from him how little time each essay gets; it is less than two minutes of consideration for each one, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, yesterday he posted that he had just gotten done scoring 500 essays on the topic “Can material things make you happy?” He was stunned that NOT ONE 16 year old out of that 500 believed that material things make you happy. That is rather remarkable isn’t it? I find it very encouraging. So I’ll reiterate the question he put on his post, “So why do we put so much emphasis on stuff and not on relationships?”