Since life is unpredictable and no one is gifted with

Question

Since life is unpredictable and no one is gifted with perfect foresight or wisdom,  living life fully is to make mistakes and to accept  them as a natural part of experience.

A) living life fully is to make mistakes and to accept
B) to live life fully is making mistakes and accepting
C) living life fully is making mistakes and to accept
D) to live life fully is to make mistakes and to accept
E) life fully lived is making mistakes but accepting

aspiremba · Answer

I choose D. 

(Another contender was A - Chose D over A since A uses a gerund verb and D employs parallelism better.)

afife76 · Answer

I am choosing D due to paralelism. (contender is A)

lastochka · Answer

I would have also picked D on the exam. What troubles me with D is whether it is acceptable to use "to" in "to accept" since "to make mistakes" already contains 'to' and has an 'and' in there. I am unclear in this area.

Wouldn't be surprised if the answer is B.

crackgmat750 · Answer

Paul, From where have you got these brutal SC's?:) Are they from ETS. Suddenly after reading them..I feel my SC concepts are horrible.

I think since some days SC is something where Iam doing very well in the practice tests of vstudy..kaplan etc..but now it seems all is not well. Anyways..thanks for making me realize this.

venksune · Answer

I am in synch on the parallelism in D and with the choices selection of other members. However, I will risk C. - right, I also laughed - but to get the discussion into a different dimension, I will see if I can defend my choice.

My contention is that you dont want ' to make  mistakes'. you are 'making mistakes' by chance and 'by virtue of making mistakes you progress' - this is the effect the sentence expects I suppose. 

We hear people say 'you're going  to make mistakes , if you dont practice enough' - this is when they wanted to warn you about the potential to doing a mistake. However the same people would say 'You are making a big mistake...' when they see you do a mistake. In this context 'to make mistakes' is discrediting the effect. There is this famous quote 'Making mistakes simply means you are learning faster'

So, 'making mistakes' and 'to accept them' seem right.

Also 'living life fully' is a more popular usage than 'to live life fully'. 

I presume here that Paul is testing 'superficial parallelism' to 'actual parallelism'. 

If it happens to be D - go easy on me guys, maybe I am 'making a mistake!'

Lastochka, to answer your question, look at this example,

He like  to swim, to jog and to play .
He likes  to swim, jog and play .

Both the sentences are right. 'to'  need not  be repeated before jog and play.

bigtooth81 · Answer

Excellent explanation Venksune. Anyway, I choose D cos I dobt that ETS will think the same way as yours. What's the OA???

Paul · Answer

OA is D. crackgmat750, this question comes from Peterson's GMAT book. Venksune, nice analysis!

Off. expl. is: The verb  is  indicates that "living life fully" is being equated with "to make mistakes and to accept them". Therefore, these actions should be described in grammatically parallel forms: "to live life fully", "to make mistakes and to accept them".

This is just an example of a proverb I found using the verb "is" to separate to infinitives: To know all is to forgive all

venksune · Answer

Thanks. You guys are very nice. D was becoming very obvious and was a near no brainer. I inclined myself to purposely think acute - knowing well that I am not right.

Since life is unpredictable and no one is gifted with

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