Grade it out of "6", without background on the methodology?
Would 3 mean 50% on a kind of grading scale that outlines a minimum of 60% to pass?
Or would 3 mean 50th percentile (half performed better; half worse)?
Or would it mean that you performed really badly because the scores are scaled to different percentiles (e.g. rating someone on attractiveness: only choosing from 5-10 though theoretically it should be from 1-10)?
Your essay is pretty weak actually.
Sentence by sentence:
1. Strong (bold assertion)
2. Very weak (filler)
3. Average-weak (superficial remark; where is the evidence?)
4. Average-weak (ambiguous: so we can love inanimate objects without any symbolic meaning?)
5. Weak (weak transition, drab)
6. Average (ok, maybe there's a story)
7. Average-strong (building up, maybe getting back to the prompt)
8. Weak (what..? btw "whom" is for humans)
9. Very weak (ok... this clipped writing style has worn out its chances)
10. Very weak (hearsay? "means a lot" -- to what end?)
You should find this article interesting: nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?_r=1
In it, a "Dr. Perelman" from MIT argues vociferously that the essay score (1-6) is based on mere length:
TAKEN FROM THE ARTICLE: "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.
I'd give your work a "2."
Mustafa