Which is still a ridiculous point: A/A+ students are not necessarily smarter, more successful, more intelligent, whatever-you-want-to-call-it than B+/A- students. His sole defense of that assertion is
if you're so damn smart, wouldn't it take you just slightly more effort to get an A
which I cannot characterize as anything else but a total lack of any sense of what someone may want to do with his time, other than obtain high grades, combined with the unfounded accusation that they all consider themselves capable of doing better.
He completely rules out the possibility that out of numbers 5 through 15 out of a 100, five may rather want to spend their time, let's say, starting a company, practicing a sport or contributing code to some open source project.
That's when the real problem shows it's ugly head: they are made to feel like they have to excuse themselves for their grades, as anything below 'perfect' is always questioned, as the article did: "why don't you get higher grades?"
For me, the answer really was exactly as he says: because I have a fucking life out of school. However, the intention of that answer wasn't to play down the grades of others or to assert my intelligence. I won't deny they usually also have a life out of school. The intention was purely and solely: to answer the question that everyone keeps asking. I've given that answer so many times I can only think of it shouted with the expletive in it. And then grade-obsessed nitwits like this guy throw a hissy fit because they think I'm trying to trump them. No, I don't bloody care about trumping you. If I cared, I would spend my time trying to score higher grades, so I'd get into that prestigious university. I'm not sure I would succeed, but the point is: I'm not even trying to best you. God, guys like this still piss me off. They don't want to accept the fact that there may have been guys that could outdo them, but didn't bother.
> They don't want to accept the fact that there may have been guys that could outdo them, but didn't bother.
I guess I was one of these guys too. I perceived striving for best grades as inefficient use of my time. I remembered interesting things automatically, I memorized things useful for applications of interesting things with bit of effort. With the rest, I didn't bother. For much effort on my side reward would be very little if any, so I was satisfied with any grade I got, as long as it was passing grade (it was not always easy to get, lack of interest and reputation in the subject sometimes makes getting passing grade really hard).
I believe that striving for best grades can have significant mental risk because some things depend only on chance and there is nothing more stressful than seeing how your hard effort becoming pointless by silly accident of teacher being in a bad mood.
That changed a little bit in college. There I was satisfied with grades that gave me grade average high enough to get highest merit-based scholarship, because I always liked getting money for something else than my time. With this strategy I ended up as one of 10 best graduates.
Along the way, when current school topics aligned with my interests I was getting highest grades. In case of C++ course after spending week on reading interesting half of Bjarne Stroustrup's book, on tests I was pointing out the mistakes in test questions, and providing two answers, one according to intention of the question writer and other according to exact erroneous phrasing of the question. The grade I got was something like A++ (no one else got it) and it was illegal so on later occasions it was counted as A+).
When topics diverged from my interests other people were doing better. I wasn't jealous of them because I was never interested in competing with them on their ground and I was pretty sure that on grounds that were important to me they could never be significantly better than I was. When I think of this now I never actually felt good about beating them in my domain. I felt that if they were as interested in these things as I was they could achieve similar results as I did.
Hi Confusion, I totally agree 100% with all of your points. I have absolutely no problems with people who choose to devote their energies outside of their schoolwork. My gripe is with kids who don't do that well in school but then vocally brag about how smart they are in particular school topics. A contrived example would be some kid in your high school class who is a solid B student but is always bragging about how he knows the material inside-out. I think that if you want to brag about how good you are in class, then you should probably have the grades to back it up, since by definition, grades are the metric by which people judge you in a particular class. I'm in no way saying that kids who don't do well in class aren't smart ... I definitely know people who didn't get great grades but are amazing hackers.
"A/A+ students are, by definition, more successful at school than B+/A- students. That's the only sense of the phrase I meant it in."
More successful in school. There is very little value in getting high grades until the later years of high school. Working hard in middle school is a waste of time. The smartest kids would do the minimum amount of work to pass their classes and ensure they have a solid understanding of the material. Especially when you look back and remember how much of the middle school curriculum involved drawing bubble letters and pasting printed photos on to Bristol board.
Really? Walk through the curriculum starting around the 3rd grade onwards - It basically sets up a foundation for future learning in all disciplines. Reading, Writing, Arithmetic - I remember the precise instant (3rd grade) that I was introduced to the concept of a negative number. It blew my mind. And science classes theory in seventh and eights grade were awesome - if I hadn't been grinding I probably would have never learned about umbra's and penumbras, angle of reflection, etc... as well I did.
I think you get out of any experience (Sports, School, Start Ups) what you put into it. And I have to agree - the entire point of the article, that people who haven't been able to demonstrate "success" in school, do tend to be a bit more defensive than those who have. I don't know if this applies to other fields (Sports, Startups) - but it's certainly seen in schools with regards to academic achievement. (BTW, We can all agree to hate the valedectorian who not only graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA, but also spent close to 30% of her final two years of high school traveling Europe, preparing for the winter olympics, and participating in the debate club)
Not by definition, because the definition of success at school isn't "getting high grades". School is not the end, it's only a means. If I had to give a single metric for success at school it would be 'education'; those who learn more are more successful at school. This isn't necessarily reflected by test scores.
It's the metric that is used to judge academic success.
Really, all of this is besides the point that the author was trying to make. You're getting caught up in his example, but ignoring his point. Grades are a metric of a kind of success. I agree that education is more important than grades, but that's not what the example was about.
I'm not trying to score rhetorical points here, but it seems like you're trying to change the subject after having one of your unconscious assumptions brought to your attention.
Everybody has them, and, er... by definition... nobody is aware of them. Most people try and forget all about them when they do become visible, but is that the ideal reaction?
I feel not that I'm trying to change the subject, but reign it back in.
I assumed people would recognize that what I meant when I said "more successful" in the context of an objective metric like grades. I hoped that pointing out that the author was more concerned about success in a general endeavor than in the specific example he used would clarify the point he tried to make. I was wrong.
