…and not just high school students who are looking to go to college, even us (college students). We need to realize that our grades may matter to an extent but in the long run, they are really not what makes us successful or smart. When we get into a class in school, it is very difficult for us to be calm, relax and allow what we are being taught sink in and be understood. There is always that pressure of the grade and how much it will or will not affect our GPA (Kevin 1).
When we are over-concerned about our grades, we allow the purpose of going to school and getting an education escape us; we allow it elude us. Lauren S., a student in The King’s College states in “Why Grades Don’t Really Matter That Much” that in the “real world,” a college education or degree is often cited by the community as a prerequisite for a “good job” (both terms which he hates) and I can agree that as a result of this coupled with their new understanding of the importance of college, “students get wrapped up in their grades, often taking them as value statements on their own self-worth” (Schuhmacher 2)
The truth is, other than missing the real point of learning, believing that our grades are the only foundation for our future thus making us over-strive for a perfect 4.0 GPA is just downright stressful for us students. If schools were established only with the intention of graduating students with a 4.0 GPA, I for one wouldn’t even bother. What’s the use of going to an institution with hundreds of other people who are just as good as robots, having only four items on their to-do list every day? Go to class, eat, study, and sleep… The fun of college (or high school) is sucked away from it. The joy of meeting new people each day is gone and our social life as students suffers. We become prisoners of our own selves.
There are many examples of multi- millionaires today who didn’t pay much attention to their school work and did many things on the side. Look at the Cowie brothers Mike Cowie and Mark Cowie who didn’t see any point of a school curriculum and emerged from high school with C-pluses and a few Bs. They are now among Canada’s most successful commercial real-estate brokers, making millions of dollars. We talk about Winston Churchill who was famously at the bottom of his class at Harrow, Richard Branson who left school to run a newspaper he founded, Senator John McCain, and even President George W. Bush who was a solid C student in his first year at Yale. See who they became—making history. “A growing body of evidence suggests grades don’t predict success — C+ students are the ones who end up running the world.” (Sarah Scott)
We need to understand and recognize that there we could just as well go to prison if we were looking for a place to be so anti-social and serious. We wouldn’t go to school if we didn’t want to come out of our shells; we wouldn’t go to school if we didn’t want to experience what life is like outside of home; we wouldn’t go to school if we didn’t want to meet different people of different cultures so now that we did go to school (or we are going to school) we just need to know that grades aren’t the point of school; learning is.
No comments:
Post a Comment