Quote:
Originally Posted by Salik Syed
If kids REALLY want to learn they will... It often takes more than a teacher to learn something... you need to have interest in it as well.
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I absolutely agree. In fact, that is exactly my point. Kids who are intellectually motivated don't need the grade to keep themselves productive, so why burden them with irrelevant work when they try to do something they actually like? In my experience, schoolwork has mostly just gotten in the way whenever I've wanted to do something interesting, like learn an instrument or read a particular book or build a robot. This is not to say that I'm entirely ungrateful for my public education. There is no doubt that I have learned a great many facts in these last twelve years, and facts are the basis of reason, so I am glad to know them. However, the spirit in which these facts were taught to me was one of basic uncuriosity, with the motivations of the vast majority of my teachers and administrators centering around standardized tests, and their expectations were that my motivation be my grades.
As it happens, grades have never been my motivation (though I do try to keep them acceptable to my parents, mostly for their sake), which explains the tremendous drop my grades took during and after the winter and spring of my tenth grade year, when I discovered my school's FIRST team. I had found something that I liked and that I could learn something while doing (a big plus for me). As such, my grades took a another knock down from their already low standing on my list of priorities. Ignoring school in favor of robotics (or music or the stage crew or any number of things I like to do) has always been a choice I have made, and personally I have no regrets. I have had a productive and fulfilling four years in high school. In contrast to myself, I have watched a great many very smart people spend their whole of their lives slaving away at stuff they know is meaningless for the sake of someone else's priorities.
What my priorities are is not my team's mentor's problem, and thankfully he realizes this. If someone on the team starts to suffer academically, it is entirely his or her lookout. For a team to introduce grade-based restrictions is to shut out those students for whom grades are not a motivator or priority, not to mention all those students who
can't get good grades for one reason or another.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Salik Syed
Lastly ... GPA is not necessarily a measure of pure intelligence... and it isn't meant to be. Basically your GPA is a reflection of several things:
-How goal oriented/motivated you are
- How smart you are
- How organized you are.
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Grades are not a reflection of motivation or how goal oriented you are, they are a reflection of what you choose to make your motivations and goals. If you make school your top priority, you will get good grades, and if you don't, you won't. There's no way around that.
Really, good grades are a measure of how well you can play the system, which means doing busywork, brown-nosing, and generally giving over your own wants to someone else's wants. One of the main reasons I like FIRST so much is that it is an environment where I can succeed to some degree without having to do that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Salik Syed
Having a low GPA does hurt you in life... and my ideology is this:
I am not someone extraordinarily special, I am not a genius and I probably am not going to achieve anything so <amazingly> special that I can get where I want to get...(this same fact probably applies to most people too). So I will just suck it up and jump through the hoop and get a good GPA.
Most people aren't amazing, they aren't going to be successful in a vaccum those people need to suck it up and just try to get a good GPA and use the standard venues towards success.
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I couldn't disagree more. Yes, grades do (unfairly) effect some people's perceptions of you, and having an exceptionally high GPA can get you scholarships and such, which are nice. But that scholarship is not going to make you happy any more than the GPA itself did.
As for how "most people aren't amazing": I guess that's so, but that doesn't mean everyone has to have the same definition of success, or that that definition must include good grades and a brand-name college and a high paying job. Personally, I don't call it success to sell yourself out of an opportunity to do something you love in exchange for a two car garage.