So I was one of the kids in high school that took the AP classes and generally considered getting good grades was one of the most important thing in life. Now, it’s certainly important, especially if you want to go to a big university and you want to, like, build structurally sound objects and not have them collapse on people, then yes. You should master calculus so that I don’t die while I’m driving over a river.
But my point is that grades are not, in fact the most important thing in the world, (I write as I am supposed to be studying for my American history exam). I am a competitive person, which meant that I wanted better grades than everyone around me when I was in high school. I didn’t get them, because other people would actually study while I crammed for ten minutes before the exam and get a 90 rather than studying for five hours and getting a 95. Such is life.
So, in high school, good grades were the objective. Which meant that everything I did was in pursuit of that goal, and there were very few classes that I actually enjoyed and learned in. Because this is a universal truth about smart slackers in high school- you may get good grades, but that doesn’t mean that you actually learned anything. Last minute cramming ensures you an A, but that means that now, three years later, the only thing I remember about biology is that the ribosomes produce proteins and there’s a mitochondria in there somewhere but I don’t actually know what it does.
Freshman year of college was a wake-up call for me. I could study for ten hours for a physical science exam and still get a 68 on it. Until that point in my life anything less than an 80% in a class was equal to failing in my book. I didn’t understand anything that these people were talking about. (How do electrons work as particles and a wave? That makes no sense!) And to be completely honest, when I was taking physical science, the only reason I understood Einstein's theory of relativity was because of Orson Scott Card’s book series of Ender’s Game. As I went through my general ed courses last semester- mainly the science ones- and consistently bombed those tests I started to care less about grades.
That same year I read a Shakespeare play in a weekend just to prove that I could, which was a big deal to me because I kind of hated Shakespeare. I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time and watched as my novel fell apart into a plotless puddle. I read a lot of books for fun. I decided to take a class on England History because I like England and I like history, it was my favorite class that semester. I decided that while I needed to pass my science classes I didn’t necessarily need to get A’s.
(Okay, back from my American History final.)
This year I procrastinate studying by attempting NaNoWriMo again, meeting nerdy people, and watching educational YouTube videos. (The field for educational and entertaining YouTube videos is widening every year. Check out pbsideachannel, scishow and crashcourse if you’re interested.) This means that while I may not be learning about comparative politics I am learning about the Mongols, quarks and can you argue that Doctor Who is actually a religion?
The point that I’m trying to make here is that the more that I go through college, and the more that I learn about life and the world in general, is that I like learning for the sake of learning. Getting good grades is nice, but I find that enjoying the subject matter that is being taught to me is infinitely more important, because then I will go and seek out more knowledge in that field. I loved my American history and government class in high school, and that’s the reason that I’m now a history major and a political science minor. One day I will go back and read books like To Kill a Mockingbird so that I can enjoy it without the endless and pointless repetitive study guides. Because school is great, but it also ruined a lot of subjects for me. I think it did the same to a lot of other people too, and I find that that’s really sad. Because a lot of people won’t understand why learning is actually fun. The world is an interesting place, and I’m learning more about it every day.
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