Is Life Really All About Attaining that Oh So Elusive A?
For starters, I’m the sort of person who believes more in attaining knowledge as opposed to attaining the grade. If you’re scratching your head in exasperation wondering, “well, what’s the difference?” Herein lies the difference: being in it for the sake of learning means that you are keener on understanding the topic and this would include extra knowledge and all the gory details that aren’t all that relevant to your exam.
However being in it for the grade means that you do the bare minimum and are only in it to get the grade and not really venture any deeper into the topic if doesn’t really have any relation to the exam. In order to make myself believe and in turn make you converts to my new brand of religion, I will exploit very famous and successful people that fared badly at school but went on to become very successful people and rather imaginative pioneers in their fields of expertise.
A good example would be Winston Churchill, one of the more controversial figures in British and global politics in his time. He was said to have done so badly in school that his father had very few hopes for him and could not possibly have imagined that his son would ever be successful in politics or law. Some of you probably have no idea who in the cahoots Winston Churchill is, but let me assure you that him achieving the things he did is far more impressive than some of our more current day politicians who graduated from Harvard and made some of the most catastrophic decisions in the politics of today – bigger mistakes than even BP could even dream up.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, his name starts with B and ends with USH.*cough*George Bush* cough*. Churchill’s understanding of politics is something that goes beyond text books and something that no matter how many honours or degrees Bush attained he could never acquire.
Another example of such an individual would be Jane Goodall, one of the world’s leading experts on chimpanzees. She never went to university and was inspired by a friend on a visit to Kenya, where she started working as a secretary, to call up an archaeologist to set up a gig for her to observe Chimpanzees just for the heck of it.
Her love for chimpanzees and her lack of formal training about observing animal behaviour was actually what led her to make the discoveries and observations that she made. Imagine that, the very thing that should have made her very bad at the job was the very thing that propelled her to make discoveries that went unnoticed by the most qualified expertise. Her contributions to studies of chimps continue to be unmatched by any other breakthroughs till this day, and she even managed to pick up some chimps along the way. How many people can say that?
Not to drop a Cinderella ending on you, but this woman right here managed to have it all. Cambridge, knowing a good thing when they saw it, asked Jane to put pen to paper and write a thesis on her findings. She graduated with honours, and is one of only nine people to ever have a PhD without having a BA.
Quirky fact about Jane: Jane has Prosopagnosia (face blindness) and is unable to recognize human faces. That’s probably why she could remember all those chimps… So it’s not a total Cinderella story.
If you still haven’t managed to pick up on my drift yet, then I’ll gladly come to a close and explain to you what exactly it is I’m trying to say, concisely. Although, these two people might be rare exceptions to the rule I’m trying to point out that you don’t really need As to be successful in life. Granted, the As may look really pretty, but it’s possible to live without them.
An A doesn’t really mean much in the long run, it might seem like everything right now, but it isn’t. It simply means that you either know how to test well or that you understand a certain subject at the level of what is expected of you. Knowledge on the other hand isn’t something that needs validation or something that is represented by a grade. It’s an accumulation of what you have learned and what you understand. Its life long and is more valuable to you in the long run.
I’m not telling you to flunk out of College or to let your grades slip, I’m just telling you that even if you get straight Bs that if you understand something and you can remember it and appreciate it for what it’s worth then you shouldn’t really let the Bs upset you. I mean are you really going to be sitting around at 80 comparing your grades for your O levels or A levels with you friends and feel some sense of accomplishment simply because you go an A?
I seriously doubt it, and if you could see yourself doing that I suggest that you revaluate your priorities on things.
BY LINA ABUSHOUK
However being in it for the grade means that you do the bare minimum and are only in it to get the grade and not really venture any deeper into the topic if doesn’t really have any relation to the exam. In order to make myself believe and in turn make you converts to my new brand of religion, I will exploit very famous and successful people that fared badly at school but went on to become very successful people and rather imaginative pioneers in their fields of expertise.
A good example would be Winston Churchill, one of the more controversial figures in British and global politics in his time. He was said to have done so badly in school that his father had very few hopes for him and could not possibly have imagined that his son would ever be successful in politics or law. Some of you probably have no idea who in the cahoots Winston Churchill is, but let me assure you that him achieving the things he did is far more impressive than some of our more current day politicians who graduated from Harvard and made some of the most catastrophic decisions in the politics of today – bigger mistakes than even BP could even dream up.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, his name starts with B and ends with USH.
Another example of such an individual would be Jane Goodall, one of the world’s leading experts on chimpanzees. She never went to university and was inspired by a friend on a visit to Kenya, where she started working as a secretary, to call up an archaeologist to set up a gig for her to observe Chimpanzees just for the heck of it.
Her love for chimpanzees and her lack of formal training about observing animal behaviour was actually what led her to make the discoveries and observations that she made. Imagine that, the very thing that should have made her very bad at the job was the very thing that propelled her to make discoveries that went unnoticed by the most qualified expertise. Her contributions to studies of chimps continue to be unmatched by any other breakthroughs till this day, and she even managed to pick up some chimps along the way. How many people can say that?
Not to drop a Cinderella ending on you, but this woman right here managed to have it all. Cambridge, knowing a good thing when they saw it, asked Jane to put pen to paper and write a thesis on her findings. She graduated with honours, and is one of only nine people to ever have a PhD without having a BA.
Quirky fact about Jane: Jane has Prosopagnosia (face blindness) and is unable to recognize human faces. That’s probably why she could remember all those chimps… So it’s not a total Cinderella story.
If you still haven’t managed to pick up on my drift yet, then I’ll gladly come to a close and explain to you what exactly it is I’m trying to say, concisely. Although, these two people might be rare exceptions to the rule I’m trying to point out that you don’t really need As to be successful in life. Granted, the As may look really pretty, but it’s possible to live without them.
An A doesn’t really mean much in the long run, it might seem like everything right now, but it isn’t. It simply means that you either know how to test well or that you understand a certain subject at the level of what is expected of you. Knowledge on the other hand isn’t something that needs validation or something that is represented by a grade. It’s an accumulation of what you have learned and what you understand. Its life long and is more valuable to you in the long run.
I’m not telling you to flunk out of College or to let your grades slip, I’m just telling you that even if you get straight Bs that if you understand something and you can remember it and appreciate it for what it’s worth then you shouldn’t really let the Bs upset you. I mean are you really going to be sitting around at 80 comparing your grades for your O levels or A levels with you friends and feel some sense of accomplishment simply because you go an A?
I seriously doubt it, and if you could see yourself doing that I suggest that you revaluate your priorities on things.
BY LINA ABUSHOUK
