I'm here to tell you that while getting good grades is vital, it isn't the most important thing in your life. Achieving in high school improves your chances of being accepted into a good university.
Employers will often require your university academic transcript so it is important to do your best. However, they also look at what you've been doing outside the world of academia.
Extra-curricular activities such as music and sports go a long way to make you stand out, even if you just participate in them for the fun of it. Companies want well-rounded individuals.
Grades do matter. There may be flaws in many grading systems—sometimes in the education system itself—but letters and numbers do still hold value. It may be a tough pill to swallow, but you’re only hurting yourself if you pretend your grades don’t matter.
Colleges look at grades, scholarship organizations look at grades, and employers look at grades too. However, you should also remember that you don’t need to have a 4.0 to be successful.
Grades can’t show every amazing quality you have, and colleges, scholarship organizations, and employers understand that.
Reframe How You Look At Your Grades
You should think of grades more as a measurement of how much you tried. To some, straight A’s come naturally, requiring no extra effort. If you’re one of those students, then getting below a B might mean you really didn’t try.
If it takes you hours of studying to get B’s, then that’s okay too. As long as you truly tried to the best of your ability, you can look at a C and be okay.
If you know you can do better than a C, then try harder next time, do something different when you study, use a different test-taking strategy, or even ask for some extra credit.
Everyone is capable of improving in school—it just takes time. Remember that you should never beat yourself up over a low grade—as long as you actually tried.
Why is Learning More Important Than Grades
The war on grades became so fierce that the advantage of diversity, lifetime friendships and a sense of collaboration got overruled. Sooner, I realized that being a part of a race that ends where it starts and not doing well means resentment and depression.
Having mixed grades in the first term motivated me to go for better grades in the second term, and I scored the best possible grade in all four subjects for which the results are declared as of now.
To introspect and justify grading, I went through the subjects again and realized that I completely missed the learning in a subject for which I was graded the best, and it was self-deprecating to defend my knowledge versus my grade.
All the way, I found that I just tried to score a good grade, and it does not reflect my intelligence all the way in this matter.
'Grades measure your performance in school, while intelligence measures your performance in life in general.'
Good grades make you feel amazing, but at the same time, they give us an illusion of being intelligent and proficient in a subject. Whereas learning generates intelligence and intelligence measures your performance in life.
We lose too many talented people by defining intelligence through exams that are wholly inadequate and constricting.
Your education may become outmoded in the next five years, but your attitude, your connections and your learnings will be lifelong. Remember, nobody gives a damn about your mark sheets more than YOU during an interview.
As my program director at IIM Calcutta said during the closing ceremony, "These certificates are just pieces of paper, you hold the key to your success."
Organizations need leaders, collaborators and team players who can build it together to last. After all, competition is not about building through copying others but improving your offerings to stand out and become a source of inspiration. As Zen Shin said,
Final Thoughts
Get passionate about your studies! This can be quite difficult at high school because you think, or know, that a lot of what you're learning is irrelevant. Nonetheless, remember that good grades at high school will let you pick (with some degree of freedom) your majors and units and university.
You may know of many people who didn't get good grades but still made it big. So get out of the house. Enjoy some sun. Come back in. Study for a bit. Focus on the things you're passionate about. Grades are not the most important thing in your life.
Written by – Dhruvi Solanki
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