Day 22

Do you believe that your academic record accurately reflects your abilities? Explain

I remember that my 9th grade biology teacher used to say, "School is just a game. Getting good grades is about beating the game, not how smart you are." 

It's so true. School doesn't really measure your academic abilities, well, it sort of does. Sure, a part of getting good grades is knowing the material, being able to write well, and being able to think critically. However, another big part of high school for me is knowing how to put in the least amount of effort into academics and still end up with good grades. I don’t want to concentrate all the time on my homework; I have real interests too. I think I'm pretty good at playing the game of school.

It all started when in 9th grade, one of our homework assignments in biology was printing out our progress reports and calculating how well we would have to do on our finals to get the grades we wanted. My grades were pretty good, so for most of my finals, I didn't even study. Sure, I got A's on them anyway, but it didn’t matter, instead of stressing I relaxed, exercised, practiced French horn, and slept. Maybe the sleep is why I did so well?

My academic record reflects my abilities at playing the system. But you can’t tell from my grades alone how much "hacking" I did of the game called school.

Another perfect example of an academic game is the SAT, one of those most stressing tests for high school students. I didn't study for the first SAT I took because I simply wanted to know what I didn’t know, to avoid wasting time on things I could do. I received my SAT score yesterday, and it turned out to be pretty good. Now I can study exactly what I need to. 

My academic record reflects my ability, but, thankfully, it doesn’t show the effort that has gone into the grades I have received.

It does count for something though, because I’ve put enough work into it to get a 4.o.