High school and education isn’t about comparing yourself to others. The classes we take should help us excel in the fields of study that we are interested in. Students should enjoy the classes they take, instead of feeling bored, stressed and overwhelmed.
Students who don’t feel they excel often times lose self-confidence. This happens because students attribute their worth and self-value to their performance in school. This is okay to a certain extent, because you are what you produce, but students often define themselves only off of the grades they get rather than who they are and what they do outside the classroom.
Grant Barkley, Leesville junior, said, “Students should focus on learning and not worry about a rejection from a college just because they take a risk.”
Students have to realize that there will always be someone smarter, more talented and more experienced than them, but students shouldn’t let that get them down.
Austin Credle, junior, said that bad grades can be “taken as a challenge.” This is an optimistic and ambitious way to go after an education. Rather than letting their weaknesses hinder their performances in school, students should come to a clear understanding of what they struggle with and surpass it. If students can come to accept that their education is to benefit them rather than to obstruct their paths, they will be able to deal with mistakes and failures and learn to improve, so that they might not make the same mistake again.
Another Leesville student, Juan Esteller, felt that his worth cannot be derived from his grades, “If anything, they reflect how much I like to learn,” said Esteller. “So I learn, and if I learn well, then I earn good grades.”
Esteller also thinks that “there’s the benefit that when you earn good grades you can go to a good college and of course good colleges translate into a good job and a good life… since that’s how you gain a broader view of the world and how you become a more well-rounded person. I would say how we learn is what enables us to be human and what enables us to succeed.”
Stellar students such as Esteller take challenging classes to push themselves for personal gain rather than for just a grade.
Additionally, competition to get into college has become so rigorous that students fixate themselves on only earning a high GPA. In order to do this, students may not challenge themselves with the classes they take.
The same competition that high school students face is just as rigorous as that of the job market. However, there, companies look at much more than just someone’s transcript, because it can’t show personality, work ethic or the ability to cooperate with co-workers. Numbers on a sheet can’t adequately represent you as an individual to a college or company. Students shouldn’t let their grades be the sole source of their self-worth because grades leaves out the important skills that students may have learned from experiences outside of a school setting.
Such life skills cannot be taught in a class but learned through experiences. Every student has their strengths and weaknesses, this is well-known, but how can one display their individuality to someone who only sees a specific part of them? A whole pie can be graded off of just one slice, but students are not pies. A student’s personality is made of many components.
In the end, students should not let grades define them, but in turn, define their grades.
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