<p>Between trying to get ther perfect sat with straight A's and all the Ec's, im going crazy. I think im going to live shorter now :p</p>
<p>I understand what you mean about cutting years off your life. I get so little sleep these past few years, some days I feel so haggard like I went from 17 to 55. Outliving my parents has seriously become one of my goals now.</p>
<p>why do you have to get a perfect sat and straight a's?</p>
<p>for me...mild OCD</p>
<p>stress stress stress</p>
<p>Agree with you guys, I had got bad cold for 5 time in 3 months,and absend for 8 days, which dragged my grades down.</p>
<p>Stress is just one of many reasons, my health geeting worse and my grades getting better! That's strange.</p>
<p>10 years from now, nobody will care about your GPA, class rank, or extracurricular activities of today.</p>
<p>Contrary to what the academic right wing claims, it is NOT immoral to have some free time and to sleep at least 7 hours per night. It's OK too cut back from 5 AP classes to 3 or to get B's instead of A's.</p>
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<p>Ahhh... Dare to dream..:p</p>
<p>Why is the option I suggested off the table? There are LOTS of people who don't max out on AP classes, who earn B's instead of A's, who don't go to any Ivy-type of college, and STILL turn out OK.</p>
<p>I didn't mean it in a negative way. I'm sure there are many people who turn out great without doing all the things that you mentioned. Its just that in my case, my parents would freak out if the thought of getting Bs even arose!! lol! So for me, that perspective -without question- would be "daring to dream".</p>
<p>desi_chik, it's OK to let your parents freak. They may be shocked for awhile, but they'll get over it. You can't please all of the people all of the time. In a world with teenagers who smoke dope, bully others, smoke nicotine, use crystal meth, vandalize, shoot people dead, have premarital sex (especially unprotected), etc., getting B's or cutting back on some AP classes is no big deal.</p>
<p>I just barely passed graduate school last year, but nobody at my workplace cares. What counts is that I get my job done.</p>
<p>I was once the stat-obsessed top achiever. I abandoned that way of thinking when I saw that it didn't really matter in the long run. And I'm SHOCKED that so many of today's students make myself and the top students of my day look like Ferris Bueller in comparison.</p>
<p>Yesterday my spanish teacher screamed at our Honors Spanish III class. It was the most awful voice I've ever heard coming from her. Then later she cried. Why? Because she claimed that no one wants to study anymore, no one cares for the language or for the class. They just want the "stupid A". And she's right..a couple of Bs won't hurt anyone from time to time. Students nowadays are WAY to caught up with getting straight As. It's just gonna kill them one of then these days.</p>
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<p>When you put it that way... lol!
The difference is that the teenagers who do not engage in such activities don't necessarily need to lower their standards. Your logic is correct; however, I just think that for what I'm aiming for, my parents are correct(unfortunately :p). The straight As and the max number of APs that I can handle will be the best way to go.</p>
<p>< Because she claimed that no one wants to study anymore, no one cares for the language or for the class. They just want the "stupid A". And she's right..a couple of Bs won't hurt anyone from time to time. Students nowadays are WAY to caught up with getting straight As. It's just gonna kill them one of then these days. ></p>
<p>That's the trouble with education. Students (and all too often, parents as well) are more concerned about grades, credentials, and other trappings of education than the education itself. Unfortunately, the increasing emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing will only further damage education. In the Communist Soviet Union, there was the saying, "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." The educational system is moving towards a model of, "They pretend to teach us, and we pretend to learn."</p>
<p>My prior obsession with grades hindered my education. When I didn't get into MIT or Stanford, I ended the straight-As-or-bust mentality. Unfortunately, I had lost too much interest in learning over the years, and I got far less out of my undergraduate education than I should have. I did get a GPA of 4.13 (A=5), which was probably a record high for someone who didn't care, and I'm now surprised my GPA wasn't MUCH lower. At the two engineering jobs I had between undergraduate and graduate school, nobody cared about my GPA or my past educational credentials. I sure as heck wasn't able to use my 1470 pre-recentered combined SAT score or my salutatorian status to get a raise. On the flip side, no boss I ever had used against me the fact that my undergraduate senior project was a joke or the fact that I earned several C's. At my current workplace, nobody cares that I just barely passed graduate school, graduated near the bottom of the class, or that I was near the bottom of the Kalman Filter theory class.</p>
<p>As a graduate student (began 6 years after earning my Bachelor's), I wish I had cared more when I was an undergraduate. I had decided to specialize in the electrical engineering specialty of control systems, which was based on signal processing. I had a weak background in signal processing, as I only took the one required introductory class as an undergraduate, hated it because of the lengthy calculations, and earned only a C in it. (Plus, all I cared about as an undergraduate was earning my degree and getting out. I kept waiting for a flash of divine inspiration to strike out of the blue.)</p>
<p>HINT to those of you going into engineering: If you don't have an engineering-related hobby, then you won't be able to relate to anything you study. It's as much an impairment as going to class with a blood alcohol level above .08%. If I hadn't discovered amateur radio, I'd have no business in electrical engineering today.</p>
<p><your logic="" is="" correct;="" however,="" i="" just="" think="" that="" for="" what="" i'm="" aiming="" for,="" my="" parents="" are="" correct(unfortunately="" ).="" the="" straight="" as="" and="" max="" number="" of="" aps="" can="" handle="" will="" be="" best="" way="" to="" go.=""></your></p>
<p>So exactly what are you aiming for? To become a doctor? (I definitely can't help you there. From what I've heard about medical school, I don't think I could last more than a week.)</p>
<p>I'm still alive with my immune system working at 5 hours per night of sleep on school days.</p>
<p>"Yesterday my spanish teacher screamed at our Honors Spanish III class. It was the most awful voice I've ever heard coming from her. Then later she cried. Why? Because she claimed that no one wants to study anymore, no one cares for the language or for the class. They just want the "stupid A". And she's right..a couple of Bs won't hurt anyone from time to time. Students nowadays are WAY to caught up with getting straight As. It's just gonna kill them one of then these days."</p>
<p>I always love when teachers pull this crap. They claim that we only study to get the A...and then they turn around and hit us with weekly exams, 20-page papers, essays, and what not. The system nowadays has created this grade-obsessed generation. People can certainly cut back, but they'll be left behind the mass of kids who attempt to do everything. </p>
<p>As for me, i got bigger dreams than just turning out "OK," so i'm going to curse the system but work my a s s off none the less.</p>
<p>< The system nowadays has created this grade-obsessed generation. People can certainly cut back, but they'll be left behind the mass of kids who attempt to do everything. >
10 years from now, nobody will care whether you were an A student or B student. People won't even care about the ranking of your college in the U.S. News and World Report survey.</p>
<p>< As for me, i got bigger dreams than just turning out "OK," so i'm going to curse the system but work my a s s off none the less. >
There is something called the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns.</p>
<p>Oh...and i guess we just automatically end up somewhere 10 years from now?</p>
<p>There's a progression that takes grades and college into account. You need good grades to get into a good school. The school needs to have a good reputation and you need to do well to get good work experience or go to a good graduate school. Your graduate school has to be good for you to get a good job with a good starting salary afterward. </p>
<p>Sure, 10 years after you've been through all of this, "no one is going to care." But you've already been through it. Your whole "10-year" philosophy doesn't work. Maybe it worked for you at some point...i'm sensing from your posts that you're much older than high school kids today...but that's not applicable today. I see kids who have done everything possible still get rejected from top schools. Where does that leave kids who chose to take it easy? </p>
<p>Of course, i'm only referring to those kids who want to achieve big things. If one is comfortable with just a normal life and a normal salary, any grades and college may suffice.</p>
<p>I definitley agree with most of the posters on this forum. Yes, I do try my hardest at school but I also make sure to leave time to have fun. You can only go through high school once, and if you go through trying to do everything instead of doing what you enjoy you might end up wishing you would have slowed things down a little. </p>
<p>Also, I believe that grades are not a very accuarate way to judge achievment. Sometimes the students that study hard every night do worse then those with "natural ability." But do you know what? In the long run, it's really the slackers that are losing, the only thing that should matter is if you learn from your mistakes and just learn. I ended up getting a B+ in my pre-calc class this year, but I am perfectly content with it. I know that I have learned much more then those that have just skated along like a knife through butter. They may never have to study, but when the time comes that they don't know everything, they will not be prepared with the studyskills that the rest of us learned in our classes. </p>
<p>Anyway, enough of the rambling. I guess what I just wanted to say is that you should take time to enjoy what you enjoy doing, and worry less about the grades. Afterall, grades aren't that great a judge of how hard you worked and learned.</p>