<p>I am taking post 101!</p>
<p>work hard!</p>
<p>Ohm's Law of Procrastination:</p>
<p>It's great to have potential, but to achieve anything currently, you must overcome your resistance to hard work :D</p>
<p>But seriously.</p>
<p>High School Student A is hardworking, but of normal intelligence. He goes to class, and does his homework (and beyond). After much effort (read: studying for about six hours a day) he finally masters the concepts behind rotational motion. He takes the test and gets an A.</p>
<p>High School Student B is a smart cookie. He figures he's so smart he doesn't have to pay attention in class or do homework, and instead sits on his butt watching TV and procrastinating all day. Come test day (which he actually bothered to show up for), he realizes he never really learned exactly what moments of inertia really were. He gets a C on the test, and the only reason he didn't fail was because he was smart enough to guess intelligently.</p>
<p>You'll notice that the higher up you go in grade levels, the more pronounced this effect. This is because the higher up you go, the less teachers repeat themselves, and the more teachers expect you to learn on your own. In lower-level classes everything is actually taught to you, and repeated several times (so if a smart student comes to class and listens every so often, he can absorb a lot of the material by osmosis). In higher-level classes teachers repeat things far less often, and you're expected to do much more of the learning on your own (so if you're supposed to study a concept and don't because you're lazy, tough luck -- it won't be repeated, so you won't learn it no matter how smart you are).</p>
<p>Remember that nobody is born with truly innate knowledge of physics, chemistry, calculus, etc. Everyone learns it from somewhere. Smart people will have an easier time learning it, but they still have to put in some effort.</p>
<p>Very true. You're halfway there with CC, though!</p>
<p>Yeah fizix. True. There are a lot of slackers at my school who are getting by with easy A minuses because the teacher is very leniant. It won't last long though.</p>
<p>Well, I was in 8th grade when the Dow Jones Industrials Average dropped over 500 points in a single day, Alan Greenspan was the Federal Reserve Chair, and Mayor Harold Washington of Chicago died.</p>
<p>I'm glad that we didn't have Internet access in the late 1980s and early 1990s, because I would have felt SO inferior reading forums like this one.</p>
<p>That said, I think people here obsess TOO MUCH. I was the big achiever of my day, I thought I had it hard, and yet, the students on these forums today make my old self look like Ferris Bueller or Zack Morris in comparison.</p>
<p>Trust me, 15-20 years from now, nobody will care about your high school GPA, class rank, AP scores, SAT scores, extracurriculars, etc. So just enjoy life and make a reasonable effort to learn. Don't obsess over earning every last point, over taking every last Honors/AP class, or doing things to impress admissions officers who can't possibly care about you (just as you don't care about their lives, either).</p>
<p>For now it is important though...</p>
<p>< For now it is important though...>
Important enough for it to completely take over your life?</p>
<p>Here's a homework assignment: Find an adult who would be more successful today if only he/she had attended a more prestigious college. Remember: the key factor has to be the prestige of his/her alma mater, not people skills, financial skills, diligence, etc.</p>
<p>LilBabySeaOtter: Think about this: EVERYONE is mediocre at some things.</p>
<p>Did Mother Theresa know particle physics? Did Einstein know Shakespeare? Is Michael Jordan a good baseball player? Is Tiger Woods a good basketball player? Does Mariah Carey know calculus?</p>
<p>Chill, lilbabyseaotter, and come back next year!</p>
<p>jhsu2, Michael Jordon played professional baseball.</p>
<p>< jhsu2, Michael Jordon played professional baseball. >
Michael Jordan played professional baseball, but he didn't do very well.</p>
<p>Well, some colleges are legitimately better than others. Some colleges offer more courses, teach better, etc., meaning you get a better education, meaning you're better prepared to deal with certain types of professions (scientific research, medicine, etc.) Some colleges offer more opportunities (you get to come into contact with world-famous professors and their ideas, you might get more research opportunities if you want them, etc.) Not to mention a person at a college where they're surrounded by very academically driven people will probably be more motivated to work (and thus learn more) than someone surrounded by stoners who skip class. (The social scene matters too.)</p>
<p>And basically, the way to get into those sorts of colleges (they're not easy to get into) is to join the cult and work hard in high school. People might not care about your SAT scores 20 years from now, but the fact is, colleges will care about them in four years, and going to a good college is worthwhile for many, many reasons.</p>
<p>The other thing, of course, to realize is that although AP scores and whatnot are really only useful for college, what's more important is the knowledge you've attained in the AP class (you don't want to be flunking out of a good school once you're there, right?) So just because SAT and AP scores and grades are just numbers on a sheet of paper that no one really cares about, doesn't mean you shouldn't care about them (they're indicators of your academic progress, which really IS a valuable thing that you need to get out of your high school experience). A lot of the most fundamental (and thus most important) knowledge is taught in high school, not college.</p>
<p>That being said, you also do need to worry about having fun in high school, but I'm sure you'll find a way of dealing with that very quickly :)</p>
<p>(Whatever you do, don't start playing NetHack. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.)</p>
<p>Leave, before its too late! :D</p>
<p>Come back in a few years. Look at me - I'm trapped here forever.</p>
<p>Chaos: Too bad I'm not leaving. And yes, you're trapped.
fizix: You're absolutely right.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Michael Jordan played professional baseball, but he didn't do very well.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Being able to play any level of professional baseball puts you in, oh, probably the top .1% of the population, at the very least.</p>
<p>Michael Jordan played AA Baseball, which is minor league, which isn't the top level, but is pretty darn good.</p>