<p>In your opinion, how do you feel about the students in high school who say that they're smart, but say they're just lazy, but have horrible grades. Anything that you've considered saying or have said to them?</p>
<p>Sounds like they may have organizational issues. Perhaps you can give them some tips!</p>
<p>Consider the possibility that they’re misrepresenting the situation.</p>
<p>It may be more socially acceptable to say that your grades are low because you’re lazy than to say that you’re struggling with your schoolwork.</p>
<p>So it might be necessary to dig deeper to find out what’s really going on.</p>
<p>“It may be more socially acceptable to say that your grades are low because you’re lazy than to say that you’re struggling with your schoolwork.”</p>
<p>Exactly. Ditto acknowledging depression, drug use, social anxiety, bullying, etc. There are tons of reasons why kids underperform in high school.</p>
<p>Not always. Some really smart kids really are lazy - and if they don’t have an involved parent driving them, mild issues with organization (which almost every kid has) can morph into bad grades. It takes WORK to do well, even if you’re really really smart. My oldest was that way. Wish I could go back and do it over. :(</p>
<p>“You are screwing up your life. Yes, you are young and think you are invincible, but it’s not all true. Look at your cousin John. He is really smart, but really lazy. He got bad grades. And now he is 48, doesn’t have a college degree, lives in a tiny apartment, and just now is going to college – and making straight A’s. So, you are grounded until your grades are good and will be grounded again if they go down. You are in the house except for school from Sundays at dinner until Fridays after dinner. If you have not finished your weekend homework by lunchtime Sundays, you lose the rest of the day, the next Friday night, and must have completed your next weekend’s homework by that Saturday at lunchtime.”</p>
<p>I think they’re not as smart as they say they are. My S is smart and lazy. He always did his homework (as far as I know, although it was often at the last minute), but he never studied, not even for the SAT, and he got straight A’s anyway. Just to show how lazy he is - he missed almost every deadline for the college app process (he did get them to the colleges on time - just not the college counseling office), the deadline for the dorm app, the deadline for the ID card, and the deadline for some placement exams. </p>
<p>I should buy the boy a t-shirt that says “I’M A GENIUS. ASK ME ANYTHING, AND I’LL GET BACK TO YOU TOMORROW”. :O</p>
<p>"So it might be necessary to dig deeper to find out what’s really going on. "</p>
<p>Absolutely.</p>
<p>My grandfather used to say, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”</p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>He also used to say, “Drive careful, because I’m walking!”</p>
<p>I agree with the digging deeper.</p>
<p>Sometimes, you will find a problem that the student himself does not recognize. For example, some students do poorly in advanced math courses because they have never really mastered the concepts taught in Algebra 1. Some struggle in English because they have no idea how to write a coherent paragraph. Some struggle with many subjects because they have never learned how to study. Any of these problems could be written off as “smart but lazy,” but the underlying cause of the problem is something quite different.</p>
<p>In one of my’s kid’s classes, the teacher always says:<br>
You want fries with that?
Another always says: ** and how much does that pay? **</p>
<p>What I like the best is when each English teacher assigns each kid a future write-up for exactly 10 years from the date of the assignment: example-Date 9-22-22</p>
<p>Dear Myself: I am writing today to let you know what I want for my future.<br>
I will accomplish these goals by_______________________________<strong><em>. Right now I am doing </em></strong>______________________________ toward that goal. Next year I will be __________.</p>
<p>Some are more bored than lazy also. My S started refusing to write spelling words 5x each in 4th grade. He told me “I already know how to spell the words so I see no point in writing them down 5x each. I have better things to do with my time.” He didn’t understand why they didn’t do a pre-test each week and give students full points if they knew all the words at the time of the pre-test. </p>
<p>He had a point. I made him do them anyway on the premise that sometimes we have to do things we think have no point just because we are supposed to do them. He had a point though. In 9th grade, his history teacher called him out on his ‘laziness’ at parent teacher conferences. He said he had never seen someone work so hard at providing only the minimum answers on a test in order to get the items right. His science teacher also called him for doing the least amount of work possible to do well, even though he was capable of better. Since that day, he has put maximum effort into everything and is doing great in school. However, he realized recently that he may not make the top 10 because of his two A-s in 9th grade. Oops. It bothers him now.</p>
<p>Thank goodness that stage in life is over. “Horrible” may need defining- a B could be, or a C… </p>
<p>We were lucky with our son and spelling- his second grade teacher let him work on the "200 (or was it 100?) most misspelled words for middle and HS students instead of doing busywork (she also told me she relied on HIM for the correct spelling when she wasn’t sure). We found out 5 minutes before the area spelling bee that there was a list of the words he could have studied/looked at- as a 9 or ten year old 6th grade middle school champ he came in third, behind two 8th graders. But spelling isn’t intelligence, fortunately he also had the creative thinking skills as well. He also had trouble in early grades with the boring basics- flash card stuff, and was one of the slowest in his kindergarten class to do his placing numbers of objects to correspond to numbers project. An Honors degree in Math with several grad courses eventually followed. He never had perfect grades- zeroes on AP Statistics homework meant a B despite perfect quiz/test scores. A C his final semester of AP Chemistry when he took the exam a month earlier that he scored a 5 on. </p>
<p>The above anecdotes are for a gifted kid. Most bright students don’t learn the material when they have lesser grades and don’t have good study habits. My son also has some regrets- maybe he could have gotten into a better than top 15 for grad school math college than he did (we are fortunate to have an excellent flagship). Parental efforts didn’t cause him to perform better, sigh. PS- son doesn’t like being told he’s smart.</p>
<p>Take it from a 50 year old underachiever. Saying you are smart but lazy is easier than admitting that you don’t have what it takes.</p>
<p>^wow straightshooter, that was straight to the point. And very eloquent. Mind if I quote you in the future?</p>
<p>As a smart but lazy person, it annoys me when other people say that they are smart and lazy. Being smart and lazy is just being lazy. It’s an excuse–“oh, I could do better but I just don’t try.”</p>
<p>I, too, was a smart, lazy person. I was told when I was very young about how smart I was, blah blah. If affects your psyche. I might have become lazy because it was easy to get As, or maybe I was too scared to be fully successful, or thought I was “too special” or whatever. Now as an adult, I realize that there are a TON of very smart people (along with a TON of not smart people), but I realized that my level of smarts might have been special in a small pond of elementary school, but really is non uncommon and there are a lot of people way smarter. (Big fish, little pond). </p>
<p>So I resolved that would never tell my kids that I thought they were smart. Instead told them that smart people are truly a dime a dozen and what I valued much more in employment was people who were hard workers (and persistent and reliable). I’ve said this very often. Are my kids smart? Hell yes. But again, I’d much rather they be hard workers. So underperforming grades never get a “but you’re so smart” or a “you are not performing to your potential” from me. Instead we talk about how hard they worked in preparation.</p>
<p>As a working adult, I realized that I was not necessarily a ton smarter than those around me. Thus I actually started working and being less lazy. Then went to medical school as a second career and studied hard for the first time in my life.</p>
<p>NJres-you reminded me of a great quote from Prizzi’s Honor: If Marxie Heller’s so f’in’ smart, how come he’s so f’n’ dead? Thank you. Carry on… :)</p>
<p>la-zee, adj.; the unwillingness to do what is required.</p>
<p>stu-pid, adj.; the unwillingness to do what is required, when failing to do those things causes adverse effects.</p>
<p>ar-ro-gant, adj.; the belief that your stupid behavior is fine, and that adverse effects that result are the fault of other people.</p>
<p>Even worse is the fact that these kids are proud of being ‘arrogant’. I was erratic in my performance, number 31 out of a class of 600+ without trying. I have tried to share my life experience with my boys, but who wants to hear it from your mom? They just come back with the fact they’re arrogant and sorry about the past, but little or no effort to change the future, especially with all of those assignments that ‘don’t have a point’.</p>
<p>
I tell them there are a lot students who are smart and not lazy, guess who is going to come out ahead?</p>
<p>I share my life experience with my girls. They are smart enough to know my experience could be very relevant to theirs. Since our kids were little I have repeatedly told them that information is power, whether they agree with it or not, absorb it, process it and use it.</p>
<p>I work with a lot of young smart people at work now. Part of my job is to mentor them so they are not just book smart. One thing we all agree on what makes a good analyst at our firm is “ability to listen” and then “ability to solve problem.” In order to listen one needs to be not arrogant.</p>