<p>For the first 5 periods of class (honors), I'm surrounded by people with my academic ability, and who genuinely want to do well in school. After a quick lunch break, I hit my non-honors Studio Art I class. This class features the "general public" per say, people that feel that having fun > getting good grades. </p>
<p>I spoke with a friend of mine in the class, and we got to the topic of college. He told me that he doesn't plan to go to college even though he has great potential, and whenever I ask him what he actually will do once done with high school, he swiftly avoids the question. He has a 40% in art, 3 B's, 2 F's and one D. The funny part is, about 30% of my art class has those types of grades.</p>
<p>Another concern of mine is a Criminology class many sophomores choose to take, they take it because the workload is light. At the beginning of the year, I am told, the teacher gives a huge test that no one has any prior knowledge of. Everyone fails, and most can only work their way up to a C by the end of the semester. I don't get why they take the fun over the C on the report card. They don't care obviously, but why? Their future depends on what they do in high school. </p>
<p>The group I sit with in art are a cool group of dudes, but they deride me for taking school too seriously and claim I base everything on academics. I tell them that I have to (for the most part) in order to be successful in life. Some of the Juniors and EVEN Seniors in the class have no idea of the SAT/ACT/PSAT is. Why don't they realize that doing well is a necessary factor (again, for the most part) for being successful?</p>
<p>and probably because they don’t know what it’s like to excel in school, or they lack foresight, or maybe they just aren’t academically inclined.</p>
<p>yeah haha, I’ve been asked to go to a party, I love having fun but the place was too far and I knew it was trouble. Turns out there were plenty of drugs and alcohols which ended up in a police ambush and many arrests. I’m so glad I made the right decision</p>
<p>I took a regular Chem class sophomore year and couldn’t believe the amount of people who simply didn’t care when they got a thirty on a test. I flip when I get a B! I honestly don’t get it. Back to advanced Physics this year.</p>
<p>I think most people are motivated by success. If I felt like I couldn’t do well no matter how hard I tried, if it felt like everyone else would be better than me at school no matter how hard I worked…I wouldn’t be motivated either. </p>
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<p>Not directly. There are lots of opportunities for second chances. Most universities accept most of their applicants.</p>
<p>Lol @halcyon, you exploited the one area I forgot to enter “(for the most part)”. The problem is that most could do A LOT better than how they actually do. I helped the friend of mine with a 40% in art in physics by sitting with him for an hour and explaining every concept just to test what his potential may be. It was actually harder to coax him into studying for an hour than it was for him to understand. Test results are out tomorrow and we’ll see how it works out for him.</p>
<p>@jerlie, yeah lol, my friend cried over a B+</p>
<p>Simply put: people are raised differently. My cousins were raised with no emphasis on education – they are high school dropouts. My boyfriend was raised with no emphasis on education and his parents didn’t care about grades. Graduated high school with like a 2.7 (which to me is just horrendous omg). He didn’t even continue to college until two years after graduation. </p>
<p>I, on the other hand, was raised with the idea that education and knowledge is valuable. I’m sure many on this forum did as well.</p>
<p>I tell people just do well enough to get out of high school to get into a four year school and do *everything * you can to graduate from college to get into graduate school and/or find a job. </p>
<p>For most careers, high school isn’t even all that important.</p>
<p>that sounds really condescending. people can’t change what family they’re born into…there are actually a lot of people on here whose parents don’t put push them to do well. my cousin is one of three, and his two siblings went to vassar, but he graduated high school with barely a 3.0</p>
<p>I think the opposite question is more relevant:</p>
<p>Why do people care so much about high school?</p>
<p>I have plenty of friends who graduated with 3.0s, go to the state flagship, and are now engineers who will be payed handsomely. As long as you don’t do pitifully (like the people in your art class) high school doesn’t matter at all. Nobody in the future will care whatsoever how you did in high school, and few will care very much about where you went to college. When you’re 50 you will realize how pointless high school was; even my college friends recognize it just a year or two in.</p>
<p>People who need 4.0s are in the extreme minority and, as halcyon posited, probably have more character flaws than anything else (I myself am one of these people, and I dislike it as much in myself as I do in others). Many such people are compensating for some sort of inferiority complex, often social.</p>
<p>Having a big name degree can open some doors for you going forward, but arguably not as much as will the charisma of being the high school quarterback who’s social allure is something people want to be around. The high school quarterback realizes this and 4.0 students instead mistake it for stupidity–ironic.</p>
<p>My parents didn’t really go to college (my father has an associate’s degree from a local community college, but he doesn’t need it for his job) and they never emphasized it much. They love me and all, but I doubt they would care if I dropped out of school and/or never went to college, so long as I didn’t freeload off them.
I think I care about grades because I was praised for being “smarter” than the other kids (really it was just that I had more useless knowledge because I was too shy to do anything other than read) back when I was in middle school and elementary school, and I enjoy being praised so I do stuff to make it continue.</p>
<p>1) Cause they aint good at it.
2) Cause they depressed.
3) Cause they anti-social.
4) Cause they on weed.
5) Cause they hate oppression
6) Cause they don’t want no edjamacashun</p>