Do You Let Your Grades Define You?

In a world where marks will determine what universities we get into, what careers we will choose and eventually, how successful we are, it seems only natural to be concerned about them. But, more recently, grades seem to be becoming an ego-boosting mechanism. Getting a higher mark than someone else may make you feel more intelligent, more powerful. So, what about those who are below the class average?

Being in a mini school, I’ve been on both sides of the situation, and when I wasn’t achieving marks as high as my classmates, I felt inadequate, stupid and inefficient. It seemed like a lot of my classmates lost interest in me because they considered me to be unintelligent. Experiencing this decreased my self-confidence and I became more self-conscious, participating less in class discussions out of fear that I would say something stupid. Or I would spend a ridiculous amount of time on homework because I was afraid I was doing the assignment wrong. And, somehow, although I am now above the class average, I only feel slightly different.

Even if I have received the highest mark on an assignment, a test or a class, I won’t talk about it, because to me, it seems arrogant to brag about your grades, whether done so in a subtle or non-subtle method – such as fishing for compliments by complaining about a mark. Yet, when I don’t speak about my grades, some of my classmates seem to assume that I am simply incapable of high achievement.

It seems like being smart isn’t enough to make yourself significant to your classmates; you’ve got to boast about your grades (in a way that makes you seem modest), and you have to compete with other people. For a while this really bothered me, but now, I don’t let it get to me as much. I’ve come to realize, so what if other people think I’m not as smart as they are? I work hard and strive to be the best that I can, and I’m consistently making self-improvements. As the cliché goes: you reap what you sow. In my case, I have put in effort to sow a lot. As for what I reap, I guess we’ll see what happens in the future!