Jon Morrow from On Moneymaking just did a guest post on Brazen Careerist about why he regrets getting straight A’s in college. He lays out pretty clearly what he did, what he got out of it, and why it wasn’t worth it in the end. Some of the comments on the post had a definite pent-up rage undertone—I’m not entirely sure why. Were the commenters feeling threatened by Morrow’s ponderings about his own life and the decisions he’s made (which I’m fairly certain had nothing to do with them)? Who the hell knows.
I understood where he was coming from, even if the cranky commenters didn’t. And I can back him up in saying that being obsessed with your college GPA to the detriment of your actual life is unnecessary. As he points out and as I’ve said before: unless you’re applying to some highly competitive grad school program, an exquisite grade point average isn’t something anyone important will ever give a rat’s ass about.
I did the same thing Morrow did: I studied all the damn time and was focused to my very core on getting the highest score on every lab write-up, assignment, quiz and exam. I had an amazing physics instructor once who was smart, tough, unsmiling, and told us on the first day of class that she didn’t believe in extra credit so we shouldn’t waste her time asking for it. She expected us to learn the material well and to do the work she assigned, end of story.
And then she handed back our first set of lab reports and told the class that one student had gone above and beyond what even she expected and she had therefore gone against her twenty-year no extra credit policy and had given this particular student several extra points. This turn of events did not amuse her, and she stood over me and stared me down while announcing this in front of my glaring classmates. The grade-obsessed perfectionist half of me was supremely proud and was jumping up and down (on the inside) with delirious joy, thinking “Oh, hell YES! I kick ASS!” The normal half of me thought, “Crap. Now they all hate me and think I’m a freak.”
Which I was. Physics Class Me occured when I was working on degree # 2 and was ditching my infant daughter, my husband, my friends and any semblance of my life in order to devote every waking moment (of which there were quite a number as I rarely slept) to achieving academic success. Necessary? Yes, if I wanted to get into the program I was so focused on. No, if I had taken a step back and gotten my priorities straight. Unconsciounable? Absolutely. I ditched my child for about the first three years of her life because I couldn’t just let go a little (unclench) and get a few B’s.
Lest you think the perfection obsession was limited only to the New-Mommy-Staggering- Under-the-Weight-of-Parental-Responsibility Me, I have another sparkling example of School Obsessed Alexa. I had two weeks left of my senior year at Evergreen. There are two important bits in that last sentence: (1) normal people, if they are capable of unclenching, can usually find it within themselves to do so during the last two weeks of senior year; (2) I was at Evergreen, where obsessing about academic perfection is dumb because there are no grades.
Anyway, I had just returned from a photography road trip and had a lot of printing to do in the darkroom before my final project was due to be shown. My then-boyfriend, now-husband asked me to go away with him for the weekend to the San Juan Islands. His friend is a pilot and had offered to fly us there. How romantic. I knew that what my boy really had planned was to propose to me. He had set up this whole thing, his friend was willing to fly us, he had a ring, etc. I played dumb, pretended I just thought he wanted to go waste a weekend of printing time at a bed-and-breakfast, told him I loved him very much and it was a very sweet gesture, but I needed to stay home and rack up as many printing hours as possible in the darkroom before my project was due. I’m usually a very forthright and honest girl (I have no filter between my brain and my mouth, so I tend to say everything the moment I think it), so it’s fortunate I held back and didn’t say, “I’m too busy with school to get engaged to you this weekend. Better luck next time, pal.”
Isn’t that awful? I’m such a bi*ch. I cringe when I recall that stunning moment. For the record, he proposed after I turned in my project and hung my show. We’re living happily ever after and I’ve since learned my lessons regarding life vs. school and I’m a much better mom, wife and friend because of all the learning I’ve done (read: cringe-worthy moments have carved me into a real person).
School is good and working hard is commendable. But the pursuit of perfection to the detriment of your real life is usually not worth it. Find some sort of balance. Minus the crystals and granola. Unless that’s your thing.
Posted by Alexa Harrington