This is a column that I wrote last January, and it is the one that I am most proud of. I think it speaks to who I am as a person inside, and how I really feel concerning colleges and the future.
Today, I am having trouble thinking. This year, it has become a usual struggle for me: I try my hardest to do schoolwork, but I really am not engaged in any of the material.
And I must admit, it troubles me. I don’t know that I have ever felt so detached from my academic learning environment. Unfortunately, I think I know the culprit: college.
College has gotten so much more real this year, from adults getting too close to my face and cheerily asking, “Where ya thinkin’?” to my friends and I studying for the SATs, to the guidance counselors coming in to talk to us, and I feel somewhat lost. There seems to be a frightening undercurrent amongst my friends that has arisen: we are competition for colleges.
This year, we have started to focus more on grades. And GPAs. And SAT scores. And extracurriculars. And whether or not we are the president of any of the clubs or organizations we are involved in. And community service, not for the sake of helping others, but for the sake of college applications.
We’ve started asking our teachers, “Will this be on the test?,” a question that I heard a couple of weeks ago when discussing the lives lost in the Holocaust.
We have developed the worst side effect of wanting success: we have ceased to learn.
It is a dire reality, isn’t it? But you can bet, one of us will go to an Ivy League.
Maybe even two.
The other day, I received a test back. Unhappy with the result, I was instantly distraught, knowing for sure that I was not going to be able to attend the college of my choice based upon this grade and how it would affect my final grade and my other grades and it would inevitably affect my college acceptance which would inevitably affect my ability to get a job and then I would have no job unless I went to Harvard Law and without this particular test score, Harvard Law would be unattainable and I would never be worth anything in the grand scheme of life and history and religion and literature and science and Ican’tbelievethisishappeningtomewhatdidIdotodeservethis.
I had not even looked to see what I had gotten wrong. I only saw my score.
I stopped asking questions, even when I had them, because I heard that my teacher gives quiet kids better grades than talkative ones.
I apologize. In a column called “Life at BHS,” this is not much of a life to lead.
I, like many of my peers, have gotten so caught up in the race for college acceptance, that I have forgotten what it means to be a person. I stand on my soapbox in my own little corner of the Bedford Bulletin, supplying morals and life lessons in the hopes that people will think, while I have not actually thought for some time.
And I am sorry for that.
I have cared so much about my grades, that sometimes, I don’t listen unless I know it will be on the test.
And I can hardly believe myself.
Education is not about grades, Harvard Law or SAT scores. It is about learning; it’s that simple. True learning is not assessed through tests, colleges or prestige. Failure to recognize the virtue of learning, is to not learn at all.
As an American student, I am taught the many workings of the world. I have the privilege of learning about everything in society: its ecosystems, its civilizations, its friends and its enemies and its imperfections. It is through learning of the world that we learn of ourselves.
If we are to learn purely for the sake of learning, then there is a good chance that we will not know everything, something that many have trouble with. Students believe that the SAT assesses all knowledge derived from textbooks, not what we have “truly learned.” Therefore, in order to attain a perfect score on the SATs, students must know everything and nothing at all simultaneously, solely for the interests of appealing to the college system. This is a method that students must accept in order to gain entrance to the college of their choice.
I must choose to learn.
I will never know everything. In fact, there is a good chance that I will not know anything about some subjects.
There is a good chance that I will never get a perfect score on my SATs. I may never be able to comprehend multivariable calculus, although I am certain I could not have comprehended that anyway, and I will probably never be a lawyer, physician, and astronaut at the same time.
But, maybe I’ll ask questions when I have them. Maybe, I will see what I got wrong on tests before I wage war with the world over my scores. Maybe, I will spend more time daydreaming without worrying what those idle moments might do to my GPA. Maybe, despite imperfections, I will change the way someone sees the world. Maybe, I will see the world differently as well.
Maybe, I’ll be happy.
And, if I am happy, then it is a pleasure to have learned anything at all.
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