Over-achiever or under-achiever? Or just average? What's your drive?

[blueovalboy7]

I am an under-achiever, sad to say. I guess I just grew to dislike school more and more as I was pushed to reach my Mom's expectations. She has a Masters degree and has been teaching for 28 years now and she won't admit it but I believe she expects the same from me. I'm content with my overall gpa in high school at 3.25, never was a straight A student, but most likely could have been if I had applied myself. Essentially I'm ok with being average, but like LIK said this is an "over achieving" society and I think that my attitude is looked down upon. I guess it can be summed up as me being lazy, but I really can't say that I am motivated to be an over-achiever when it comes to school. Sorry for the long winded post.

 

[Byuakuya]

I did extremely well in school, always getting an A* or an A on all of my coursework pieces. I even received the Upper Class School Prize for Science. After that, when I entered college, the praise and high grades that I had received in school made me big-headed. :lol:
I did really badly at first (in college), and then came to realise that there are others who can achieve grades as well as you or even better than you. That understanding is probably the reason that I am in University today, with grades that can help me go a long way.
I apologise if the above section came out as boastful.

 

[Napalmbrain]

Example: Taking the "suicide three" - the three hardest courses my school offers (Higher Level Maths, Higher Level Physics and Higher Level Chemistry).

That's exactly what I did (more precisely, I took their UK A-level equivalents). But the thing is, I didn't consider them to be the hardest. I had a harder time with the likes of business and art. I enjoyed physics and maths the most, so now I'm doing an astrophysics course at university. I've stopped trying as hard as I did back in school, not to the point of failing, but not quite as good as before. Overall I'd consider myself to be average.

 

[Frogger]

...Ahaha... You're all hard on yourself attacking your threshold of what an under and an over achiever actually is. I don't know what the boundaries are, but judging on my mind I would say that... I'm neither.

I'm not an under achiever, I believe I can sail through things with the art of waffling and basic knowledge, which some people still lack these days. Passing tests are easy, I just got the grades that I needed to stay in the highest classes, an that was pretty easy. Average, eh, no, I did what I had to do to remain a high average that I found satisfactory.

I've had the "I don't care about this" attitude for many years of my school career, that's when I realised I didn't need the highest grades to do something good, I just had to kick it into gear when it is needed. I suppose it was because I've always hated being the oldest child, I had to teach people rather than being taught, my teachers ways of explaining things just did not go through to my head sometimes. I'd seek help but they all had the same ways of teachings, so I just gave up and started to look for help online, which isn't that great for maths.

I struggled with maths a lot of the time, I asked questions and my teacher would still be lazy enough to say to me that i had to move and sit next to the snobbish girl that knew everything, and she was too busy talking to her friends rather than explaining things to me, I just wanted to get away from her. Me and my maths teacher never saw eye to eye, I would always question her ways of teaching, and many other things, she prefers to teach the kids already with understanding and just throw the others into a pit of failure.

I got a B this year in maths, to which I was ecstatic to receive. My maths teacher expected everyone to get A's in her class, but a lot of them got C's. I hurried past her and she'd say; "What did you get in your maths?" and I jumped up in the air with my reasults papers and said "I GOT A FREAKING B!" with a fairly large grin on my face, and all she had to say was "So you didn't get an A? You should have tried harder." Me, not wanting a career in the subject, couldn't care less, I was happy with that.

One time she gave us a test where none of our class understood, seriously, the test was marked out of 100, a couple of people got 0, the highest score was 16. I got 6. When she put the results on the interactive board she looked at us and said;

"Now, what does that say about your effort? None of you are pulling your weight at all. I am ashamed of you. What does that say about your slacking?"
"What does that say about your teaching methods?" is what I said, she heard me, and we have never had a conversation that hasn't been spiteful of her since. But, now she's gone, woo!

I have taken the subjects that I performed best in at college, I still can't figure out why I had to learn science, at all. That just blocked my mind from important things and wasted my time on the subjects I actually wanted to do well in. I have the attitude that if you put your mind to it, you can probably achieve it, but there's some things I just didn't want to do.

Competition, I love, but not with grades, they're what I want and what I choose to have.

 

[JAKE196]

I usually work hard but at times I can be quite lazy. . :crazy:

 

[Trulen]

^
Ah, teachers.
Luckily throughout my high school, I've never had a teacher that wasn't willing to help, though my advanced math teacher's a little hardcore. But she used to teach college.

Man, the lady's smart.


But the completely awesome thing is, we get stickers on our tests if we get A's.

You never know how pleasant a sticker is until you get one. Even if you think it's for Kindergardeners.

There's something about seeing a "STAR STUDENT!" sticker on your paper.

 

[Frogger]

^
Ah, teachers.
Luckily throughout my high school, I've never had a teacher that wasn't willing to help, though my advanced math teacher's a little hardcore. But she used to teach college.

Man, the lady's smart.


But the completely awesome thing is, we get stickers on our tests if we get A's.

You never know how pleasant a sticker is until you get one. Even if you think it's for Kindergardeners.

There's something about seeing a "STAR STUDENT!" sticker on your paper.

Ahahaha, I love that idea, I tried to persuade my teacher to re-enforce the use of stickers but she said that she thought the class was mature enough to know when you get good grades.

But, some people aren't just capable of getting A's, so, I'd rather just have a sticker if you get above your target or something. As I've said, if you're proud of it, you should get an award.

I never noticed that you were seventeen, I always saw your style of writing and thought you were a lot older, and the age of moderators, I just assumed that you'd be older and have a career and all that borgeois whatnot...

My college teachers seem happy to help me when I'm in need, they don't treat you like children, now getting to call them by their first names, it makes me think that they're not robots sent on this planet with the sole purpose of teaching, they actually have lives. I like that now you're in control of how much effort you're going to put into your work, you're not constantly being jabbed with a stick pushing you intot he wrong career aspect.

 

[Nfanboy]

I have gotten all A's my whole life. Not one B. There was one thing that made me so mad my entire life: My school NEVER challenged me. I knew all of the work, before having them teach it to me. What was the worse, was: We had this test in 4th grade to see what Saxon book we would learn from. I passed out of pre-algrebra. Got every question right. That means I was ready for algrebra in 4th grade. My school didn't give me algrebra untill the last 3 months of 8th grade. Now I go to a different school, and it is great. I actually like going there. Now I'm doing algrebra 1. If I was given algrevra when I was ready (4th grade) I could be doing calculus now. Dang I hate my old school.

 

[Frogger]

I have gotten all A's my whole life. Not one B. There was one thing that made me so mad my entire life: My school NEVER challenged me. I knew all of the work, before having them teach it to me. What was the worse, was: We had this test in 4th grade to see what Saxon book we would learn from. I passed out of pre-algrebra. Got every question right. That means I was ready for algrebra in 4th grade. My school didn't give me algrebra untill the last 3 months of 8th grade. Now I go to a different school, and it is great. I actually like going there. Now I'm doing algrebra 1. If I was given algrevra when I was ready (4th grade) I could be doing calculus now. Dang I hate my old school.

You have a point here. But, and this is how you're coming across to me, you're probably the sharpest tool in the bunch so you have to consider what the other students are feeling.

For the whole educational syllabus to be changed, well, you'd have to do so much to do with government and whatnot but also, they have their boundaries because they know what kids should not be capable of. Limitations are there so they don't want to push the poor kids over the edge, if one person out of my whole year was too brilliant and wanted extra teaching then the whole class would have to learn it and go through all the complicated teachings, I couldn't do that without my brain exploding.

Learning to study with a personal tutor should solve it but I really wouldn't take the option to drag all of the other students with you just for a challenge.

 

[Trulen]

Ahahaha, I love that idea, I tried to persuade my teacher to re-enforce the use of stickers but she said that she thought the class was mature enough to know when you get good grades.

But, some people aren't just capable of getting A's, so, I'd rather just have a sticker if you get above your target or something. As I've said, if you're proud of it, you should get an award.

I never noticed that you were seventeen, I always saw your style of writing and thought you were a lot older, and the age of moderators, I just assumed that you'd be older and have a career and all that borgeois whatnot...

Ah, well, I'm in the honors class. So we're expected to make good grades.
Maybe in the lower classes she'll hand over a sticker for a B.

And I just actually have 5 years of experience being 12 ;D
There's no 17-year old around here :shifty: