Quote:
Originally Posted by alphabassettgrrl
Then nobody gave me a hard time about doing it and I could do as I please.
I don't know that I cared about my grades, but it made life easier to get good ones.
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Fortunately that wasn't a problem. I pretty much had free run of the school by my senior year. I was technically taking two classes a day at the community college across the street, doing two independent studies periods. One I spent every day in the empty band room making out with my girlfriend and the other I ended up teaching the organic chemistry class when the school district decided there weren't enough students to justify a teacher.
Here's the way I look at it:
I quickly realized that 20% of the effort got 90% of the grade. So I did 20%. My high school girlfriend (later my one year of college wife) figured it was worth putting in 100% of the effort to get that last 10% of grade. Graduated valedictorian. Continued that in college where I spent two years on academic probation (before buckling down the last two years to do what was necessary to get in grad school) and she kept getting straight 4.0s and overachieving. We both went to grad school and got MLIS degrees (I assume she overachieved there too, but we were split by then).
And now I probably make twice as much money as her and am equally happy with my life (assuming she's happy with hers; she certainly wasn't happy while overachieving at school).
So I'm pretty pleased with the 20%/90% rule of schooling and preach it to children at every opportunity (the key being a recognition that schooling and education are not synonyms and need not overlap; I know many people who sucked at schooling but also didn't learn anything; that combination isn't a good one). I expect in a few years the GD/CP family will hire me to give a seminar in their home explaining the details of my system to their children.