[jd_]

What do you see yourself as, smart people who *don't* challenge, or smart people who might fail?

I had an interesting thought reflecting back on my high school years, which for me is over a decade ago.

I realized there were a couple groups of people amongst the "smartest kids" in the school.

Some, were the grade first priority people, who sought to have perfect grades, hence ended up as the valedictorian/salutatorian of the school.

However, other kids wanted challenging courses, and took the hardest classes possible along with the hardest loads.

There seemed to be some kind of conflict between the two... on one hand, the people with the best grades got a higher rank... on the other hand, at least the top 2 people I remember, neither one of them were in the more difficult AP courses like AP Chem/Physics/Calc/Computer Science and etc.

Many of the top 20 or so were not in the gifted program either, which had more difficult courses.



The problem is, I felt like there was a bit of angst/remorse towards the people at the top, and many felt like they had *cheated* the system in a sense for the reward of prestige and/or finishing first.

This scenario more or less repeated itself in college with people trying to get high GPA's to get into Law/Med School instead of taking possibly very hard course loads.

Which do you see yourself in? Which path do you value more?

[Metaplanar]

Both, in a way. I like to collect easy As, but when something is genuinely interesting and somewhat challenging, that's even better. It's more fun, even if the grades might be slightly worse.
We don't have the AP system here, but I had to choose two subjects at school in which I would specialize and participate in more advanced classes for the last two years. The first one was easily Maths because, while being somewhat boring at times, it was easy and always gave me that great sense of accomplishment. For the second one, I was torn between Physics (which I was generally better in) and Chemistry (which was more challenging and interesting but where I often got one grade lower). In the end, I chose Chemistry. It was a good choice.

(I see you list all those subjects under "more difficult courses"...in my experience, while English or German was less work, it was more difficult to get a really good grade there, because grading was relative and very much depended on whether the teacher liked my style. And fact-knowledge subjects like History were the worst. Much more work than the sciencey stuff and so boring...)

[jd_]

oh sorry, I meant the AP across the board, we had AP English/Language/History also.

The valed/salut's just took the regular stuff.

In fact I remember them personally avoiding some of the harder classes, same in college.

Here is a scenario, for my "multicultural" requirement in college, we could satisfy it with maybe 8 different options, ranging from 100/200/300 level courses. I took the harder multicultural film 300 level course as a freshman, b/c I thought it was interesting. For the "health/nutrition" course, I took the hardest of the three, b/c I actually wanted to learn.

Now sometimes that backfires and I ended up with a B, but, I think it is possible I would have been so uninterested in a lesser/easier course that my grade might have actually been worse! I experienced that effect also when I tried to take an easy class, and thought to myself, never again!

[kiwig0ld]

I definitely look at myself as a smart person willing to challenge the status quo. Failure is never looked at as a option, only the result of an attempt to challenge myself....With that being said I may fail but always have a contingency plan.(but I'm not going to fail)

Which path do you value more?

I value the smart who may fail more because of the heroic outcome of their efforts when they win.

[jd_]

I definitely look at myself as a smart person willing to challenge the status quo. Failure is never looked at as a option, only the result of an attempt to challenge myself....With that being said I may fail but always have a contingency plan.

I feel healthier looking at options that way. If I don't try for the best, I am left feeling a bit unchallenged...or there is something on my shoulder nagging me that I should be doing more. For about a 5 year period of my life, I felt I wasn't challenging myself and felt super stagnated. It seems the more elaborate/difficult something is, the more I am attracted to conquering it.

You bring up a good point on contingency plans.


For instance now on continuing grad school, I want to take it as far as I can... so I have a list of school options, and what to do if I don't get in here, a list of cities I could live in, other career avenues I could take if I didn't get funding, then after that options if I didn't get tenure or at a post in somewhere I could see myself living, etc...

At one point I thought I was a perceiver, as I thought it was "leaving options open"... but I realized that wasn't really what I was doing, I was creating not just plan B... but plan C, D, E... just in case plan A didn't work out. So while I had *other* options... I already had them planned out/safety nets/etc. Big difference I think.

When I plan a trip... I have an idea in mind of "go to this museum" ... but I also have the backup plan ready if the museum is packed, do this instead, followed by changing other plans for the course of the day. These are NOT spontaneous, I have just already thought out of all the other options, researched times of other places, looked at maps, guides, etc... so they might LOOK spontaneous to the outside viewer.

A perceiver I think would just go with the flow, and figure out something else... Where as I would already have a backup plan, and execute it right away, sometimes leaving other people baffled thinking "you made that decision out of nowhere" ... When in reality, I had that backup plan ready pretty far in advance.

[Flatliner]

I took all the AP courses I could. I did fairly well in those classes and enjoyed it when teachers would give me challenging assignments, or open-ended ones where I could choose my own material.

I wasn't arsed about grades, but I wanted to learn. I am not sure whether that puts me under "challenge" or "might fail" - I think I did both of those things.

[jd_]

I took all the AP courses I could. I did fairly well in those classes and enjoyed it when teachers would give me challenging assignments, or open-ended ones where I could choose my own material.

I wasn't arsed about grades, but I wanted to learn. I am not sure whether that puts me under "challenge" or "might fail" - I think I did both of those things.

I just realized I messed up the topic. I had to edit the topic as it was initially too long, and ended up deleting a key word .. "don't"
so it but don't challenge, or smart but might fail.

[Spear]

Grades mean nothing if you don't really learn anything . Taking a harder subject means that you challenge your self and if there is competition in that subject the better . Like perhaps a student of similar ambitions and interest would most likely become your "rival" for let's not forget that competition leads to progress . Those who just look at grades as a judge of who they are , are most likely to be the ones who think that just because they have good grades they are a good student .
In my school there is about 30% Theory and 70% Implementation in a practical or somewhat useful manner . I don't know about other school systems , but generally those who focus on grades will do in the "Implementation" period while those who are actually interested use the "Theory" part of it to gain as much knowledge and use it wisely afterwards .
I mean getting A's is kind of rewarding when you actually did something for it and not just breeze through the year just being a drone who does what he is told and never questioning the teacher/professor .

I know I went kind of off topic but I can't really find a way to explain clearly without giving so vague metaphor or using a pie chart . Well maybe next time .

[sorry_neither]

Do you mean "smart people who don't want a challenge," and "smart people willing to risk failure"?

In school? I wanted a challenge, but failure was never a real risk. I was in all the upper-level classes in high school and have taken honors courses in college, but coasted through them. Now I take all the neuroscience classes I can, even though I'm a psych major, since they're fairly challenging. (I'd have switched my major to neuroscience if I hadn't already switched majors so late.)

But life in general? Trying to reorient myself to not be afraid of failing.

[Dashing]

Avoid challenges, spread love.