There are certain things in life that by overly focusing of on them make them harder to attain. Two great examples are money and happiness. The same is true for grades.
I have been a teacher for several years now and it never ceases to amaze me how students always obsess about grades, but have not given much thought about how to attain the high grades they crave. They want the A+, but they truly don’t know what is required to achieve it.
I often tell my students that I don’t care about grades, what is important to me is that you understand the content being taught. The truth is, once you focus on understanding the grades will follow. The sad reality is that not many people know what it means to truly understand something. The best way to describe true understanding is to echo the late physicist Richard Feynman. He said that you have only fully understood something when you are able to explain it to a five your old in a way that he or she can understand it.
Throwing around scientific words and the jargon of a specific discipline is not indicative of true understanding. These are just labels that we give to underlying concepts. To truly understand you have to be clear about the core underlying principle of the concept. The only way to get to the core is to constantly ask ‘why?’.
It’s amazing how school, which should serve to heighten our intellectual curiosity, has been so successful in diminishing it. Instead of learning in an environment where every answer is valued and appreciated, we quickly find out that our opinions are wrong. So instead of enjoying our learning, we view it as an arduous task to get the grade.
But if you think back to the time when you were three years old, you couldn’t stop asking the question ‘why?’. However, after a few years in the school system and being repeatedly told that your way of doing things was not acceptable, you stopped questioning and fell in line so to speak.
The truth is, to thrive academically you have to regain the curiosity of your childhood and begin to ask ‘why?’ again. The next time you are in class and your teacher explains something that you understand at the surface level, dig deeper and ask as many tangential questions pertaining to the topic as possible. This will ensure that you get a deep and complete understanding of the topic. I’ll be honest, your teacher may get annoyed, but don’t worry about that. Einstein was known for annoying his teachers with questions and he turned out to be the world’s most iconic intellectual.
So what’s the take home message? Stop focusing on grades and start ensuring that you deeply understand what is being taught. Begin asking the question ‘why?’ You will find that your curiosity will be rekindled, your grasp of the content will be fluid and your grades will be higher than you ever imagined.
Unleashing your true academic potential 