In my experience those who have higher grades in school, tend to have "better" jobs overall, but they are plagued with stress, imposter syndrome, anxiety, and risk of burn out. Those that seemed to have coasted through school, seem to still carry the care free mentality and life style. But why is there such a difference. What I have observed is that those who are stressed were encouraged in school that they can do better.
What is Better?
When you are told, "You can do better," what do you think and feel? I personally feel like I have let them down, I have failed in some way, I did not meet expectations, I misunderstood what was needed and the blame is on me. The person who said "You can do better" may have meant it as a soft warm hand of "it is ok, we will make it better next time." What does better even mean? How can you do better than 100%? Does better mean to raise the price of good? Does it mean break the world record?
C's Get Degrees
After graduating college and working a job for a couple of years I talked with my mom, who was adamant on A's were the only way to get through school, I casually mentioned "C's get Degrees." She was taken back by me stating that "C's get degrees." Oddly she had never heard of that saying. The saying basically means that you don't have to be the best, you just need to pass. I heard a very interesting thought that a class of doctors all graduate, there are those at the top of the class and those who are the top. You still call them doctor.
Why A's
So here we have my mom who strove to get A's in all of her classes, I attempted to do the same and still finished school with a very high GPA. One reason why we both strove so hard to get high grades was so that we could both get scholarships so we could afford school.
So for both of us getting a C would be unheard of. I technically had a couple of classes where I did not get an A in the class. There was one class in high school that I got a D, yes a D, on a test. When my mom saw this she jumped in and tried to figure out if it was my fault or the teacher's fault. After months of looking into it, we realized I had difficulty reading (a topic for another day). This was one of many experiences where I was shown that mediocre was not permitted.
Going back to the topic of this article. I realized in college that some of the scholarships I wanted to get, I would never get because I got one (1) B. The school I went to had extremely high standards for academic full ride scholarships. Early on I realized that I would never get the "full ride" scholarship because of one (1) B. With this realization, I shifted to not stressing about not getting what was now impossible to achieve. There are too many people that even if they know they cannot achieve a very specific thing they either melt down and die trying to hit what they have no ability to achieve, or they completely give up and walk away a failure. The way I saw this college experience and the options that were presented to me, either way I didn't like either extreme, so I figured out the in between.
I didn't like either extreme, so I figured out the in between.
The in between
First of all you need to know what you goal is. If you must have high grades, then strive for them. Just remember, one bad grade doesn't make you a failure. For most people, just passing the class if the minimum goal. With that in mind, figure out what you are comfortable with. Some of the classes I took in college were programming classes. In these classes to get a modest grade, you just needed to make a program that needed to be able to handle the requirements that the assignment had outlined. If your program could do that, it was a guaranteed B. It would be great if all of life's tasks were that easy. These assignments taught me a very important lesson that took me years to realize.
Know what the requirements are, know what the "dream state" would be, and know what the bare minimum is. Right there you have three finish lines. Over achiever shoot for the dream state and stress over achieving it and then kick themselves if all they could deliver was the minimum, even if the other requirements were far outside their realm of what they could do. The care free individual knows that minimum is the minimum of what they need to do to keep their job, so that is what they do. As soon as they hit minimum the call it done. I have learned I like to hit as close to the requirements as possible with a little extra. Keeping in mind the minimum, I can gauge where I am at in the outlined timeline. If I run out of time, if I have hit minimum then I call it done. When I hit minimum and still have some time I will see how far I can get.
Just enough
When you have just enough you are able to let stress go and are able to actually achieve more than you thought, instead of spending time stressing and not making any progress. Now this is no excuse to live mediocre lives, but it gives you the ability to go beyond the bounds of what you have set for yourself. For example, do you need to have the biggest house you could ever afford, or do you go with one that gets the job done, meets your requirements, and with the remaining resources go do something else? I would strive to get something that does the job today so tomorrow you can achieve your bigger goal. This could be starting a business, being debt free, traveling the world, or helping a charity in your free time. Spend what you have where you want to, not on the high achievements.
Image from: https://theorion.com/60732/opinion/cs-only-get-degrees/
