ARE GRADES REALLY IMPORTANT? 😯

I was at a conference yesterday and the speaker asked "How important is it to get a first class?" And as usual, nobody offered to answer the question 😂

(Side note: I don't know if it's just my class, but for some reason, students of this generation would rather not answer questions in any gathering even if they know the right answer. It's funnier when the lecturer starts the class saying "I want this class to be interactive" 😂😂😂)

Ok back to the topic... After a few minutes, 3 people out of about a hundred offered to answer. One of them said in summary that "1st class graduates are in high demand" in fact that organisations fight over them 😂. He went on to say that 2nd class upper and lower divisions would have to work really hard to get jobs and that those in the 3rd class division would only get jobs if the hirer has pity on them because they'd have to search for a really long while to get jobs. In that moment, I was like 👇

Another guy said he thinks it's a function of understanding. That first class graduates are generally believed to have high levels of understanding and it diminishes as it gets to the least grade. 

If you've been following this blog carefully, you'd already know what I think about school 😒. I don't think that 1st class graduates have organizations doing flips to have them on their workforce and I don't think 3rd class graduates only get hired out of pity 😂 that's just even weird to think of. I also don't believe that your grades in school are tied to your level of understanding. 

I think your grades at school are a function of how willing you are to conform. Your willingness to wake up early in the morning to go for class or not attend any classes and read all your lecture materials only to replicate in a way that would conform to the standards set by the examiner on what should be right or wrong. Since grades measure your ability to conform, do I think they're important? Well... yes and no.

Grades are what you want them to be for you. If you want good grades so you could get your foot in the door of big organisations to get interviewed for high paying jobs, then grades are important FOR YOU. If you want to pursue a passion which requires you to develop a talent which our educational system would probably not help you do, then getting good grades in this education system is absolutely not important FOR YOU. 

It all depends on what you want to use the grades for. No grade has a value on its own. No matter what your parents, teachers, friends or colleagues say; grades are only as important as you want them to be. Grades are only important when YOU decide they're important and decide to use them to get something YOU think is important, other than that, grades are absolutely not important.

I don't know if a principal in Singapore wrote the letter above, but I totally agree with the content

Disclaimer: This post is in no way aimed at encouraging people to get bad grades at school 😂.