I'm told I'm smart.
Siiiince.... 1st grade. Then at around 7th grade I ended up falling behind in school stuff because fuck if I know. Got the whole "You could do better if applied yourself" talk.
Not that exciting 
That sounds really familiar. Why? Because I followed the same trajectory. Despite being extremely intelligent by whatever objective measurement you want to use (various IQ tests all above 160 or so and averaging (mean) at 177, any kind of standardized test scores all in the ~95th percentile, whatever,) I barely graduated high school with a 2.12 GPA, and now I've worked my way
up into a (mostly) shitty retail job that barely pays the bills and am stuck here for the foreseeable future, even though I have a two-year degree and am qualified to work pretty much anywhere because of management experience and an extremely diverse skill set. What happened? What went wrong? Not too long ago, I actually figured it out, and I'm willing to share.
You're probably bored with your schoolwork. It doesn't provide a challenge, you don't see the point in doing it, and it's a waste of time. It's all completely pointless bullshit. And that's entirely true.
Here's the thing, though: Schoolwork isn't to teach you the basics of whatever it is that you're learning. I mean, sure, you'll learn the very basics of math, science, history, literature and a couple of other things (even though much of what you'll learn in high school is wrong or watered down,) and getting good grades isn't an achievement specifically for you. Schoolwork feels like busywork because it is. It's to teach you to keep going when shit gets boring, because you'll use that almost every day of your life when you're an adult. It's to teach you to prove yourself to the man in order to be placed in the pecking order for college or trade school, which helps you get into the career field you want to be in. It helps you learn to grind. If you don't grind, you get placed with the incompetents and idiots. Grinding is a skill, and it's one that I'm just learning how to do because I didn't take the time to learn it in school.
You'll hear a lot about "potential," and how you're not living up to it. There's a reason for this: because you have natural aptitude, you're expected to work it to a much finer edge than your peers. Vector is a master of grinding that edge beyond razor sharp. She claims to not have super-aptitude in much of anything, (and I don't believe her for one second,) but her strength lies in hard work and grinding that edge. She's accomplished everything she has because she's busted her ass and not stopped for one second to say, "I can't do this." Fuck that. You can do it, you just have to work hard to do so, and right now is the time for you to show that you are willing to put in the work.
If you're an artist, you're expected to be the best damn artist in the world, or you're just another person on the scrap heap. Every kid can draw, and some can even shade a little bit. You need to make real, distinguished art that sets you head and shoulders above the rest. If you're into building things, you damn well better know everything about your math and physical sciences, or you'll get people killed in the real world. No bridge was ever built on hope. No foundation was ever laid on "maybe." If you're into computers, you need to know logic and hardware, programming and security, and people will look to you as some kind of wizard. That said, every kid nowadays can write a basic script and set up a firewall. My first grader has computer classes twice a week, and will probably start programming in junior high. You'd damn well better be able to keep up with the kids who get the head start, or you're no better than anyone else. If you're an athlete, you'd better have professional speed and strength and know everything about your field of play in high school, because your chances of doing it professionally are less than one in a million. (I went to high school with around two to three hundred athletes. Only two of them ever made money in any kind of sports, and one of them was me, and that was only because I was willing to fight for scraps and pocket change.) If you want to go into a field in particular, start learning it now. Everyone else who wants to go into that field has, unless that field has you saying, "Hi, welcome to McDonalds!" on your 40th birthday.
The point of school isn't to get better unless you actively take the time to better yourself. It's not even about learning the stuff in the books. It's about showing what you can do, and what you're willing to do. It's about learning what you want to do with your life, and how far you're willing to go to get there. If you bust your ass now, you'll find that a lot of doors will open for you later. If you don't bust your ass now, well, the establishment will think that you're an idiot or worse, that you're just a regular person. That you're nothing special. That you don't get to go in the special doors (like the one to your own office or business,) because you're not willing to work hard enough to get there.
tl;dr: Bust your ass now. The whole point is learning how to bust your ass, so that life doesn't dump you on your ass later.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9418984 times)