Hypothetically Speaking...
I tended to just squeak by with B's and C's in school, unless the teacher required absolutely no work, because then I'd get an A just for being there and contributing to the conversation. I blame laziness, and the fact that when I get overwhelmed by something, I ignore it. This has caused many many hours of procrastination and paper-writing all-nighters. And sometimes it just caused many many hours of procrastination with the end result of, well, nothing to show.
This annoys a lot of people. It especially annoys the type of people who are hard workers and overachievers and who spend weeks on a paper that I only spend a night on, and we still get the same grade.
And if we don't get the same grade, I'm usually satisfied with a C or a B because I know that I didn't put shit effort into what I wrote, and that I probably deserve it, and that "Average" or "Above Average" isn't so bad when you consider there are people who actually try, but who just aren't good writers, and their hardest work merits them a C.
In college, one of my flatmates and I took the same class in which the final paper had to be a 12-page summary of everything that we had learned during the semester. After about 6 pages, I got bored with writing and decided to call it quits. No summary, no spellcheck. I figured that since I only wrote half the paper, I was deserving of a 50%. This didn't please me, but my desire to ignore what overwhelmed me outweighed my desire to actually raise my GPA. End result: I got an A with the comment, "You left some things out, but overall, great paper!" while my friend, who wrote a complete paper, got a B+.
Fast forward to this past semester, when I took my final class for my special ed certification. It was a graduate class, and I had had the professor 2 or 3 times before, and each time the syllabus included the same types of assignments which I found useless and tedious. I considered the fact that this professor was disorganized, too busy, and still wasn't sure what my name was (in a class of 12), and I decided to just not write the final paper. I got an A in the course. This is a higher grade than I received when I actually did all the work.
I'm not particularly proud of being a slacker, but something inside of me feels, oh, I don't know, sort of "nanny nanny boo boo" when I beat the system.
And if I had actually put effort into getting an education, I might have been able to come up with a phrase more sophisticated than, "nanny nanny boo boo."
This annoys a lot of people. It especially annoys the type of people who are hard workers and overachievers and who spend weeks on a paper that I only spend a night on, and we still get the same grade.
And if we don't get the same grade, I'm usually satisfied with a C or a B because I know that I didn't put shit effort into what I wrote, and that I probably deserve it, and that "Average" or "Above Average" isn't so bad when you consider there are people who actually try, but who just aren't good writers, and their hardest work merits them a C.
In college, one of my flatmates and I took the same class in which the final paper had to be a 12-page summary of everything that we had learned during the semester. After about 6 pages, I got bored with writing and decided to call it quits. No summary, no spellcheck. I figured that since I only wrote half the paper, I was deserving of a 50%. This didn't please me, but my desire to ignore what overwhelmed me outweighed my desire to actually raise my GPA. End result: I got an A with the comment, "You left some things out, but overall, great paper!" while my friend, who wrote a complete paper, got a B+.
Fast forward to this past semester, when I took my final class for my special ed certification. It was a graduate class, and I had had the professor 2 or 3 times before, and each time the syllabus included the same types of assignments which I found useless and tedious. I considered the fact that this professor was disorganized, too busy, and still wasn't sure what my name was (in a class of 12), and I decided to just not write the final paper. I got an A in the course. This is a higher grade than I received when I actually did all the work.
I'm not particularly proud of being a slacker, but something inside of me feels, oh, I don't know, sort of "nanny nanny boo boo" when I beat the system.
And if I had actually put effort into getting an education, I might have been able to come up with a phrase more sophisticated than, "nanny nanny boo boo."
posted by Jess at 6:55 AM
5 Comments:
You got an A without even writing the final paper???
So hating you right now. Right along with everyone in your class who did all the work.
Boo.
Ha. I am exactly the same way. I'm glad to know I'm not alone in my weirdness at ignoring what overwhelms me! Lazies unite! It's truly a miracle that I ever graduated from law school.
Claire - If they had asked me, I'd have told all of them to skip the final paper too. Though then he might have noticed...
GG - White Power!!! (And by "White," I mean a "Blank Sheet of Paper.")
you know, we tried to pull something like that off, all of us, in my last class.
turned out i was way too chicken-shit not to hand in my paper. i just didn't trust everyone else saying they weren't going to do it and didn't want to be the only one. see, cause normally, not handing in your final is a big problem for most teachers...
life just isn't fair sometimes.
Oh yeah. You were the naturally laid back and smart girl I wanted to smack upside the head. (In the nicest way.)
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