Some suggest that the best way to live a human life is to do worthwhile things well. What is worthwhile is up to the individual.
I will not attempt to sugarcoat my thought processes. Throughout my academic career, certainly throughout most of my K-12 education, I did well mostly because I could and the praise I received had become integral to my identity. I had no notion to question the constructs under which I was performing, and the praise and high marks I received sadly became my motivators to do well. However, by late middle school and early high school, cracks had began to form in my academic scheme. Starting in the eighth and ninth grade, I began to suffer from depression atop an adolescent angst that had turned my social anxiety from a non-problem into a source of distress. After years of straight As, I got my first B in the eighth grade, and two more in the ninth grade. In fact, two of my interim grades each year were Cs. From this upset, I underwent some crises. I would not get upset with my parents when they were upset at me for not doing well, but developed a neurotic aversion to praise from them and other adults. There are numerous occasions I yelled and screamed at my parents when they commented on something I was doing well but was insecure about. (In retrospect, the illogic of this astounds me and I regret my behavior.) I even developed a distrust of those who I was not close with yet think highly of me, something I still have not totally shed. Upon entering into the eleventh grade, I began attending the Governor’s School of Southside Virginia, a magnet school with a stressful environment. By Governor’s School, I was most motivated by a sort of practical existential anxiety. I had developed a want for independence and financial security, and to me the most obvious path was to do well in my academics so that I might further my education and earn valuable degrees to get a good job. Having fallen from grace before, I accepted Bs where I might have gotten As, having put in insufficient work to achieve the highest marks I might have gotten. I to this day cannot say whether or not my poorer performance was due to my mental health issues, which are most insidious in that they affect your perception, or due to bad habits and laziness; most likely, it is a combination of both. Still, I aimed as high as I felt I could, because I knew it would pay off.
My motivation to do well academically for its own sake is all but gone. Anxiety for the future is still an important motivator for me to do well, but I have grown to value my own education and personal development more. Playing the game and getting high marks is an arguably unfortunate concession I must make to keep my funding and my standing at Longwood, though one I am quite willing to make. Constructs such as “doing well” in school are not inherently bad; it is often useful to recognize them for what they are, but rebelling against them because you “see through them” is immature. I am a physics major, and my major classes are important to my future career. It is hard to derive profound insights about the meaning of life from how much energy a bullet imparts on a block of wood, or the optical properties of a lens. However, some of the things I am learning along the way and in other classes are helping me mold myself into the person I want to be. Despite my overly pragmatic view into academics, there are merit and non-career-related opportunities afforded to those who do well, which I enjoy because of my grades. Doing well in my classes is a small price to pay for taking honors courses, for instance, and for standing out from the pack when it is important. There are different paths for everyone, but the path of excelling academically is working for me.