How is that even possible? You must have had a lot of tests to make that 21 part of an A average.
I’m assuming not a Cali resident. Is that right?
I’ve heard that the UC’s have a lower bar for out-of-state residents because they extract more money (i.e. out-of-state tuition) from them.
The “kept her weight down” is a sarcastic crack at her being fat, right? Way too weird to put in that context.
Perhaps most charitably, it’s a clueless husband who’s echoing his wife’s own words about why she spent so much time at the park without realizing how bad it sounds, but that’s very best explanation I can come up with.
My younger brother, who was even more arrogant and tried even less than I did, went to the same university as me and took the same chem class taught by the same professor. I explained beforehand how hard it was and how much effort it required. As younger, immature brothers do, he completely ignored me.
After his first exam I went to visit him and he proudly pointed out how he didn’t even study and got a 79, saying he would put in a little effort next and get an easy A. I was very happy to point out his 79 was actually 79 points out of a possible 150 points for a 52% lol. Needless to say he did not continue much longer in that class.
I feel like SATs used to matter more than they do now. I had poor/average grades in high school but did well on the SAT and got into a variety of mid-range schools. My cousin was director of admissions at Washington University in St. Louis, though, so I went there (I have no idea whether I would have gotten in on my own merits, but I doubt it). I drank and did drugs for four years, left one class short of my degree, and just pretended I had graduated. After I got sober I worked with Wash U to take a local college class and transfer it back so I’m officially class of 2016 I think, original graduating class was 1995.
It is hard for me to not consider my past when looking at schools for my kid. My parents were hell-bent on me going to the “best” school I could go to. No scholarship or financial aid, so they spent a shitload for me to blackout every night. So that really seems like a mistake. On the other hand, I doubt things turn out better for me if they had said “FU, you’re going to UMASS.”
I was very very far into adulthood before I ever faced any actual consequences for my behavior, but when the reckoning came it was a doozy. So I guess that’s the pattern I’m trying not to repeat. It definitely feels like mashing buttons, who knows how things are going to turn out.
If I had a kid who acted like me in high school, I would actively encourage to consider delaying college for a while - until they were ready to appreciate it as a means to a better life and life-enriching learning, not just an extension of high school that you do because everyone else is doing it.
That’s correct.
It would be funny if the wife wasn’t using the public park but instead was having an affair with some Korean dude named Park.
This is a good thought, but I think a lot of people wouldn’t ever reach this stage.
This:
Also I think there is some value of just the doing what everyone else is doing and just being propelled forward by inertia. This is why where you go matters a lot for the unmotivated. If you are a smart, highly motivated kid, then I don’t think it matters much where you go. On the other hand if you’re an average-ish kid, then going to some Ivy-level place makes a big difference, imo.
There’s also the possibility that people that go to college without a Real Appreciation for it will develop that if they spend time with other college kids that have that perspective. But if they “delay” going to college and work in a bar or something they might eventually think “this sucks, I’m going to college to make something of myself” OR they might just socialize the norms of tenuous employment and low pay.
Yeah, this too.
One of my friends was a chem major at UW in 1995 and getting 30% on a test meant you aced it and set the curve.
Some professors have a policy of dropping the lowest test score. It’s all bs though. At the end of the semester half the class has dropped out and most of those who didn’t feel bad about their grade. It’s not the most motivating system.
I took calculus in HS and was pretty good at it.
I lasted 2 weeks in college math.
Sending a student who isn’t self-motivated into an Ivy-level place could go either way. They could get inspired by their peers and get pulled along with the tide of success, or they could drown/completely detach.
For grad school qualifying exams you got to choose from several different tests. I took a pchem one once, got like a 45% and that wound up being one of the higher scores because almost no one else bothered to even try it. I was pretty crushed when I saw the score, tho.
When I was starting my senior year in high school, my dad had a talk with me about how he didn’t believe in taking on debt and he could send me to a state school or I could get a scholarship if I wanted to go somewhere else. I was upset at the time, but in hindsight not taking on debt for undergrad education is pretty solid advice. Luckily I got a decent scholarship at a school that was way better than the state schools I had access to, and my parents picked up the rest of the bill. My sister ended up going the state school route, and she’s done very well for herself.