Former (and current) brilliant students- did you slack off?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Spin off of the “When do you call it quits with a child re academic performance.” (See here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=125393 for more details). Instead of hijacking, I created my own thread.

People here were talking about how one reason why intelligent students often stop working is often due to boredom or lack of challenging assingments. For example, many people found it pointless to do homework assignments that appeared mundane and not important, because they tested information that they already knew how to do.

I’ve heard of this a lot, but was never really sure if it were true. RickJay and HumbleServant disagreed with this perspective.

Personally, I never really found it true. In my school, the people who didn’t work hard (though practically everyone did) never came off as overly brilliant, just as people who didn’t care enough. And I myself, though I experienced my share of bored moments, always did my best. I never thought it was beneath me- I was always really eager to please.

Humble Servant’s point in particular, about how it’s often a tool of writers. A cliche, if you will. Which does make sense. I’ve seen it used quite a lot. Not only that, but I think it’s a lot easier to respect or admire someone who actually works hard, as opposed to someone who comes off as superior. Some people are born more academically capable than others, but it’s hard to respect someone who does no work even though they can, than it is to respect someone who uses what they have, or works hard to the best of their abilities.

Your opinions?

2

Yes, but it didn’t happen until college. For several reasons, I think[ul][li]Second semester, freshman year, I really overloaded my course schedule. We’re talking classes or labs from 8:50-5:30 with no breaks on Monday and Wednesday, and from 7:45-1:20 on Friday. I lived at home (off campus) and worked off campus. No car, either. I started getting so burned out that I’d skip classes just to get some breathing room []I finally reached the point where if I wasn’t really interested in a subject, I didn’t want to put forth all the effort to get an ‘A’ []“Busy work” started requiring time and at least some thinking (though it still was busy work) []I was a bit lazy–it was hard to discipline myself to actually, you know, study, because I had never really had to do that before []I started thinking grades weren’t maybe so important I started having more of a social life, and enjoyed it [/ul][/li]
standard disclaimer: I’m “slacking off” in that I’ve got a ~3.5 GPA. In engineering. I guess I’m not quite the slacker I like to pretend I am

3

I slacked off a lot durning high school. I didn’t exactly do bad- I graduated with something like a 3.6. But I did that entirely while not doing homework and acting like a little punk most of the time. In elementary school, I was an excellent student. In middle school, I got sick of the pressure and started failing classes- mostly just to show that I could (that is, that i had some identity outside of my grades). It was one of the better things that I’ve done in my life. I was able to realize that what I learn is more important that what grades I got, and that I should put less of my energy into getting straight A’s, and more of it in being as smart a girl as possible.

Academics were a joke- I went to a really really poor high school. Most of our teachers tried, but there were just too many forces working against them to allow them to teach challengeing classes. Half our teachers were there on emergency credentials. Our French teacher didn’t speak a word of French. Honors classes were minimal. Our history teacher was good hearted, but didn’t understand that the teaching techniques that work in the suburbs are laughable in the ghetto. Other teachers were simply too consumed with dicipline, beuracracy and other forces to get a lot of real teaching in. Our classrooms were unheated, un-air-conditioned (in 100+ degree weather) and generally falling apart. Most teachers ended up relying pretty heavy on busy work just to get them through the day.

I was a little punk- There are two kinds of good students in bad situations. One kind takes advantage of it, and gets straight A’s. The other kind (mememme) sits around in English class reading Crime and Punishment while their teachers lecture about something else, knowing full well that the teacher isn’t going to tell them to stop because reading Crime and PUnishment is more enriching than what they are doing. I was a punk. Whenever we did busy work, I used my busy work to mock the whole concept of busy work.

For example, we had to do reports on newspaper articles (current events) in my senior government class. I found this a bit insulting. I was eighteen years old and read about three newspapers a day. In middle school, they assign current events to kids in order to bribe them into reading the paper. But doing current events at that age isn’t gonna make anyone who doesnt already read newspapers daily start. It was a stupid assignment, and everyone- teachers and students- knew that.

So I wrote the worst current events possible. I chose the most inane stories to write about. I’d scrawl in inch high letters completly bizarre tangents- often about how various people might feel about the event. A typical current event would go:

And all my teachers could was throw up his hands and laugh. He knew I read the paper every day (I was quite the debator in government class). He couldn’t get mad at me- all he could do was laugh. I was a punk, but I was a punk in the most intellectual way possible.

Not to say I didn’t do anything. I put on plays and published literary magazines and organized a lot of cool stuff. But I a different kind of intellectual than the kids that sat around gossiping about who was ranked what in the class (oh god that was sickening). I cared more about what I was doing than what grades I got.

I was sick of grades- All my life, I was judged by my report card. But report cards don’t really reflect if you learned anything or not. And a lot of times, the actual learning gets lost in the process of trying to get an A+ instead of an plain ole’ A. I got sick of people that took less classes in order to get a better GPA (Most elective classes did not get weighted honors credit- so a lot of kids wouldn’t take extra classes like band [which was offered early morning before regular classes] because having a non-weighted class would mean they had a max GPA of 4.18 instead of 4.32). Kids would live their lives soley based on what would look good on a college application- with no regard to what they liked or wanted to do or even what they wanted to do once actually in college.

And I wanted no part in that world.

Now that I am in college, I am a really really shockingly amazingly excellent student. Part of that is that I go to a gradeless university. I really thrive away from the pointless competition, in an environment where I feel free to explore and take risks without constanly worrying about some stupid meaningless number. I also feel like I own my college education. I am paying for this (well, kind of). I am answering to nobody but myself. So there is no reason to slack off. I’m not doing this for my parents, or an application, or even a job. This is all mine. I am damn well going to get the most out of this as I can.

Plus I love learning. I am actually getting a deep and complex education instead of the superficial “education” I got in high school. My classes are challenging (to say the least- our teachers expect our papers to be of publishable quality) and we are encouraged to go in to as much depth as we want to. I actually learn new things as I write my papers. I am surrounded by students and teachers who love what they are doing as much as I do. I can’t think of a better place to be. I only regret that I spent four years of my life whithering away in high school when all this was out there for the taking.

4

I thought I’d been a slacker in high school until I read that thread…

I paid very little attention in most classes (read novels in Econ class, napped in AP Chem etc.) I actually remember correcting teachers a couple of times when they were talking about things I’d learned independently. I despised school, and was mostly contemptuous of the teachers. (There were a few I respected and liked, but they were in a minority.) I put forth minimal effort on homework (but then again I did do the work.) Of course, I wanted to do almost anything to get the hell out of suburban Michigan, and I knew I had to get a good scholarship if I wanted to go to an out-of-state school.

I graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA and a National Merit Scholarship.
Now I’m in college studying subjects that actually interest me. The only problem is that I never learned how to study in high school and now I could use that skill.

5

I would scam out on classes and go to the library.

I’d get a good CD and read things like Forester, Maupin, and Dumas.

6

First off, by definition brilliant students don’t slack off; brilliant people might, but that that would make them substandard students.

Putting aside any questions of modesty, false or otherwise, and trying to be objective here, I can say that while far from the smartest guy in the world, I’ve generally been regarded as highly intelligent, and several nominal measures of intelligence would support that assessment. I personally put little stock in standardized tests as a measure of anything other than test-taking ability, but I generally score in the 98th percentile or higher on practically any standardized test I take. I started reading at four years old and read far more widely and deeply than any but a handful of my peers until college.

Throughout elementary school, I excelled academically without expending a whole lot of effort. Partly that was a function of incredibly low standards at the school I attended (in a small town in a very rural part of Arkansas). I attended two different elementary schools in a different part of the state for sixth grade, and for seventh through eleventh grade I was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the home of the University of Arkansas. In sixth grade, I found myself having to work harder than ever before (I actually made a couple of Bs) and once I moved to Fayetteville the free ride was over for good. I found myself, for the first time, in schools where there were kids as smart or smarter than I was – not just one or two, but several of them – and where the teachers expected much more than in my previous schools. I’d like to claim that I buckled down and thrived academically, but the truth is I resisted, floundered, and had a mediocre junior high and high school career. There were several of us who were, to all appearances, capable of much more academic success than we achieved; primarily, I chalk it up to a combination of:
[ul]
[li] smug, snotty, juvenile false superiority[/li][li] fear of being unmasked as not nearly as smart as we thought we were[/li][li] desire to forge an idenity as outcasts or rebels, and the availability of that niche in the social ecology[/li][li] genuine difficulty in mastering certain subjects without an unaccustomed level of effort[/li][/ul]

Much farther down the list would be such comparatively negligible factors as failure of our teachers to challenge us, resistance to performing assignments we considered pointless (anything that could be considered busywork), teachers who genuinely had it in for one or the other of us (there were a few). Most of us were content with our good grades in the classes that were easy for us and mediocre grades in the rest. We drank a fair amount and did drugs in varying degrees, according to temperament and opportunity (this was the late 70s and early 80s – autre temps, autre moeurs).

Just before my senior year of high school, we moved to another small rural town. I’d taken all of the (nominally) academically challenging classes they offered already, so I ended up in Music Appreciation, American Government, a Spanish I class that was otherwise made up entirely of freshmen, and (God help us) Accounting, just to be able to accumulate enough credits to graduate. A graph of my GPA during this period would resemble the sort of hockey-stick curve usually found only in dot-com business plans of the late 90s. On the strength of that rehabilitated GPA and my extremely high SAT/ACT scores, I had no trouble getting into my first choice of colleges with practically a free ride using mostly merit-based aid.

In college, since I was primarily taking classes that I wanted to take, I did quite well. I could be accused of having slacked off in my required science courses, however; to wit:
[ul]
[li]Elementary Functions (aka pre-calculus): I’d flunked Algebra I once in junior high, barely passed it the second time, and nearly flunked Algebra II in high school (I aced Geometry, on the other hand). I busted my hump for the first few weeks, but a 7:40 am class in my all-time weakest subject during my first quarter of college in a windowless basement room, taught by a Russian emigre professor whose accent was only occasionally comprehensible meant that yours truly was asleep with my head against the wall (we had assigned seats in alphabetical order, and my last name starts with “w”, putting me in the rightmost row, abutting the wall) after the first couple of minutes. Fortunately, the professor graded on a curve, and retained enough of his Russianness that he was determined to finish all of the course material, despite having fallen hopelessly behind after a few weeks. He covered so much material in the last two weeks that in the last test of the quarter, on the final day of class, I scored a 50 out of 100, and on the final exam I had a 55 out of 150. The rest of the class did so poorly, however, that I still pulled a B in the course.[/li][li]Concepts in Physics: a non-majors intro to physics without the labs or the math. I fell asleep in this one nearly every day as well, but kept up in the reading and had little trouble earning a B.[/li][li]Concepts in Biology: another intro course for non-majors. I went into this one with the best of intentions; having put it off until my senior year, and knowing I was outside my usual areas, I resolved to take it seriously and exert myself. I dutifully attended class (five days a week!) and took copious notes, since the professor made a point of saying that there’d be material on the tests that was only in the lectures, not in the book. After the first two weeks, we had our first test. I re-read all the chapters and did the all of the study guide activities and questions in the two nights before the test. Every question on the test was a reworded or slightly altered study guide question. There was absolutely no material that was not in the book. I decided, “hell, I’m a senior, I’ve got better things to do with my time than this.” For the rest of the quarter, I went to class maybe once a week (just often enough to keep up with when the next test would be), read the chapters and did the study guide questions the night before each test, and aced every one of them. Went into the final with mathematical assurance of at least a B in the class, only to have the prof inform us that he wanted everyone to complete the final, but that he was going to drop our lowest test score. This one came back to bite me a few weeks later when the prof turned up on the honors committee; he didn’t appreciate that I’d pretty much given his class a miss all quarter and still aced it.[/ul][/li]
In summary, I’ve known plenty of people whose intelligence was pretty clearly established for me but who didn’t perform very well in school. This is almost always a result of character traits that will hinder success in the working world as well. In my case, I’ve always done well when doing things I enjoy and am interested in and good at, and poorly when doing things that don’t interest me or that are particularly hard for me. I’ve been fortunate in my career that I’ve generally been able to find jobs that I’ve enjoyed and that built on my strengths, and I’ve enjoyed a fifteen-year run of steadily increasing responsibility and income. Right now, however, I’m in my sixth month of unemployment, partly because of the economy and partly because I’ve resisted pursuing some opportunities that I know I wouldn’t enjoy, because I know myself well enough to know that I’d fall on my face.

7

Definitely “slacked off,” but, as some others have pointed out, I never really worked too hard to begin with.

School up until senior year of HS was fairly easy for me. I was not an all A all the time kind of student, but pretty darned close. Standardized tests: piece of cake. I was a finalist for the National Merrit Scholarship, 1510 or 20 on my SATs (I can’t remember now), all my teachers loved me, I loved being in class, I loved learning, blah blah blah blah blah.

However, hardly ever until I started taking AP classes did I need to work particularly hard for grades. High school until that point expected less of me than I could do with one hand tied behind my back, so I learned whatever I learned, and then got my Bs and As on papers and tests. As even sven says, I didn’t care too much about my grades beyond doing reasonably well.

Problems with AP courses. AP calc I think I ended with a C-, but I had a D- the first quarter, D the second, C+ the third, and C- the fourth. However, I got a 4 on my AP exam, so I didn’t have to take calc 1 at college.

Likewise with AP American history. I had copies of all the tests from a friend who had taken the class before. I started out trying to actually do my work, but ended up studying the test (all that had been changed was the order of the questions and answers, they were all multiple choice) the night before, as I hadn’t read most of the textbook. I even “borrowed” from some of her essays. But, I participated extremely well in class (I learn really well through listening/talking) and got a 4 on my AP exam, so there’s another 3 credits of material I learned after getting a C+ with an awful lot of cheating (note: that’s the one class in my life I really cheated in, and on the one hand I feel really bad about it, and on the other, if I can still do really really well on the AP exam which is what the class is geared for, then what the hell is the point of my “grade” which certainly would have been D or F had I not cheated).

In college things have gone the same way. Sometimes I do well, and other times not so well because I just don’t have the motivation to do the work the teachers expect. I still learn an awful lot, but if you don’t get papers/essays done on time then it doesn’t matter what you’ve learned, you fail.

The glories of never having to have had a work ethic (or to learn to have one) as a kid, then growing up and finding it’s not what you know, but how many words you can say it in that counts in life. Grrrrrr.

8

Sorry, I guess brilliant people who slacked off in school would have been a better choice of words.

I can sort of see what you mean now, even sven. My high school really was challenging, and I’ve worked very hard. But I do remember being in an SAT course in junior year, that was dull. Literally, going page by page by page in a workbook. Stuff I could have done on my own, which was not only tedious as hell but probably pretty useless. If my own real high school had been anything closely resembling that, I probably would have harbored feelings of resentment and superiority towards everyone else. If I thought I could have gotten away with it, I definitely would have read novels instead of working. I can appreciate now the fact that I was challenged (though let’s make it clear I’m not exactly breaking down the doors to go back to HS…)

9

An important thing to remember here is that a high school that does not challenge does not necessarily mean it’s a bad school.

My high school was easy for me, but I still learned an immense amount. I found myself (as did other students) much more prepared for learning and working then most other students. Many fellow students freshman year in college didn’t know how to write a coherent essay, which we had been doing since my freshman year of high school.

Some people are simply not challenged by learning, it’s by work that they’re challenged. And, IMO, learning and accumulation of knowledge is a much more important part of school than work. After all, the reason you’re supposed to be doing the work is to help you learn.

10

Yes, sadly I did.

All my teachers said I would be a brilliant mathematician.

Then I hit fourth grade and fractions, and it was all downhill from there.

:frowning:

11

I slacked off. Just out of pure laziness. I think the year I graduated I had a total of 100 “cuts”–which I got a way with because my mother excused them all, I kept an A-average (every class I had as a jr and sr was AP or Honors–except for Student Government), and I had all my teachers wrapped around my finger. Including my vice-principal. Some of it was due ot illness (had a couple major dental problems–bacteria eating away my jaw-bone at one point.) WHen I went to school in Utah they charged $1 for every absense–by the end of the year I paid over $60.

Anywho, I’m a slacker because my slacking off never came back to bite me in the ass. I graduated with honors and was accepted into every college I applied to. I’ve always finished in the top 90 percentile on every standardized test. Honor Roll every semester of my life. Does anybody know about the Accelerated Reader program? Each book is worht a certain amount of points, which you take a test to earn. For example, Gone With the Wind was worth 69 points and was 40 question test. By the time I was in 3rd grade I had more points than anybody in the school. I write papers at the last minute–always get an A. I’ve a fast reader so I can put that off as long as I want. I’m an even better bullshitter, so it’s not really a problem. Just finished my first year of college with an A average, and I don’t think I did even 1/2 of my required reading this year.

I want it to bite my in the ass. You may think that’s a horrible thing to say, but I don’t think anything else will snap me out of my slackerhood.
What’s even more bizarre is not that my grades suffer, but that I usually learn more than most of my fellow students. And I know that most of them do the work.

Sometimes I close my eyes and fantasize about the dizzying levels of greatness I could reach if I just apply myself, but then the SDMB calls to me, and I forget all that. (tongue firmly in cheek.)

12

I was the standard “is capable of much more effort” in high school. It wasn’t that the work was easy (which it wasn’t – I went to a prep academy) and that I wasn’t capable of it (another 98th percentile here) – I had a lot of family and personal problems at the time, which put everything else on the back burner.

I made up for it in college, though. Graduated magna cum laude with a 3.6 average. The down side? I had no idea what the term “social life” meant.

13

That would be an A average, and an A-.

:rolleyes:

14

I was not a particularly smart child. It wasn’t until I was in third grade and discovered that reading was the coolest thing ever that I began to excel. It helped that I always had a photographic memory, but I had to bust my ass to get good grades, and I did, because I realized it was the only way out of the sort of life my parents led. (I will be the first person in my family to graduate college). I was in International Baccalaureate in high school, made the highest grades in my class on the English and History exams, and earned a diploma. I was sixth in my class with a 3.7 GPA.

But this is where I have to disagree - I think all that hard work really paid off, and I have been able to slack because of that. I am at a very challenging school, I have a 3.9 GPA, I’m in the English Honors Program, and I work thirty hours a week or more during the semester. But writing essays, doing the reading assignments (I’m an English major), and all the related stuff is a piece of cake, for the most part, because I worked so hard and became good at those things a while ago. For instance, last semester I put off all my final papers until the weekend before they were due. I had NINE 5-7 page papers to write, 2 14+ page papers, and about give one-two pagers. I took some No Doz, stayed up for 72 hours, wrote them all, and ended up with straight As. I can write a kick-ass paper in six hours and get an A because I pushed myself so hard when I was younger.

Of course, it also helps that I know the nest way for me to study. I mentioned having a photographic memory; when I have exams, I just re-write all my notes on paper that has some sort of design on it (like rainbow or cloud prints). I re-read them once, and I can recall facts and data by imagining it’s place in the pattern of the paper. It makes studying really easy.

15

You have to define “slacking off.” If it’s checking out entirely, then no. If it’s not doing your best, then yes.

I had great grades and excellent test scores in high school. I didn’t ever work hard, I didn’t need to. Most of my friends were in the same boat. (And I actually went to a very good high school - I lucked out in that it was in a school district that de-emphasized competition and had philosophical opposition to tracking students, but from what I’ve seen, as high schools go, very good academically.)

Smart students are not rewarded for hard work. If anything, they’re usually punished for it. I knew that by showing up, I could generally land a grade in the low to mid-90s, if I applied any effort at all, I’d get in the high 90s to over 100. Working to the best of my ability wouldn’t do any better than that. Why bother? (Based on experience, working hard would probably mean that I’d just be given more “practice work” to fill my time, which is a huge disincentive to going that extra mile.) Coasting was more than enough.

So, yes, I’d fail to do homework at home, and do math in english class, and then write the spanish essay during math class, and social studies during math. I’d be given weeks to write essays, do them the morning they were due (night before was too much to ask) and then have those read aloud as good examples of how to write an essay. I took calculated risks on whether or not homework would have an effect on my final grade - and often didn’t bother when I knew my test grades would more than cover it. I had a teacher “warn” me because I hadn’t actually done homework for a quarter (I’d been tutoring students, so I’d done their homework with them, and obviously seen and worked through the problems, I just never bothered to turn it in). At the end of my senior year, they handed out forms for the “good students” to give studying advice for future students. My best friend and I joked about what to write “When you are asked questions, answer correctly.” “If you have to, read the book, but that’s not always necessary.” We ended up making up good answers, but I’ll always love the guy who wrote “The night before the assignment or test, cram. Instant B+” because that’s really how it worked for us (except usually a much better grade than a B+).

Strangely, I liked learning (still do). Within the first week or two of class, I’d have read the entire textbook, and I would do extra reading to find out more. The majority of my extra-curriculars were academic. I loved finding out more, I just didn’t care for homework.

16

Yes and no. I get the work done, but it contains a lot of questions that I missed out because “I understood how to do it.” or “It looked tedious.”

The problem is that I’ve never got the connection that you should work if you want to do well… At A-level I got As in all my subjects and an S in both STEP papers without trying particularily hard (I had to do some work for chemistry and the STEP papers, but not that much).

This year I’m at uni, and I just got the 5th highest mark in my year of about 260 people. I’m one of the least hard-working people I know (there are a few people who work less, but most of them didn’t do terribly well).

I’ll second what Amarinth said - I too really love learning. I often go to extra courses (without being examined on them). The problem is that the questions set for work are usually routine going over what you’ve learned, and thus don’t require much thought. i.e. They’re boring.

17

My parents spent my whole childhood telling me I was the ‘brainy’ one and my brother was the ‘people-person’ one. It turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. My brother was the most popular kid at school, the town’s most friendly dealer, and always had heaps of parties to go to and girls to do. I was the one who was always reading.

I ended up rebelling (like all good teens do;) ) in a big way. Firstly against my parents rules (they treated us both very differently) while I kept my grades up, but then schoolwork too. It was the one thing they were proud of me for (I had horrible facial scarring as a child, and would never ‘make a good match’ in their eyes) so I refused to do it anymore. I was only just passing things and was threatened with being kicked out of my school, but I always put enough effort in to just scrape through. I look back and laugh at how the bookworm turned into the party-girl. It’s amazing I turned out as well as I did. :slight_smile:

When I moved out of home, and supported myself through university, I went back to studying hard, but it took quite some time to get back into a study routine. It was stupid, and I was only hurting myself, but I felt like I just wanted my parents to love me because of who I was, not because of the marks I could achieve. :shrug: water under the bridge now.

18

Did I slack off? In the 60’s? FUCKIN-A!!!

19

Define “slacking off”. I’m serious. Is slacking off just not working hard or is it not working hard ** and ** getting significantly lower grades than you are capable of ? I certainly didn’t work particularly hard in high school. I only did the homework that would either count towards my grade (the pointless type generally didn’t) or that I needed to do to understand the subject. I never studied once in four years.Still ,I graduated with a 3.8, taking every honors and AP class available.

It wasn’t uncommon for kids in my school to do little work and get good grades. It may have been uncommon for intelligent kids to do little work and get poor grades, but if they got poor grades, the rest of us wouldn’t have any reason to consider them “brilliant”

20

I didn’t study as much as others and still graduated with high honors. But I did got a C and some B’s due to slacking. I wouldn’t do the assignments the teachers wanted because I thought of them as an insult and a way to force students into doing projects the teachers wanted. My view is that the teachers could have made those projects optional, and still a large part of the class would have done them. I went to a very competitive high school, students did everything they could to get a better grade.

The only thing that hurted me a bit was/is knowing that the grades I got don’t reflect what I knew at that time about the subject. Unfortunately, that is something hard to explain for me in an admissions application. :frowning: