A few days ago, I stormed out of my Organic Chemistry class frustrated, a bit angry and really, really confused. Needing to cool off, I rushed down all three flights of stairs in Gelb and escaped into the icy November chill. You see, in Organic Chemistry we had a pop test, and one mechanism completely stumped me. Despite all of my efforts to decipher this wild, seven-membered carbon ring, I wasn’t able to see the solution. As it turned out, Mr. Maqubela told us the next day that no one in our class, or in the past ten years, has been able to solve that problem. But don’t get me wrong. I didn’t step outside because I couldn’t crack one of Mr. Maq’s mechanisms. The reason I was mad was that I heard lots of my classmates express the sentiment that it doesn’t really matter if one gets a problem like that wrong, because if everyone got it wrong, it won’t affect grades. The curve will just be 10 points higher. But that way of looking at things bothers me. We just took a test that was mind-numbingly difficult but also somewhat exhilarating, and the first thing many students thought about was their test scores? Are grades the only motivation for doing well in school? I see a lot of negativity in a statement like that: rooting for one’s classmates to fail so that one won’t look as bad is wrong. What really frustrates me is that I get the sense that most people at Andover view academics this way. It seems many students’ only reason for studying is to get a 6.0, and they forget that the purpose of school is actually becoming a more educated individual, not memorizing a bunch of facts and building an impressive resume. The people who study just to get a good grade on a test are missing out on the whole point of coming to a school like Andover. Creativity and curiosity are infinitely more important than your GPA. Now, I know that there are honest, good-hearted students who truly aren’t motivated by class rank, and I applaud them; but I don’t think they’re the majority of the student body. With finals week shortly after Thanksgiving break, it is important to realize that school shouldn’t be a competition. We don’t want to live in an environment where everyone wants to do better than everyone else. In the short run it isn’t healthy, and in the long run it won’t result in true education. Instead of learning for the sole purpose of achieving a higher score than another student, wouldn’t it be better to strive for a complete understanding of the material and let the scores work themselves out? Your grades are all relative. Just because you scored the highest in the class doesn’t guarantee that you’re incredibly intelligent. If your only goal is to be the best in the class, you won’t be motivated to push yourself to that next level of excellence, beyond your teacher’s expectations. If you’re at the bottom of the class, you’ll resent your peers when they solve a problem that you couldn’t. If you’re at the top, you’ll be less willing to teach your classmates for fear that they might one day do better than you. The academic support centers would be more helpful and the conversations that take place in the study sessions around campus would be more fruitful if kids weren’t convinced that they had to ace every test. The smartest person in the room isn’t always the person with the highest grade. Even though many students are not blatantly competitive about grades, way too many talk about how smart other people are. We need to stop gossiping about how it is unfair that John can ace a physics test without studying. An we need to stop marveling when Jane writes a history paper in 20 minutes. The perpetual chatter about the abilities of your classmates creates the kind of competitive atmosphere that we should strive to avoid. We must focus on our own performance, not the performance of others. Grades and test scores shouldn’t motivate us. When we get so obsessed with keeping a 93 percent average or a 6.0 GPA, we lose the drive to do independent research on an interesting topic that a teacher mentioned in class or to take a risk on an English essay and experiment with a new writing style. We study with the intention of mastering the test, not mastering the topics. In doing so, we lose our creativity and our ingenuity. We forget that there is life after classes at Andover. Michael Frasco is a new Senior from Fairfield, Conneticut.
