Amanda Smith

As big tests start coming up, most students check their grades a countless number of times. They want to do the best they possibly can to make a future for themselves and show people how smart they are. But does the grade actually prove a person’s intelligence? Yes of course every student should strive for the best grade, or the highest GPA but they should ALSO want to learn the knowledge. What if you just have a lazy work ethic, or your teachers don’t fit your learning needs. You’ll earn bad grades, you want to learn the content, you just can’t. Intelligence comes from every areas. For example, someone who is gifted in the musical area, can read music, and can play multiple instruments is musically intelligent. Another example is someone who is good with people. They can communicate effectively and gets along with people easily. This is socially smart.  These are just two of the many examples where smarts come from. People tend to judge someone based on their letter grade, but I say we should stop that and actually look into a person and see how they are.

Getting bad grades can affect a student tremendously. They might lose ALL interest in school because they don’t see a point. It also could affect their self esteem, they’ll think they’re stupid or won’t get anywhere in life because of their grades. Everyone has some sort of smarts in them, if it’s book smart, street smart, or people smart, it’s there. We just have to recognize it. For some school and learning some easy, and for others it’s really hard. But if you just push through it and try your hardest, you’ll hopefully be okay.

There are tons of successful, smart people in the world who hadn’t finished or even gone to college. Studies show that a nearly a third of the world’s wealthiest people don’t have their college degrees. Take for example, Larry Ellison. Dropped out of the University of Illinois twice, and never finished either times. He then moved on to find his skills in computers and technology. Until he started his own company, Oracle, and went on to earn billions of dollars. If that’s not success then I don’t know what is.  Another successful person is Russell Simmons, a self-made Hip Hop artist who never finished his time at City College of New York. Who also went on to make millions. Going to college and finishing of course will most likely make you earn significantly more, but it’s NOT impossible to make a great living if you strive for the best. Dedication and passion will help you go far, all of these people will say the same thing, nothing’s impossible if you really want it you just have to try and not give up.This doesn’t mean go drop out of school to become a rap star, school is very important, it’s just not for everyone. And that’s fine. This is how a person’s letter grade in school doesn’t define their intelligence.