Straight A’s are a sought after achievement that is a parallel to perfection, but does this so called perfection really mean that straight A’s are always a good thing?

In our day and age it seems as though anything less then absolute perfection isn’t even worth shooting for. With many colleges across the country and internationally as well raising their average admission grades to 3.9 or higher there is much more pressure behind meeting excellence. However even those who are able to reach the so called “perfection” there is still feelings of emptiness and failure. The thought of a low grade on a test or a bad mark on some homework becomes obsessive making whoever is looking for the perfection begin to feel like they are simply a number or a letter and that is all that matters.

Straight A’s are not always a good thing and if you have straight A’s it does not always mean that you are the smartest person out there. Someone with a B- could be equivalently as intelligent but will never know because society has told them they are a failure for not getting an A.

The Average GPA in the United States of America in 2019 was a 3.0, meaning that on average 4.0’s were very few and far between. This being said, it shows that you don’t need a perfect report card in order to becoming something you want to be or get your dream job. If the average grade point for American students is a full point below perfection then why is it so heavily stressed to achieve nothing but perfection?

For those who are able to achieve the coveted 4.0 gpa there is still many issues in personal life as well as academic life. Pressure from themselves as well as others to obtain perfection can be weighing and cause for a loss of identity, if all they are ever told is how they need good marks to maintain their personality all of the sudden you have a robot focused more on standardized testing then growing relationship with their friends and family.

Burnout of course is bound to happen. With all of the pressure, at some point it all becomes to much and the towel must be thrown in. At this point it feels as though nothing is truly worth it if everything constantly is causing to much stress to continue on doing.

Some may say that getting good grades is the single most important part of high school as well as college for good grades do often translate to a good job. However ones life worth is not based off of tests and homework, but more so how they are able to use critical skills and apply them to life, or use their emotional knowledge to allow them to succeed. Not everyone is meant to do the same job and follow the same path in life for if all we had in life was bank tellers the world would simply not go round. Because of these reasons we need people of all skill level and all different talents to be prominent in the work world. Meaning that not everyone in the world needs to achieve a perfect 4.0 in order to be considered a “success”.

Straight A’s are not always a positive thing and simply do not mean that someone is better then another person because of their grade. No ones future success should be based off of letters and numbers, for perfection is not a necessity in order to have a positive future in life. You wouldn’t ask a bear to swim in a lake and then determine how smart it is based on that, and you wouldn’t judge a sharks physical abilities by asking it to climb a tree. The same goes for people, everyone is needed to make the world successful and that means there is many jobs that need to be filled and that you don’t need to be absolutely perfect to end up where you are meant to be.