We might have always come across this statement that ‘ good marks makes your intelligent and smart’ But is that completely true? Many parents pressurize their children to study harder to get good grades and when they BAD GRADES they pressurize them even more. But in real life, it’s not any number that will define your success but your skills and interests will define your success. How many times have you heard about kids who weren’t good at academics but now have earned themselves a great post in a company or are renowned personalities?
We at MADAM360 have curated a few psychological factors and tried to answer on why bad kids are more successful than the A grade students.
1. They don’t care about grades.
For many people good grades are a sign of success. Good grades marks the person to be intelligent and denotes achievement. However, marks aren’t the prerequisite thing that defines a person to be successful or not. It’s the person’s skills and talent in a particular area that makes person the person achieve great avenues. Average students or students with low grades don’t look for appreciation from people and don’t need grades to prove their success. While pursuing their goal, the look for the satisfaction achieved by the work they have done rather than the grades they achieved.
2. They don’t try to impress anyone
For A grade students, it is often very important to look good in the teacher’s eyes. They try to be active in class and try to get the teacher’s attention to be liked and appreciated. However, bad students don’t look for appreciation and impressing the teacher’s is the last thing they would ever want. However they respect teachers, they don’t like to do things they aren’t interested in.
Very often, such behavioral patterns are reflected in professional lives as well. They constantly try to impress their boss and work for something they don’t like just to look good in the boss’s eyes.
3. They don’t do everything on their own.
Many good students stick to the rule, “If you want something done, do it yourself.” This is because thye believe they can control everything on their own and don’t require a helping hand. They believe that other person’s interference will spoil their work. On the contrary, average students or bad students often use other people to get their work done.
In adult life, people also stick to these patterns: while some exhaust themselves by doing far more than their capacities permit, while others, delegate their tasks to different people and make their work easy going, organised and stress free.
4. They are okay with being imperfect.
Some people are driven by doing things perfectly or not doing them at all. Living like this can be extremely difficult as it may not be possible to be successful in every area. They devote their time and energy into making things perfect, this can be daunting sometimes as the person is constantly working hard to make it perfect rather than making it enjoyable. In this process, they never take a leap of faith and do something they actually like.
Here is an example: “I was going to an art school and there was a boy there. He was pretty good, but he didn’t do a very good job in high school. But that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the best graffiti artists in the country. Now, he works with people from all over the world. And if he was a perfectionist who really cared about his grades, his talent would never have been discovered.”
In the process of seeking ‘perfection’ in our lives we often forget that enjoying that work is also important. It’s okay to be imperfect and to accept it rather that working on something just because you want the perfect outcome. Remember, the process matters too.
5. They don’t waste time on things they dislike.
Bad students never make themselves do things they aren’t interested in, they don’t believe in putting extra efforts into things which they find pointless. Instead they focus on themselves and devote their time and energy into something where their interest lies. On the contrary, a A grade student will do everything irrespective of their interest just to be a good and ‘perfect’ student.
Here is a story that demonstrates the logic bad students have. It was told by the owner of a big company: “I went to 7 different schools and I was always a bad student. I didn’t want to study the subjects I wasn’t interested in. At some point, I just stopped going to math classes. At the same time, I was reading a lot of stuff I was interested in. Also, I was already using the internet when none of my teachers even knew what it was. I spent all my free time online, playing on the computer, reading, or walking outside.
6. They have other things to do outside of homework.
There’s life other than your school work and homework, that good students often forego in being the ‘perfect’ individuals. However, the average or bad students spend most of their free time in dancing, singing, sports, reading, art etc. They focus on self and give importance to their interests rather than academics.
According to psychologists, A-students often have a hard time relaxing because they are always tense not only mentally, but also psychologically. Unfortunately, this problem remains with them even when they grow up: they often feel anxious because they are afraid of not living up to other people’s expectations.
7. They are okay not only with successes, but also with failures.
We all know that dealing for failures for some can be a tough time. They treat failures as huge mistakes and often forget that ‘failures are actually stepping stones to success. For students , they are used to bad grades and failures and don’t consider it to be the end of the world. In real life, they have better coping mechanism for dealing with stress and to bounce back way easier after making mistakes.
Steve Jobs the one who introduced ‘apple’ and ‘pixar’ to us was fired from the Macintosh group, but the man didn’t give up. He was fired from the company only to come up with a huge project that we know today as ‘Pixar’. He didn’t mark being rejected and betrayed by his own company as his ‘failure’ or ‘end of the world’ but instead came up with one more huge company.
8. They are Risk-takers.
They believe in dreaming with their eyes open, live according to their will and not according to what their parents want from them.
If at any point they want to quit their job, drop out from college, or move to another country to live up to their dreams, they will. They listen to themselves and believe in themselves.
Mark Zuckerberg- a well known entrepreneur ,dropped out of sophomore year to pursue what was now called as Facebook. If Zuckerberg wouldn’t have taken the risk to leave studies, maybe we wouldn’t have known Mark Zuckerberg as an entrepreneur and the owner of Facebook, today.