How many times have you heard the question "what did you learn in school?" This goes for today, this month, this year and so on. And even though you are, for the most part, learning something in school, no one really wants to hear about solving quadratic equations or the history of Genghis Khan and the Mongolian Empire. You are technically learning these things, but there are much more essential lessons that you are learning in between the lines. Just because you graduate with a 4.0 does not mean you will go on to lead a successful life. Here are some vital lessons that you learn when you aren't so busy paying attention to content.
"This is not the end of the world."
So what you got a 42 on your 10th grade geometry test? I am sorry to break it to you, but in the context of the real world, that means virtually nothing. The more important lesson here is not how to properly prove that two triangles are congruent, but that not knowing the answer is not the be all end all. You can't just give up on life if you do bad on one test. It is literally nothing to stress about. In five years from now, even in one year from now, you will realize how irrelevant 95 percent of the stuff you were stressing out about is in the grand scheme of things.Knowing who the 6th president of the United States was (it was John Quincy Adams for the record) will not come in handy in life as much as learning to let things go will.
"No one cares what you did this weekend"
Sorry to break it to you, you are going to figure it out eventually, but nobody is interested in your crazy stories from Saturday night. Okay yeah, maybe you and your friends want to recap your weekends to each other, but that should be about it. Unless someone explicitly asks you to share the current happenings in your life, then it is probably best to just keep it to yourself. Blabbing on and on about all the "awesome" things you did or will do, won't make people like you. Your life is your life, keep it that way.
"Doing what you want to do is always going to be more important than doing what you think you need to do."
Yes, there are a lot of exceptions to this, like you want to take a nap but you really, really need to write that ten page English paper that is due tomorrow. But generally, doing things you want to do versus doing that you think you should will pay off in the long run. If you want to take a cooking class but you think you need to take 15 AP courses, then you are only cheating yourself. The only thing you need as a person, is to be happy. If you are doing something that literally makes you cringe just thinking about it, you should probably stop doing whatever it is.Of course, we all need to do things that we don't want to do, but being miserable is not just a generally accepted part of life. Go after what you want, I promise you will be better off.
"Life is allowed to be unfair and you are not entitled to anything."
Just because you studied for eight hours for you Biology test does not automatically entitled you to getting an A. Being the first person out to practice and the last one to leave does not entitle you to a spot on the starting line up. It is unfair and it sucks, but that is just the way life is. You can be the best person ever and always do the right thing and bad things can still happen to you. Screaming and crying about it won't right the wrongs the universe has thrown your way.
"Just because you got an A, does not mean you are smart."
Your ability to regurgitate information, does not make you intelligent. Being valedictorian is not a measure of intelligence. The expression "Grades are just a number" is entirely true. Anyone can get a 100 percent on a test. That requires absolutely zero intelligence. It is much more important to be able to understand and handle the world around you then it is for you to tell me every emperor in the Ming Dynasty in chronological order.
