We spend about 15% of our lives going to school to get an education that will help benefit us in the future. That is about 12-16 years, depending on if you go to college and for how long. But for a majority of this period of time, our intelligence is decided based on letter grades, which are averaged out into a GPA or a grade point average. As you go on, this GPA begins to feel like it defines who you are and can make you feel as if your intelligence is based solely on that number.
But in reality, you are so much more than your GPA.
Now, this is not to say that your GPA is not important because it is important to maintain a high GPA. But if you don’t have the highest GPA out of everyone, that does not mean you are stupid.
College is not easy by any means. You have to balance school, social life, make sure you get enough sleep, eat healthy, keep up with laundry, and some of us even have extracurricular activities or part-time jobs. It is not easy at all, and many of the classes we take are challenging and sometimes we are forced to take classes that are not in our area of expertise.
For example, I am a history education major. Going into college, I thought I would be taking all history and social science classes, but instead, I have had to take many classes that are out of my wheelhouse including biology, economics, math, etc. So say you had to take a class like that, that has nothing to do with your major and you did not do so well in it so it takes a toll on your GPA. This may bring your GPA down, but this does not mean you are stupid. You had to take this class, you tried your hardest and you did not get an A in the class and you should be proud of that. Because you worked hard in an area where you have almost no expertise about.
We have all heard at least once in our lifetime the famous quote by Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.
Not everybody learns the same way, and not everyone is going to be an expert in the same areas as someone else.
Some people are really good at math and science, other people are not, maybe they are good at other subjects like history, or English. So just because someone has a low GPA, does not make them stupid, because we truly do not know what that person may have gone through. For all we know, they could be super smart but were in the wrong classes. Just remember, no matter what your GPA is, it does not solely define you.
You are so much smarter than you know.
