This I Believe - You Do Not Need to Be Perfect

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This I Believe -- That You Do Not Need to Perfect

Straight A's. 4.0 + GPA. A full-ride to college on a scholarship. A 36 on the ACT. A 2400 on the SAT (including writing). I could go on but I won't. What do these all have in common?

These are perfect scores. People are judged over these scores. People spend thousands of dollars to get the high ACT and SAT scores and the high GPA. What does that mean?

That means that people did the best that they could possibly do. They are in the 99th percentile they are the National Merit Scholars, they are the ones who go to an Ivy League school and end up becoming the next CEOs of major corporations like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, heck, they could even end up as the next President of the United States. The point is, is that they were able to use their grades as a huge and potentially lucrative stepping stone for getting into those companies.  

What happens if I am not in the 99^th percentile? What happens if I did not get the highest score on the ACT or SAT or do not have 4.0 GPA? Well what society wants you to think about yourself is that you my friend are STUPID. Yep, you heard that right, you are stupid. How does that make you feel? Sad? Hurt? Rejected? A failure? Well you should, since society wants you to feel that way.

This I Believe—you do not need to be perfect. It is nice to do well so that people recognize you as being a National Merit Scholar or someone who got a perfect score on the ACT or SAT. Congrats to them. But in the long-term, these scores will not necessarily matter. Sure, in getting into colleges and into graduate programs, these scores will matter but they will not matter forever.

 This I Believe—you do not need to be perfect. I used to be the individual that had the 4.0 GPA, the high scores on the standardized tests the one that people would always whisper behind my back “Look at him, he’s so smart!” I felt that I was on top of the world because people were realizing how well I was doing in school and I lived for that realization, that attention. This was even going on for freshmen year at U of D.

This I Believe—you do not need to be perfect. This sense of being on the top of the class continued all the way up to sophomore year when I took Chinese II. Now Chinese in general wasn’t that hard as a class and to this day I do not necessarily understand why I ended up doing so poorly but all I know was that when I was mid-way through Sophomore year, I vividly remember seeing a ‘D’ for my current grade in Chinese II. I was no longer perfect, I was no longer at the top of the grade, I was now STUPID. I ended up pulling the grade up and am now doing great in school but I learned an important lesson. It is impossible to be perfect, eventually you will fail, and I just happened to fail at that particular time of that particular year. I was able to pick myself up and I am now doing very well.

This I Believe—you do not need to be perfect. There will be many different times in your life where you will have the opportunity to do well, something will hamper you or mess you up, and you will end up failing. I ask of you one thing, do not give up. Giving up is the absolute WORST thing to do. Keep trying because eventually you will succeed. I leave you with this quote from George R. R. Martin in A Dance with Dragons, I understand that the quote pertains to reading, but it can also be applied to life in general, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” Think of each individual book as an opportunity, through trying again you will be able to be more successful and become better at what you are doing.

  This I Believe.