Note: If you are a student who spends his or her days in school doing nothing but messing around with friends, having no plans for how you would like to proceed with your life after high school, then this article is not for you. This article is for the student who spends his/her nights doing AP homework instead of going out with friends; the student who stays up late into the night working on a project they just have to get a 100% on.

For those of you who can relate to what I just described, I would like for you to take a moment to think about one question. Why do you place so much importance on getting good grades? Now I know what you’re thinking- to get into a good college, have a successful career, have a fulfilling future, etc.- duh. But think deeper than that. Why have you always worked towards getting good grades? What moves that wheel inside of you that keeps on spinning, with only one purpose- to obtain a high grade point average (GPA)? The simple answer? It’s all you’ve ever been taught.

I’ll ask another question. Why do you go to school? The obvious answer is to get an education. This should be the correct answer, but the reality is that our only focus has become getting good grades. Now let me be clear. My goal for writing this is not to suggest that good grades are irrelevant. Instead, I would like to question this “golden rule” that we follow blindly, or rather, try to help you understand why it is that you do what you do. But where did this driving idea come from? Simply put, from our teachers. Since the beginning of our schooling, students have been taught the same thing by our teachers. Get good grades, get a good education. Somewhere along the lines, however, this notion became blurred. The focus shifted away from the education aspect of the concept, and we got stuck on getting good grades.

Every day in class, similar thoughts run through high schoolers’ heads. “Is this going to be on the test?” “Which FLVS class is the easiest one for me to take?” We want the answers to these questions because they will lead to us getting good grades, which colleges like to see. But what about education? What ever happened to learning something not because it might be on a test, which we might get a good grade on, which might lead to us getting a good grade in a class, but instead learning something purely for the sake of gaining knowledge?

Now I know what you may be thinking. “If knowledge is more important than grades, then why are teachers constantly emphasizing how important my AP exams are?” Well, the answer is, because they are important. You need to be able to show in some way that you’re different from the students that don’t try in school, that you actually care about your education, and that you want to progress the human race’s understanding of why things are the way they are. This is not the answer that your teachers might give you. The answer they will give you is- if you don’t pass the AP Exam, you won’t get college credit, which brings me to my next point.

Your teachers might not be able to explain why knowledge is so important for its own sake because they’ve fooled themselves, as well. This is due to the fact that they have emphasized the importance of grades over education to an extent that they have come to believe it themselves.

“So what now?” you ask. “Should I yell at my teachers about how wrong they are?” “Should I stop caring about school altogether?”

Of course you shouldn’t. What you should do, however, is shift your focus once more. Grades are not the most important thing. Knowledge is. Go to school each and every day with a mindset of, “I’m going to work hard today so that I can gain more knowledge, so that I can use that knowledge to actually contribute to society.”

You’re now wondering about grades. Given that teachers care so much about grades, it may seem that they should be prioritized. On some level, this is true. As long as you focus on gaining knowledge, the grades will come with it. You have the power to break the circularity of a flawed mindset. Forget, “Getting a good GPA is an indicator of a good education,” and think, “Getting a good education will grant me a good GPA”. Once you manage to achieve this, anything is possible.