Books (students) really can't be judged by their covers

Parents Forum
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<p>I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve read several of the anti-AA, anti-athletic recruiting, etc threads.</p>

<p>There is a girl in my Chem II class this semester who I’ve talked to sometimes during breaks. I am ashamed to say that I made some assumptions about her that turned out to be wrong. She always talked to other classmates about how boring the class was and would talk about this party or that concert…well, I hope you get the idea. She reminded me of the kids that I knew in high school who smoked pot at the the bus stop behind the school–somewhat bright but really didn’t care. Please don’t misunderstand me, these kids were actually my friends in highschool because they were more accepting of me than most of the other students and they didn’t mind that I didn’t do drugs. I just never saw any of these kids as “competition”.</p>

<p>I think that most people would “just know” that this girl’s stats were very average or even below average. She couldn’t possibly be a very competitive student.</p>

<p>Wrong.</p>

<p>I found out about a month ago that she had scored higher on one of our exams than I had. Irrationally that made me feel like an idiot (I was feeling very self conscious during this time period). I spoke with my professor to try to find out why I “didn’t seem to be getting this”. She was stunned and told me that she didn’t know what I was talking about because I’m easily one of her top five students. I told her that I’d found out that ___ was doing very well in the class and she always seemed so bored so obviously it was easy for her. Nope. Come to find out, she is indeed doing very well in school, but she isn’t nearly as “bored” as she makes herself appear. She spends hours studying and uses every resource available. She wants to be a vet–and now I realize that this is really important to her. Go figure.</p>

<p>Sorry about this long post. I just wanted to point out that some of the “slackers” who seem to miraculously get into the highly competitive schools may actually just be very good at appearing to be slackers so they can “look cool”. That is definitely the case with this girl and I learned my lesson.</p>

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<p>Demingy:</p>

<p>Good post. The girl fits the profile of the duck who appears to glide effortlessly on the surface but is actually paddling furiously below the water. At Oxbridge, there used to be a culture of appearing not to ever studying (I don’t know whether that is still true). It was uncool to be seen to strive. </p>

<p>Congrats also on doing well in class!</p>

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<p>Thanks Marite. </p>

<p>I am also ashamed to admit that while I was being judgemental, the situation was actually in reverse. Because of my crazy workload (at work) I was the one who wasn’t working nearly as hard as I could-while still doing very well-and she was the one who was working as hard as she could-while also doing very well. It’s funny because no one saw that I was “slacking off” (a slight exaggeration) just like I didn’t see that she wasn’t. ;)</p>

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<p>Demingy:</p>

<p>Don’t be hard on yourself. Being able to do well while holding a job is a major achievement in itself.</p>