“When Students cheat on exams it’s because our School System values grades more than Students value learning.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
During my entire education lifespan I have been a brilliant student, always performing well, getting highest grades and not to mention I was the modal student for all teachers. I have many awards and certificates to back-up my meritorious performance. 
Today if I look back and think for a moment, are those awards helping me in anyway? Did those grades really help me learn the reality of how to be successful in life? In fact, now that I think of, I do not even remember a lot of things I learned in schools and colleges for which I scored A grades that time. It’s not that I’m dumb, but what seemed important at that time is no longer relevant. I was then focused on trying to cram the words into my brains so that I would just write that down on my papers without really trying to picture how it would fit in the reality. My goal was just one, get highest marks.
So, were my parents really stupid enough to send me to school, then to college and on top of it to post-grad college too? Did they not know that these educational institutes are not going to teach me anything and that these degrees and awards will not matter in the struggle of real life success?
It was neither my parents fault, nor mine. It is how our education system is built today, you get high grades and you are suddenly a genius, you fail and you become a matter of shame. I have seen parents boasting their kid’s grades all the time and mentioning how brilliant he/she is. But just coz your kid is not performing well in school, does not mean he is stupid. This is one lesson which probably all famous scientists and businessmen learned early and hence dropped out of schools and colleges to learn something which was more meaningful.
I was not able to learn this lesson before and hence finished my studies. But what I did learn was that I was not cut out for the typical jobs which are defined by default once you finish your degree. For e.g. if you are a software engineer, you will end up with a job of a coder/programmer. Or if you are a MBBS, you will for sure work in some hospital as a doctor.
I never liked to be part of the cattle herd, and probably that is why I feel that education from books has not helped me much really. I wouldn’t say that going to school or college was wrong, in fact it was one of the best times of my life. I got to live other real life experiences there which probably are helping me a lot today.
But this is just me, right, what does everybody else think? So, I decided to evaluate what my friends and classmates think about their education. They gave me 4 responses of why they chose to study:
- Get a “real” job
- Learn and enhance knowledge
- Get big pay check, doesn’t matter what kind of Job I do
- To add another degree to my resume
Point #2 still makes sense, but rest of them are simply crap. But sadly, this is what is happening in reality. Almost 95% of my classmates from my graduate school were not interested in what they were studying, they just wanted to finish the course and get a job as an IT consultant which they did not even liked, but which paid big salaries.
Today, I can say that I’m a graduate, but I feel saddened to think that I wasted so many years of my life studying things which I no longer remember now.
