Beat the Education System

Flaw is the most fundamental attribute of any manmade system. While some systems may work more effectively than others, they are all doomed to have inefficiencies, major or minor. The human education system, American or otherwise, is no exception. It is not organized by Divine Providence, and it cannot be expected to function without any imperfections. The key then, is to identify its weaknesses and to capitalize on them, just like a simple headshot in a video game.

Weakness number one: modern education is organized to give the masses too many choices. As ambitious individuals, we seek education to improve our understanding of life, its problems, and its solutions. However, we must resist the temptation to spread our commitments into too many fields. In the end, we will perform many missions, but we can never perform two missions in a truly simultaneous fashion. Our human brain is wired to focus on one thing at a time, so we must discipline ourselves to go after our one goal at a time.

This valley of indecision can only be crossed by researching the possibilities available in a field of study. For example, you might think you want to be an accountant until you actually take an Intermediate Accounting course, which has a 70% national fail rate. Someone in this situation could have avoided the calamity of a wasted semester by simply talking to professors and professionals in the accounting field ahead of time. If we're pursuing anything worthwhile, we have to work hard for it, but we don't have to hate our work. As long as we prepare and plan for what we're getting ourselves into, the workload is manageable and rewarding.

Now, there's always a day when we think, "What if I fail?" Failure is a state of constant inefficiency and inactivity, not a one-time occurrence. If you've ever taken that one class that was absolutely impossible to ace, then you were simply unaware of the proper techniques that should have been used to ace it. Notice, I said, "absolutely impossible," not "very difficult" because the most rewarding achievements in life are often the most difficult to reach. Occasionally, a class will take twenty hours of study per week to ace, but those are not common, and good studying habits will cut down on the time consumption. Remember, the purpose of education is to improve your life, not to use it up.

The key to beating the education system is to find every imaginable, legal, loophole. You must attend EVERY possible class, but you do not have to do everything the teacher's way. Some teachers may ask their students to read the whole textbook, which can be necessary to ace the class, but can also be unnecessary, depending on the intensity of the class. You only have to find the perfect equilibrium between your way and their way. You must do this by communicating with your teachers and with other students who are doing better than you.

For example, I took an honors course in Greek mythology during my junior year and quickly realized that I was not as smart as I thought. The level of detail required in the responses to ace the quizzes was simply above what I was accustomed to writing. After a couple bad grades, I asked my classmates what they were doing. They were reading online commentaries of the stories to get ideas about the themes of the characters to write the essays required on the quizzes and exams. Most of them weren't even reading the books! I quickly learned what types of answers would earn A's and B's on the exams and quizzes.

Using my example, we see that education is all about how quickly you can learn, understand, use, and present new knowledge. I didn't wait until the midterm to find out how to get my grades up because failure to correct a known problem will cause it to manifest again later as an F on the transcript. At the end of the day, success in school is simply giving teachers the answers they're looking for.


Article Source: Hudson T Sauls