Better for society: good grades. Means you might be productive.
Better for you: smart. You will be happier, or at least know the reasons you are unhappy.
Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
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Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#12In addition to execution, earning good grades require particular kinds of intelligence - among them recognizing the bounds of systems and social relationships. Being smart isn't an achievement and hard work won't get you there. It is merely potential and without execution, it eventually becomes "wasted potential."
The demographic of Mensa is "underachievers".
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#13Better for society: good grades. Means you might be productive. Better for you: smart. You will be happier, or at least know the reasons you are unhappy.
I appreciate your use of "might" in the first statement.
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#14The most worthless, stupid people I know got straight A's their entire life.
Smart people can get A's too, and tend to find it even easier than stupid people do.
Smart people can also find grade school to not provide enough challenge and complexity and thus they tend to find other ways to occupy their time. In college the scene changes because you pursue what you want and most professors recognize true interest over mere putting in time to complete a class for credit. The moment you find a professor who recognizes your interests, keep a close relation because they can help you in more ways then you can imagine.
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#15[deleted]
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#16Well, at least I know the meaning of proactive, so personally I think smart. You can't be proactive to solve the unknown. Also the opposite of reactive is not proactive. Apart from being pedantic about the word proactive, I also totally disagree with the premise of the article, some of the most inventive problem solvers I've met are lazy as hell.
Proactivity does not make one busy by definition. I think it means, when one is challenged by an interesting problem, he/she does everything and more to tackle it. A side effect may be that proactive people generally care far less about boring problems, thus making them appear lazy.
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#17This is great fodder for thinking about how I'm going to explain my average-ish GPA on law school apps.
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#18I read the thing and didn't understand the word of what the author is trying to say. Maybe I am fumbled up in vocabulary or something. Anyways, if any random person were to ask this to me I would definitely go for "good grades if you want to lead a happy peaceful life and smarts if you want to live like hell but have a shot at being happy as heaven".
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#19The most worthless, stupid people I know got straight A's their entire life.
While there are some stupid people who get straight A's, there are probably a lot more that are really bright. From pg to Zuck to Gates to Feynman to Knuth (I actually don't know their GPAs, but their acceptances to the top schools means they probably had good grades).
I know what I might say will be unpopular, but what I've seen most of my life is subpar mediocre students will argue that grades mean nothing. They argue they could get straight A's if they cared to, but it's too boring, or whatever. And not surprisingly none of the ones that I grew up with are now what one would call a "professional success". None have started companies or done anything that would published in even a trade magazine/journal. In fact, of all the people I knew in high school who have been chronically unemployed, they all fit in this bucket.
With that said, they may have all figured out that things like jobs and startups are a fool's racket. And being able to dedicate more time to just having fun, whether it is sleeping around, XBox, being in a band, or playing basketball.
Re: Is it Better to be Smart, or Get Good Grades?
#20I think employers reliance on grade and qualifications are more about eliminating the really bad hires than finding the best hires. It is good in a way though, just like having a body of work to show, a hiring process that comes down to how you solve a few problems in an interview can be really hit and miss and is hard to show your full abilities.
If people meet the minimum, then it's a success. If they're substantially above average, that's a nice bonus, but not enough to justify risking a bad hire.