Moongewl wrote:
Generally, I've found that the ones with the highest grades tend not to be the smartest, but they figure out their teachers' systems and do their work based on that. I used to fill my worksheets with gibberish because I knew the teacher didn't read them; I wrote a paper praising every aspect of a book I hated because I knew she loved it; I speak up in classes where the teacher weights participation points very heavily. So often, hard work can be bypassed by figuring out what the teachers want and giving that to them. Between that and my natural test-taking ability(I am the master of multiple choice and matching), I can go entire semesters without studying.
The downside of this is, of course, that I don't learn much. After the class is over, the material leaves my brain. So I only work like that when it's a class that I have to take, and can't stand either the teacher or the subject. (That paper I mentioned was for a teacher who almost made me walk out of her classroom after she made some idiotic and rude statements.)
Yeah...critical thinking classes are a beast that way. My sister has written a lot of tripe for some of her required classes because she knows the teacher would agree with it and give her high marks. It's actually pretty sad because a lot of the time, her papers are just so badly written...all one-sided talk and opinions but very little real substance and insight to back them up (which is what she thinks she's being taught anyway). Not that she's a bad writer but these papers are practically a mockery of the material. The teacher thinks she's writing in a fit of passion when really she's making fun of all the material she's had to read on the topic. I've never seen her get less than an A on one of these papers. No one has asked more of her.
It's not fair. XD I got a B in one of my more critical thinking classes and I actually AGREED with the teacher. But she expected more from me, which makes me feel better actually since I'm sure she expected more from the people who handed her tripe.
But she'll work hard and study her butt off for more defined classes, like math. You can't BS a test like that.