I didn’t even know what a GPA was until I saw my friends mom pridefully taping her daughter’s report card to their fridge
While most kids were taking tests and pop quizzes, I was attending a Waldorf school learning how to knit, sew, and build goat houses.
All I wanted was to go to a big public high school. In my first month at Berkeley high, I realized I was at a disadvantage. At Waldorf, our English classes emphasized creative writing- at Berkeley, creative assignments were rarely even collected. Clearly they weren't crucial to the curriculum.
Switching to strictly analytically writing made me feel inadequate . I worried I would be ineligible for a four year college, so I figured out which assignments my teachers actually read, and which ones they only scanned. I spent time on ithem accordingly.
I had to let go of good habits, like being thorough, that I had learned from Waldorf. At Berkeley high, I felt pressure to memorize the materials simply to pass test.
I'm not siding with either style of learning, but I don’t think the two were meant to harmonize.