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Does your grade in school reflect your success in career/life?

Grade = Career success?

  • Yes

  • No

Results are only viewable after voting.
T

TXHokie

Platinum Member
More for the 30+ crowd who's been working a while at least.

I'd say mine is close - B+ grade, B+ career/life.
 
B student, now I'm in the top 5% in salary for what I went to college for. Only the great ascend to better themselves everyday - physically, mentally, and financially.
 
Success is relative. There's a lot of incredibly bright people making national average pay or less doing research work that pays squat and survives only off of grants and a lot of self promoting.

Compare that to somebody that barely passed grades and could have went into trade schools or apprentice halls and then skilled tradesmen and can easily clear double what those research people are making annually.

Even in my own career of IT I could easily go out and double my take home pay by consulting. So I *could* do that, but I really don't want to. Does the fact that I *could* but don't make me less successful?
 
We Americans love the stories where the rag-tag misfit underdogs win with instinct, guts and a montage.

That does happen, but usually it's the ones who put in the steady training who win.
 
DaveSimmons said:
We Americans love the stories where the rag-tag misfit underdogs win with instinct, guts and a montage.

That does happen, but usually it's the ones who put in the steady training who win.
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Pretty much.

School is a "system" that you can navigate just like a job/career/bureaucracy. There's a list of idealized, vague, contradictory expectations out there that nobody meets, and then there's what you actually have to do to get what you want and keep the higher-ups happy.

A good student figures out study habits that work best for them, figures out what kinds of question to ask and how to ask them, to make sure that they are exactly sure what they need to do to get the grade they want with the minimum amount of effort. Then they go do it. Hopefully, they will find something interesting enough during the process to learn more about it on their own, but that's incidental to the "get good grades" goal.

At work, it's similar: "Okay, all that marketing speak is great, I want to make a website that brings venture capitalists to spontaneous orgasm too. But what's the ask here? Do you have a requirements document? What are our budget, deliverables, deadlines, and how many people do I get to do this?"

Some people figure out how to do that in school, and get good grades. Some people don't figure it out until later, so they have good careers in spite of their grades, but they'll always be a little behind the first group.

And, yeah, some people never figure it out.*

*Then again, some days, 36 hours a week of smoking pot in between doing oil changes doesn't seem like such a bad life.
 
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Having sex with the boss can get one promoted 3 times in 18 months. Plus you get to keep 100% of the department's bonuses. She earned it all! Just saying.
 
TheGardener said:
Having sex with the boss can get one promoted 3 times in 18 months. Plus you get to keep 100% of the department's bonuses. She earned it all! Just saying.
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Pretty sure "Always have sex with the boss" is one of the Ferengi rules of acquisition.

Right after "never have sex with the boss's daughter."
 
How do you define success? Dollar? Or some other metric? Dollar does not necessary equal success.
 
Based on my grade I should be a homeless bum.

3 careers and doing quite well currently.

HOWEVER, do NOT let this effect your mind set and importance of getting good grades. You should always strive and push yourself to get the best grade you can possibly get.
 
My career success is probably better than my grades. I didn't try very hard in school. I think there's probably more correlation with intelligence than with grades.
 
ponyo said:
How do you define success? Dollar? Or some other metric? Dollar does not necessary equal success.
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Maybe I should've reword it better but the poal is meant to be subjective on your own measure of success. It's not always about money or position that defines a successful career for each person. Grade yourself.
 
Did very poor in school with ~2.5 GPA at graduation (mostly attributed to drinking too much and working too much).

Had offer when I graduated making around the middle of expected with an engineering degree (and certainly higher than some peers). After four years with the same company i'm up 45% on salary.

I'd say that school ethic had no correlation with my success in career, but my work work ethic did (been working since 15, full time job throughout college)
 
I think I'm performing below my capacity, but I kinda like it here. Yeah I could probably go out and earn $1m/yr, just don't really care to do it as that would just give me more work and more to worry about.

I coasted through school so I guess it's pretty close to what I do now lol.
 
Are you talking high school grades here?
I feel like I've done pretty well for myself. I had like a 3.2 or something average? I don't know. Didn't care much then, even.
 
TheGardener said:
Having sex with the boss can get one promoted 3 times in 18 months. Plus you get to keep 100% of the department's bonuses. She earned it all! Just saying.
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I don't think any of my bosses like the D, so this isn't really a viable strategy 🙁
Vdubchaos said:
Based on my grade I should be a homeless bum.

3 careers and doing quite well currently.

HOWEVER, do NOT let this effect your mind set and importance of getting good grades. You should always strive and push yourself to get the best grade you can possibly get.
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Meh. The difference between whatever I got and a 4.0 was all homework, seemed pretty pointless since I was learning without the busy work. I'm actually probably a more successful and well-rounded person because I spent time doing other things when I "should" have been doing homework.
 
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Dropped out of high school, been working software development for 15 years and make more than others at my level that have MBAs.
 
Graduated with a 2.9 GPA from tech school with an Associate's degree. Poor grades were a mixture of being lazy and school docking overall class grade for attendance when I had multiple family deaths and life events occur.

My career has gone far, far better than I could have ever expected or dreamed.
 
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