What‘s the definition of a smart student?

If you were asked this, what would your answer be?

When I was a student, smart and cool students were defined as students whose average test scores were 90 and above, rarely or never even remedial, students with perfect assignments scores, and of course, the class champions. This definition arises from the general view of society, family, school environment, and friends, which then each student makes as a definition.

And I was the one who believed this too.

At that time, I used to think that grades were the most important. Ahead of the exam, I always ‘do preparing my best’ to make sure that I am well prepared for the exam. I studied at night until I lost track of time, I brushed out all subjects: until the book was scratched!

I could not even close my eyes before I thought that all is good.

Indeed, after spending every night studying very seriously, the results were certainly satisfactory. There is tremendous satisfaction when you see the papers with the numbers: 90, 92, 95, even 100 lined up on the table. At that time, I felt cool. Other friends felt the same. They said it was amazing.

Up to grade 12, I was still the very ambitious one.

I remained an ambitious child who always made sure that my grades in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Religion, Language, and other disciplines were good. Nothing can be remedial. I can be overthinking when there were disappointing grades. I could lose my appetite when I got a remedial result.

I hoped at the time that those high grades would bring me to college. I was hoping that those 96 and 97 report grades would get me a free college seat.

But it didn’t.

I was rejected by the national university selection (SNMPTN). The value that I had designed beautifully and diligently, was not enough to break into one of the three I chose. At that time, I felt very embarrassed because I couldn’t graduate from the SNMPTN path with my report that was quite ‘beautiful’.

Long story short, I went to college, I graduated from the test (SBMPTN) path majoring in Mathematics. In semesters one and two, it was still okay to balance redox reactions, looked for the size of the normal style, still remembered a little with historical dates. If you asked, I might be good at answering.

In the next semester, it begins to be dispersed with Advanced Calculus, Multivariable Calculus, Matlab, Statistics, and others.

Moving up to a higher semester, I met the Learning Media Development, Microteaching, and Scriptsweet (read by ordinary people: thesis).

The question is, do I still remember the general formula acid + base = salt that I used to master very proficiently until I was very familiar with the oxidation numbers?

The answer is of course no.

Did my good scores mean at all?

The answer is no.

So far, it doesn’t mean that being an expert in all fields is bad. On the contrary, I think all teachers will be proud to see their students master the field they teach. This means that students pay attention to what the teacher explains well, students study at home and repeat their lessons until they are proficient.

The point of this article is not going there.

What I want to share are, let me summarize, these few points.

1. After becoming a student alumnus, I believe that when we are students, every error is ok. We could have remedial value, it’s not a disgraceful thing, embarrassing to make us punish ourselves, but it also does not mean that we will stop without any regret. Remedial after trying, it’s ok. Try again. In school, we can learn a lot and remedial grades don’t mean that we are stupid. (Of course, this won’t be right if you don’t study before, it’s far from what I meant).

2. In years past, a smart student was defined as a student whose test scores were 90 and above. But, I think: One doesn’t have to excel in all fields to be smart or cool. We all learn from mistakes. If I was asked what was the value of 95 and 96 in my report card meant, I could not even be sure of the meaning. But if you asked what it means to study, the process, of course, there will be many aspects that I can use to answer it.

3. Being an expert in all fields is cool, but you don’t have to be an expert just to get other people’s recognition, only for the grades listed on the report card, especially for temporary test scores. I mean: you may be proficient now, but suddenly forget about it the next day. If you like many fields, choose them because you like them. Not just for the sake of confession. The confession is temporary. It’s a shame if you fight only for winning the recognition of others, I mean, they won’t even remember it all the time.

A student can be cool in Mathematics, but weak in Language. He would spend hours writing a paragraph on an Indonesian assignment but could finish 40 questions in 2 hours. Understand our potential, do our best, but focus on the motivation of the efforts made.

Before ending this writing, I just want to make sure that you read this from my point of view as a human who always learns until the time I write the article. You could choose to agree or not. I may discuss the matter again from another aspect, this is still being continued! Thanks for reading.