I've never been much for going all in at school and aiming for the highest grade. Of course I had certain gymnasiums I wanted to get into after elementary school so I worked hard enough for my grades to cut it. In the gymnasium I worked quite hard as well, need the grades for university after all. That changed when I found a shortcut to the university called Högeskoleprovet, "The high school test" in English. This optional test is a large test consisting of maths, Swedish and English, which were three of my best subjects. The best thing about it wasn't the subjects however, it was that it was completely impossible to study for. You could learn the type of questions you would get from doing previous tests but not more than that. The test doesn't measure how good you are at reading a book and memorising facts, it measures how good you actually are at the subject.
I have always been frustrated by that you can get a good grade by just learning exactly what you are supposed to. I don't claim to know a better way of grading but it feels stupid when someone when someone gets a higher grade than me on a test only to know less about it just two weeks later. Momentary knowledge isn't really important knowledge in my opinion.
I got the grade 1.65 on Högskoleprovet. It is around top 5% of all who did the test and enough for studying journalism anywhere. All I really needed to do was to not fail any courses so I worked enough for that. My days pretty much consisted of school, some time at home and then going to my running training so I focused on the running and made sure school didn't end too bad.
I did however have a goal ever since I got my first grades, to get everything perfect on a test that you couldn't "just study" for. I came close to it many times in English, the closest being 109/110 on my second last test, but I didn't manage to ever nail it.
I kept trying in the university when the tests were "based on skill, not studies". That usually meant the tasks of writing articles and doing journalistic stuff and not the subjects where you have to learn the rules/law. Of course I studied quite hard for that as well, after all it is very useful for a journalist to know the laws about his work and that is what I'm going to be. Classes that weren't as related to the worklife as a journalist were a bit of a different story. Still, I never got it perfect. Highest grade? Yes. a perfect result? No.
My grades here in Amsterdam have varied a lot. The ones where I do solo work have been quite low as I'm just not enjoying what I'm studying that much. It's not that it's bad teachers or anything, not at all, I just didn't pick a subject that was perfect for me. And when work isn't that fine it doesn't go that well for me. When it comes to group work I have worked harder, then it isn't just my grade I'm responsible for. But there was one individual task that got me excited, last course I got a task to write a story about a day in 2027, describing how society had changed from now. You can read his story by clicking the link at the end of this blog post.
It wasn't the only work I had to do and I while I saw it as a more entertaining task than most I can't say I was euphoric from the start. I started writing something else one evening, it was supposed to be a short hypothesis and also a kind of future prediction, just 400 words or so. I struggled a bit with the start as it didn't feel like a good introduction to the hypothesis. After I while I realised why, I wasn't really writing a hypothesis, I was describing a day. Suddenly all my inspiration as a writer flowed. I completely forgot about time and sat there writing a long story for something like six hours, to me it felt like it had been one. The next day I checked it again for language and stuff to improve while also asking some people for opinions. Being in a flow and just writing means I will write well, it does however also mean that I get blind to my own mistakes so a check was really needed.
Well, I heard that one student had gotten the result and feedback in a mail so I checked my inbox on my phone and sure enough. I was very curious about the grade as I knew I had written a good story. I did however also know that I might have gone off the subject writing a one day diary of one person who lived in 2027. Or well, a diary of me living in 2027 more or less, I based the character on me but overexaggerated stuff. I was expecting a grade that was either really bad or really good but when I opened the document after downloading it to my phone I couldn't believe my eyes. I actually dropped my phone on the ground by accident from shock, thankfully it didn't crack.
Straight tens in all four criterias and 40/40. According to Google 10.0 is a grade that only 0.1% of all students get in a course and while I don't know if that's true I felt completely euphoric for many hours. I had been trying for ten years without success and this was probably my fourth last chance as I only have three handins left here before I'm done with my studies here, which are also the last studies that I have planned in my life. When I get back to Sweden in July I'm out on the work market. If I'm thinking of the "best moments" of my life this is certainly in the top five, at least currently. A friend asked me to make a happy blog post and I guess the next post might be about other things that cut my top five when it comes to moments in life. We'll see.
About grading
I guess some of you might be wondering how I think grading should work if not as it is today. I would like to see the questions you can study for and memorise being used as something that you have to get a certain percentage correct on to pass the course at all. Anything higher than passing should however be based purely on questions that you can't memorise in that way. Either requiring own conclusions and reasoning or other questions that a book can't teach you to literally answer.
In my opinion the amount of time and effort you spent studying shouldn't matter, only how good you are at the subject should. Just like in work really. You wont get hired for trying hard, you will get hired for performing well. You disagree with me? Feel free to tell me, what I am stating is my opinion and not an universal truth.
If you want to read the story that finally gave me a perfect result I made it a blog post a while ago, just click the link below.
http://leoliving.weebly.com/stuff-for-you-to-read/when-schoolwork-is-fun