Grades

[Anonymous]

I have 3 in Private and I feel like maybe I'm really weird. I don't care about college to the degree that I just want my kids to be happy (not completely stressed out about grades) and to find a subject they really enjoy learning and hopefully want to explore long term. In fact, I'm totally fine with my kid doing a trade. My priority is for them is to be able to take care of themselves. Education in private school to me is a means of offering them the best opportunity to find their own path of independence.

I wish for my kids to find something that they have a great deal of passion for v. doing something because it's "normal" and "stable." In my younger days I was highly ambitious and very oriented for "success" but now with kids and older, I feel like the only thing that's meaningful is the satisfaction of your career - in the sense that you can balance financial interests with daily responsibilities. An unbalance in either area = unhappiness. I also work in an industry where I see a lot of not so smart top school grads but also very successful execs who didn't have a top tier education, so I think that skews my perspective. I see a lot of success being based on more than where you went to college basically The most interesting people to me who often succeed tangibly outrageously are those who didn't follow every rule and conform.

I mean education matters but unless you are after going to a certain college, education and specific grades/test scores are 2 very different things. I have expectations that they study and prep for classes the right way - the process of following a recipe for academic success is a priority for me because this is about being successful in a task and in life - but in terms of needing to get into an Ivy or a specific kind of school - WTF? I have faith in them that they will thrive no matter what. I'm happy if they get into Harvard but I'm not disappointed if they don't, as long as they put in the right effort to do as well as they can academically. I just don't get why college is supposed to be a guarantee of "success" or money? Help me understand why people go nuts over this topic? I think once upon a time it was but certainly not these days because I think there are 10000 ways to make a damn good living. For what it's worth I recruit MBAs out of Stanford/Duke/UVA regularly. They are amazing people typically and not all but many bore me to tears

[Anonymous]

Was there a question in there somewhere?