Grinders and strivers and curators, oh my!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the pejorative associations are kind of rooted in its English heritage.
In Britain, it is unseemly to strive. It all should come naturally. Think about all the British explorations that were so amateurishly executed with tragic and fatal consequences. All because one (the organizer) should not appear to be trying so hard.
Maybe it comes from their resignation to social class structure. Michelle Obama was derided as a striver by their press which is kind of hard to understand. Her work hard ethic and pull yourself up by the bootstraps is actually very American. I guess the British dont do that.

I don't think the pejorative associations have to do with work ethic. Yes, that may have been true in aristocratic times, when the gentry didn't work, but this is modern America. Notice that when you describe a student as "hard working" most people would not consider this description pejorative. "Hard working" is a positive trait. There is additional meaning associated with "grinder" and "striver" as it applies to college students and that's the part that carries the negative weight.

The additional meaning is ascribed by those seeking to devalue the hard work put in by other students so their students look better.

Nope. There is a difference, even if you refuse to acknowledge it.

What’s the difference?

Let’s take two hard working kids. Both Asian if you like. One loves physics and enthusiastically studies it. Genuinely contributes to class discussions, helps his friends when they struggle. Second kid doesn’t give a darn about linguistics but heard it was an undersubscribed major and his best shot of getting into Harvard. He’ll drop the major for something else that will get him to Wall Street. Will only talk in class if participation is graded or if the teacher is a letter writer. And why would he help his friends if they are competing with him in college apps. Which one is the striver? It’s not hard to tell!

Both Asian? Really? Why would you include this sentence?

DP. Another poster said striver was just a racist term for Asians. This person is trying to explain the difference is between the attitude of a striver and a hard worker, and you can just assume they are the same race (Asian presumably because it was brought up) because the race isn't the issue at all.

Thank you! I am Asian, btw. Back in my day we used the term gunner, and it was applied pretty equally to white or Asian or any other student who was fake, hyper-competitive and self-promoting without considering others.

Yeah we used gunner in undergrad(ivy) and again at my T5. It was mostly a joke because we were all gunners or we wouldn't have gotten there. However, there were levels: front row gunner(honest about their ambition), second row gunner(the worst--did not realize their top-gunner nature), and back row gunner(stopped gunning once they got in, knew they'd made it, but were still baseline gunners). It's all for fun!
Kid is premed BioEngineering at a different ivy and they use "grinding" or "lock in and grind" on themselves or each other all the time. They jest but they are far more collaborative than 30 years ago when I took the brutal semesters orgo and physics. The premed advising tables show higher % success for average students now than at my ivy 30 yr ago, and I have asked friends with kids at my ivy for the internal data: it has a higher %too compared to my day.
I pulled up tables and converted SATs through two SAT recentering cycles and it makes sense: Only about 1/4 were 98-99th%ile then, now it is 3/4 (pre-TO). Almost everyone there has the ability to get 510+ on the MCAT, even the below average 3.6 kids get in to US programs.

What you don’t understand is that there were people there that were not gunners.

They were just naturally intelligent, it came easy, somebody probably went and found them in the middle of nowhere because their SAT score with no prop was in the 99.9 percentile.

You didn’t socialize with them so you never met them.

There are also people there that other talents who weren’t gunners, like musicians. They didn’t care that they were in the 95% dial or that they were in the bottom 1/3 of their class because they have other talents.

Let’s not glorify natural genius too much. There’s always the cautionary tale of the kid who scored 1600 on the SAT but failed out of high school because they couldn’t be bothered to put in any effort they deemed mundane. As an adult they constantly have a chip on their shoulder because they are annoyed life didn’t go their way and recognize their genius. If grind is a continuum, everyone needs to have at least a little bit of grinder in them to succeed.

It was the strivers who end up in the lower 50% that crash out.

Smart and hardworking beats hardworking and average. But hardworking and average beats smart but lazy any day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in NYC. My kid got the necessary score to go to Stuyvesant. We opted out. Total striver fest. It is big enough that this does not refer to everyone. It is very heavily Asian. But there are Asian kids there who are not strivers. But there are many who are. And some non-Asians who are.

It seemed like a miserable place to go to school. My child is smart enough to succeed there. And there are plenty of kids who go there and end up as smart, well-rounded, kind, well-adjusted human beings. But too many don't. Not how we wanted them to spend four years. Bronx Science also had lots of strivers, but it did not permeate the culture in the same way.

IYKYK (that means If You Know You Know - a good term to differentiate non-strivers from strivers).

Your description of Stuy is how I currently feel about Princeton.

That element exists at Princeton but it is far from common and is far less common at Princeton than at Stuyvesant. Though I think it is likely more common at Princeton now than it was 30 years ago when many of us went to college.

Princeton does have a decent sized cohort of quirky intellectual type. But there is a very nuanced difference between them and strivers. Primarily in that they truly enjoy learning for the sake of learning. They might want to achieve the highest level of academic excellence possible, but a lot of them actually are going for academia (which can be really cut-throat, but again, in a different way).

Speaking of which, a great example of a striver is Kent from Real Genius. If you haven't seen it, you need to. Great movie. Hilarious. A bit dated but still worth it. And again, note that Kent was white.

Ah, the olden days when even strivers were white

See also Tracy Flick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in NYC. My kid got the necessary score to go to Stuyvesant. We opted out. Total striver fest. It is big enough that this does not refer to everyone. It is very heavily Asian. But there are Asian kids there who are not strivers. But there are many who are. And some non-Asians who are.

It seemed like a miserable place to go to school. My child is smart enough to succeed there. And there are plenty of kids who go there and end up as smart, well-rounded, kind, well-adjusted human beings. But too many don't. Not how we wanted them to spend four years. Bronx Science also had lots of strivers, but it did not permeate the culture in the same way.

IYKYK (that means If You Know You Know - a good term to differentiate non-strivers from strivers).

Your description of Stuy is how I currently feel about Princeton.

That element exists at Princeton but it is far from common and is far less common at Princeton than at Stuyvesant. Though I think it is likely more common at Princeton now than it was 30 years ago when many of us went to college.

Princeton does have a decent sized cohort of quirky intellectual type. But there is a very nuanced difference between them and strivers. Primarily in that they truly enjoy learning for the sake of learning. They might want to achieve the highest level of academic excellence possible, but a lot of them actually are going for academia (which can be really cut-throat, but again, in a different way).

Speaking of which, a great example of a striver is Kent from Real Genius. If you haven't seen it, you need to. Great movie. Hilarious. A bit dated but still worth it. And again, note that Kent was white.

Ah, the olden days when even strivers were white

See also Tracy Flick.

Yup. I cited her a few pages ago. Yet some people insist the term only refers to Asians and we are all racist. Whatever. I need a cupcake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in NYC. My kid got the necessary score to go to Stuyvesant. We opted out. Total striver fest. It is big enough that this does not refer to everyone. It is very heavily Asian. But there are Asian kids there who are not strivers. But there are many who are. And some non-Asians who are.

It seemed like a miserable place to go to school. My child is smart enough to succeed there. And there are plenty of kids who go there and end up as smart, well-rounded, kind, well-adjusted human beings. But too many don't. Not how we wanted them to spend four years. Bronx Science also had lots of strivers, but it did not permeate the culture in the same way.

IYKYK (that means If You Know You Know - a good term to differentiate non-strivers from strivers).

Your description of Stuy is how I currently feel about Princeton.

That element exists at Princeton but it is far from common and is far less common at Princeton than at Stuyvesant. Though I think it is likely more common at Princeton now than it was 30 years ago when many of us went to college.

Princeton does have a decent sized cohort of quirky intellectual type. But there is a very nuanced difference between them and strivers. Primarily in that they truly enjoy learning for the sake of learning. They might want to achieve the highest level of academic excellence possible, but a lot of them actually are going for academia (which can be really cut-throat, but again, in a different way).

Speaking of which, a great example of a striver is Kent from Real Genius. If you haven't seen it, you need to. Great movie. Hilarious. A bit dated but still worth it. And again, note that Kent was white.

Ah, the olden days when even strivers were white

See also Tracy Flick.

To continue the Reese Witherspoon movie analogy, yes, Tracy Flick is a striver. But Elle Woods (from Legally Blonde) is not. The former is a social climber but the former is not. Both are obviously blonde white women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the pejorative associations are kind of rooted in its English heritage.
In Britain, it is unseemly to strive. It all should come naturally. Think about all the British explorations that were so amateurishly executed with tragic and fatal consequences. All because one (the organizer) should not appear to be trying so hard.
Maybe it comes from their resignation to social class structure. Michelle Obama was derided as a striver by their press which is kind of hard to understand. Her work hard ethic and pull yourself up by the bootstraps is actually very American. I guess the British dont do that.

I don't think the pejorative associations have to do with work ethic. Yes, that may have been true in aristocratic times, when the gentry didn't work, but this is modern America. Notice that when you describe a student as "hard working" most people would not consider this description pejorative. "Hard working" is a positive trait. There is additional meaning associated with "grinder" and "striver" as it applies to college students and that's the part that carries the negative weight.

The additional meaning is ascribed by those seeking to devalue the hard work put in by other students so their students look better.

Nope. There is a difference, even if you refuse to acknowledge it.

What’s the difference?

Let’s take two hard working kids. Both Asian if you like. One loves physics and enthusiastically studies it. Genuinely contributes to class discussions, helps his friends when they struggle. Second kid doesn’t give a darn about linguistics but heard it was an undersubscribed major and his best shot of getting into Harvard. He’ll drop the major for something else that will get him to Wall Street. Will only talk in class if participation is graded or if the teacher is a letter writer. And why would he help his friends if they are competing with him in college apps. Which one is the striver? It’s not hard to tell!

Both Asian? Really? Why would you include this sentence?

DP. Another poster said striver was just a racist term for Asians. This person is trying to explain the difference is between the attitude of a striver and a hard worker, and you can just assume they are the same race (Asian presumably because it was brought up) because the race isn't the issue at all.

Thank you! I am Asian, btw. Back in my day we used the term gunner, and it was applied pretty equally to white or Asian or any other student who was fake, hyper-competitive and self-promoting without considering others.

Yeah we used gunner in undergrad(ivy) and again at my T5. It was mostly a joke because we were all gunners or we wouldn't have gotten there. However, there were levels: front row gunner(honest about their ambition), second row gunner(the worst--did not realize their top-gunner nature), and back row gunner(stopped gunning once they got in, knew they'd made it, but were still baseline gunners). It's all for fun!
Kid is premed BioEngineering at a different ivy and they use "grinding" or "lock in and grind" on themselves or each other all the time. They jest but they are far more collaborative than 30 years ago when I took the brutal semesters orgo and physics. The premed advising tables show higher % success for average students now than at my ivy 30 yr ago, and I have asked friends with kids at my ivy for the internal data: it has a higher %too compared to my day.
I pulled up tables and converted SATs through two SAT recentering cycles and it makes sense: Only about 1/4 were 98-99th%ile then, now it is 3/4 (pre-TO). Almost everyone there has the ability to get 510+ on the MCAT, even the below average 3.6 kids get in to US programs.

What you don’t understand is that there were people there that were not gunners.

They were just naturally intelligent, it came easy, somebody probably went and found them in the middle of nowhere because their SAT score with no prop was in the 99.9 percentile.

You didn’t socialize with them so you never met them.

There are also people there that other talents who weren’t gunners, like musicians. They didn’t care that they were in the 95% dial or that they were in the bottom 1/3 of their class because they have other talents.

Let’s not glorify natural genius too much. There’s always the cautionary tale of the kid who scored 1600 on the SAT but failed out of high school because they couldn’t be bothered to put in any effort they deemed mundane. As an adult they constantly have a chip on their shoulder because they are annoyed life didn’t go their way and recognize their genius. If grind is a continuum, everyone needs to have at least a little bit of grinder in them to succeed.

It was the strivers who end up in the lower 50% that crash out.

Smart and hardworking beats hardworking and average. But hardworking and average beats smart but lazy any day.

Working smart not hard wins every day and lazy people find ways to work smart,

[Anonymous]

a striver is viewed as someone sacrificing their mental health, relationships, and social life for an unfulfilling, endless chase for status

[Anonymous]

What I find interesting about “striver” is that it’s never a criticism of a specific person’s actual behavior. It’s always lashing out at some vague group of people that are blamed for the poster’s kids shortcomings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in NYC. My kid got the necessary score to go to Stuyvesant. We opted out. Total striver fest. It is big enough that this does not refer to everyone. It is very heavily Asian. But there are Asian kids there who are not strivers. But there are many who are. And some non-Asians who are.

It seemed like a miserable place to go to school. My child is smart enough to succeed there. And there are plenty of kids who go there and end up as smart, well-rounded, kind, well-adjusted human beings. But too many don't. Not how we wanted them to spend four years. Bronx Science also had lots of strivers, but it did not permeate the culture in the same way.

IYKYK (that means If You Know You Know - a good term to differentiate non-strivers from strivers).[

"Sounds like "striver" is just your lack of faith in your own child's personality and your parenting."

Eh, I had a kid at Stuy and another at Bx Sci.
The above poster is right. Stuy is kind of miserable. I wish my Stuy kid had gone to Bx Sci instead.
There's a part of me that wonders if things would have turned out better if they went to Beacon where everything is so much easier.
My Bx Sci kid is now in college with a Beacon kid (both from same middle school). The Beacon kid had the scores for specialized but the family figured the kid would stand out at Beacon and thus had a far easier time scoring a college acceptance than my Bx Sci kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I find interesting about “striver” is that it’s never a criticism of a specific person’s actual behavior. It’s always lashing out at some vague group of people that are blamed for the poster’s kids shortcomings.

Nope. Not at all. I can cite lots of strivers. I went to school with a bunch of them. And few things brought me more joy than outperforming them. Which I did more often than not. My kid goes to school with a few. And they outperform the strivers more often than not also.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:a striver is viewed as someone sacrificing their mental health, relationships, and social life for an unfulfilling, endless chase for status

Sacrificing the mental health of a nosy busybody, maybe. Only people obsessed with status cry about strivers, people who supposedly don’t deserve their status. Other people don’t see people that way.

Elon Musk is a fraud and a creep and a hateful bigot with dragon sickness. I don’t need to call him a striver to name his flaws.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in NYC. My kid got the necessary score to go to Stuyvesant. We opted out. Total striver fest. It is big enough that this does not refer to everyone. It is very heavily Asian. But there are Asian kids there who are not strivers. But there are many who are. And some non-Asians who are.

It seemed like a miserable place to go to school. My child is smart enough to succeed there. And there are plenty of kids who go there and end up as smart, well-rounded, kind, well-adjusted human beings. But too many don't. Not how we wanted them to spend four years. Bronx Science also had lots of strivers, but it did not permeate the culture in the same way.

IYKYK (that means If You Know You Know - a good term to differentiate non-strivers from strivers).[

"Sounds like "striver" is just your lack of faith in your own child's personality and your parenting."

Eh, I had a kid at Stuy and another at Bx Sci.
The above poster is right. Stuy is kind of miserable. I wish my Stuy kid had gone to Bx Sci instead.
There's a part of me that wonders if things would have turned out better if they went to Beacon where everything is so much easier.
My Bx Sci kid is now in college with a Beacon kid (both from same middle school). The Beacon kid had the scores for specialized but the family figured the kid would stand out at Beacon and thus had a far easier time scoring a college acceptance than my Bx Sci kid.

If Stuy is too hard for your kid than another school is better. My nephew loved Stuy, and my friends who went to Stuy (many years ago) loved it.

But you are talking about “scoring a college acceptance” which marks you as the “striver”, not the Stuy kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the pejorative associations are kind of rooted in its English heritage.
In Britain, it is unseemly to strive. It all should come naturally. Think about all the British explorations that were so amateurishly executed with tragic and fatal consequences. All because one (the organizer) should not appear to be trying so hard.
Maybe it comes from their resignation to social class structure. Michelle Obama was derided as a striver by their press which is kind of hard to understand. Her work hard ethic and pull yourself up by the bootstraps is actually very American. I guess the British dont do that.

I don't think the pejorative associations have to do with work ethic. Yes, that may have been true in aristocratic times, when the gentry didn't work, but this is modern America. Notice that when you describe a student as "hard working" most people would not consider this description pejorative. "Hard working" is a positive trait. There is additional meaning associated with "grinder" and "striver" as it applies to college students and that's the part that carries the negative weight.

The additional meaning is ascribed by those seeking to devalue the hard work put in by other students so their students look better.

Nope. There is a difference, even if you refuse to acknowledge it.

What’s the difference?

Let’s take two hard working kids. Both Asian if you like. One loves physics and enthusiastically studies it. Genuinely contributes to class discussions, helps his friends when they struggle. Second kid doesn’t give a darn about linguistics but heard it was an undersubscribed major and his best shot of getting into Harvard. He’ll drop the major for something else that will get him to Wall Street. Will only talk in class if participation is graded or if the teacher is a letter writer. And why would he help his friends if they are competing with him in college apps. Which one is the striver? It’s not hard to tell!

Both Asian? Really? Why would you include this sentence?

DP. Another poster said striver was just a racist term for Asians. This person is trying to explain the difference is between the attitude of a striver and a hard worker, and you can just assume they are the same race (Asian presumably because it was brought up) because the race isn't the issue at all.

Thank you! I am Asian, btw. Back in my day we used the term gunner, and it was applied pretty equally to white or Asian or any other student who was fake, hyper-competitive and self-promoting without considering others.

Yeah we used gunner in undergrad(ivy) and again at my T5. It was mostly a joke because we were all gunners or we wouldn't have gotten there. However, there were levels: front row gunner(honest about their ambition), second row gunner(the worst--did not realize their top-gunner nature), and back row gunner(stopped gunning once they got in, knew they'd made it, but were still baseline gunners). It's all for fun!
Kid is premed BioEngineering at a different ivy and they use "grinding" or "lock in and grind" on themselves or each other all the time. They jest but they are far more collaborative than 30 years ago when I took the brutal semesters orgo and physics. The premed advising tables show higher % success for average students now than at my ivy 30 yr ago, and I have asked friends with kids at my ivy for the internal data: it has a higher %too compared to my day.
I pulled up tables and converted SATs through two SAT recentering cycles and it makes sense: Only about 1/4 were 98-99th%ile then, now it is 3/4 (pre-TO). Almost everyone there has the ability to get 510+ on the MCAT, even the below average 3.6 kids get in to US programs.

What you don’t understand is that there were people there that were not gunners.

They were just naturally intelligent, it came easy, somebody probably went and found them in the middle of nowhere because their SAT score with no prop was in the 99.9 percentile.

You didn’t socialize with them so you never met them.

There are also people there that other talents who weren’t gunners, like musicians. They didn’t care that they were in the 95% dial or that they were in the bottom 1/3 of their class because they have other talents.

Let’s not glorify natural genius too much. There’s always the cautionary tale of the kid who scored 1600 on the SAT but failed out of high school because they couldn’t be bothered to put in any effort they deemed mundane. As an adult they constantly have a chip on their shoulder because they are annoyed life didn’t go their way and recognize their genius. If grind is a continuum, everyone needs to have at least a little bit of grinder in them to succeed.

It was the strivers who end up in the lower 50% that crash out.

Smart and hardworking beats hardworking and average. But hardworking and average beats smart but lazy any day.

Working smart not hard wins every day and lazy people find ways to work smart,

I can see why people value intelligence, and I can see why people value work ethic. I must say it’s rare that I meet the person who values laziness.

[Anonymous]

IMO strivers are much more likely treat the world as a zero-sum game than those who criticize strivers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I find interesting about “striver” is that it’s never a criticism of a specific person’s actual behavior. It’s always lashing out at some vague group of people that are blamed for the poster’s kids shortcomings.

Nope. Not at all. I can cite lots of strivers. I went to school with a bunch of them. And few things brought me more joy than outperforming them. Which I did more often than not. My kid goes to school with a few. And they outperform the strivers more often than not also.

You are an adult creeping on high school kids, and you made your obsession with competing against your classmates a people a pillar of your personality. How can you deny being the striver?

[Anonymous]

Stella Dallas, if any of you saw that movie, is a striver I suppose.
So is Madame Bovary who thought she was marrying her way into a fancy higher class only to find it Yawnsville.

And finally, Meghan Markle is perhaps our most recent example of utter striving.