Grinders and strivers and curators, oh my!

[Anonymous]

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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.

Larry Wall.

[Anonymous]

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

Much less.

[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.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Something missing from your comment, ma’am?

[Anonymous]

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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.

Larry Wall.

Lol, I am 100% sure he is not actually lazy, despite not wanting to do tedious work.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Fictional characters in over the top comedy movies. OK, thank you bringing this serious real-world issue to light.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I think Tracy Flick is a striver, and Elle Woods is a grinder (but in a good and endearing way).

[Anonymous]

Based on a 200+ page book that was adapted into an Oscar-nominated screenplay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Fictional characters in over the top comedy movies. OK, thank you bringing this serious real-world issue to light.

Lighten up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

How am I creeping on HS kids? And no, I was not obsessed. I just found it kind of amusing that I got better grades than these kids while not sacrificing my decency and values and being an insufferable suck-up. People tend not to like strivers (at least at places that aren't full of them). I was not the most popular person at my school but I had plenty of friends and was liked by peers, teachers, etc. Strivers were not.

And replying to another post - the parent who said they didn't like the strivers at Stuy didn't say it was too hard for their child. Just that they didn't want their child in that type of environment. Huge difference. But again, a striver doesn't get this.

Again, so much defensiveness and unwillingness to read/listen. Seems like we have touched a nerve with all of the strivers here!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I think Tracy Flick is a striver, and Elle Woods is a grinder (but in a good and endearing way).

I would have loved to grind with Elle Woods. Or Tracy Flick. But I digress.

[Anonymous]

And the reason why it was so critically acclaimed is that anyone with half a brain knew, even back in the late 1990s, that there are plenty of strivers of all races and genders (who don't have to be as over the top as Tracy Click to deserve the moniker) out in the real world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Fictional characters in over the top comedy movies. OK, thank you bringing this serious real-world issue to light.

Lighten up.

Yup. They are kind of proving the point. Would they rather we say "John Smith and Jane Doe from TJ, Class of 2024?"

[Anonymous]

For those who don't understand, here is an example of striver behavior (not a perfect example) from my child's fifth grade class.

Kids were assigned to write a page and illustrate about an animal. Very specifically said one page and not to go over. They were going to present this on a day parents visited class. Two strivers (both Caucasian, by the way) write 3+ pages, plus very elaborate illustrations. Lots of big words clearly aided by parents - these kids actually are very bright, but not this bright.

On parents day these parents glowed with pride when it was their kid's turn, with a very professional looking assignment while others kids were perfectly fine but looked like things created by kids in that grade.

The kid starts reading and starts turning to the second page. The teacher stops them. Teacher says that there is only time for one page per kid - that was the assignment and there is limited time. Striver mom is horrified - she wants junior to show off how brilliant he is. Other parents are relieved as they need to go to work and don't have time for this and think junior should receive a bad grade for not following directions. Plus they are happy that the teacher is aware of the problem, rather than many teachers who would praise this behavior. Junior makes a tone deaf, rude comment about how their report is the best and their parent nods their head.

[Anonymous]

I've always associated striving with the American way and the generations of immigrants that came here and worked their way up. For me striver is a hopeful word, and it saddens me to see it reduced to a pejorative applied to a class of desperate high-schoolers being squeezed like lemons by their crazy parents. That''s all.

[Anonymous]

Don’t we have a generation of kids who can’t read or count? What striving?