Reply to Grinders and strivers and curators, oh my!

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Grinders and strivers and curators, oh my!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]At the end of the day, anyone who uses the word "striver" is someone with an unhealthy obsession with other people's children and insecurity about their own children. [/quote]

Nope. It is people who want to surround their children with [b]smart, interesting, funny, kind, curious, sincere people.[/b] I think for you that list stops at smart.[/quote]

The highest concentration of this type that either of our kids ever met was/is at their ivies. They are like this too. Almost everyone there studies and puts in effort to get to the next step, but they also have fun, hang out, have time for sleep, have extracurriculars that really do bring them joy. They are supportive of each other. 
There were more "grinders" and "strivers" (the negative way DCUM describes them on this thread) at their private high school and some of their competitive summer programs. However, to be successful reaching the next goal when one is surrounded by other smart interesting creative disciplined students, as happens at Ivies/stanford/MIT, one does have to "grind" (study hard) and "strive"--make sure they are networking and chasing opportunities at the ivy. Newsflash the award-winning, faculty favorite top kids in physics, engineering are studying hard! These are difficult subjects.

Neither of ours had to do this level of studying at their competitive high school, everything came easier to them than peers. One is likely top 5% at their ivy and the other is/was top 1/4(class of 2026 just graduated). 
Each student has to make their own calculation of how much they want to work to reach their goals, and to me at least I do not see anything wrong with those who had to work a lot harder in high school versus those that did not feel the real competition until college. Better to have them put their heart into it than face the competition and give up their dreams(MD/phd for one and phd later after they see what happens with a funded startup). If that is "grinding" and "striving" so be it. Very few people on this board have the intelligence level of the 99.9% to know what it really feels like, even when you sit near the top of a competitive peer group.

I am an MD married to a stem professor: neither of us got where we were without grinding at times and striving at times especially grad/med. We credit our top-15 college(s) for helping teach us how to compete for the next level. We would have stagnated at easier schools without that peer group push.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics