Tooting my own horn

[maybe]

Good on ya I don't think I have ever had an A in my short life.

[SPman]

Good on ya I don't think I have ever had an A in my short life.

Whats with all these A passes....girly swat stuff!
Why ....back in my days,,,mumble mumble....an acceptable pass was a C...a "gentlemans pass"! Shows youve done enough work to get through, but have spent adequate time on other, more worthwhile, social pursuits!

[James Deuce]

Whats with all these A passes....girly swat stuff!
Why ....back in my days,,,mumble mumble....an acceptable pass was a C...a "gentlemans pass"! Shows youve done enough work to get through, but have spent adequate time on other, more worthwhile, social pursuits!

Damnit. I feel like someone's quoting something I said once

Thanks for all the feedback folks - I think Milky's achievement is unreal though. Hope there's a few more like him around

[Milky]

Well done that man! Keep it up all the way through and you'll notice that there are a few tasty scholarships for the top engineering grads...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....HAHAHAHAHA.....HA

seriously though, that is coming from me who doesnt spend as much time as he could on his studies... within engineering there are people who seemingly live to study. I had a look through the internal assessment marks for one engineering computing paper I am doing, and this person got: 60/60 60/60 19/20 and 18/18. Leaving them on 49.75/50% for that portion of the course so far. With marks like that how can you compete??? Seems that I am a reasonably intelligent type person, but I miss out on the academic scholarships for having a life of sorts and miss out on the all round scholarships because I am not sporty/leadershippy/culturally developed enough.
I guess it depends on the yardstick you use for measuring yourself against, but for a lot of the time, I see many many places where I am non-scholarship material
Life is tough....

[Milky]

...Hope there's a few more like him around

I am sure there are... I think that there are also more who dont have the culture at home/ in their upbringing to take the natural intelligence they have forward through their schooling. There were a bunch of guys at my intermediate who were rather smart, but didn't have the channels to output that intelligence into anything meaningful for them. Skateboarding seemed to be the only solution at the time
It is difficult to say how people will turn out as they grow, but I truly believe that there are much much greater numbers of potentially intelligent people out there than most would admit. I think I was lucky that I fitted in with the way the schooling system operated, and enjoyed the challenges that were presented to me along the way. It also helped that I was (deputy) head boy - deputy in brackets, 'cos my superior got booted for smoking - and that allowed me to get a bit more involved with the teachers, other students, organisation, planning, fundraising etc... I think all in all I was simply lucky to walk the path that I did.

[jrandom]

I think all in all I was simply lucky to walk the path that I did.

Many of the guys I know who've done well think the same. I suspect there's a lot that comes down to hard work and guts, though. And ten years down the track your grades and scholarships won't matter much anyway (well, apart from getting you into your first job, which might be more decent if you're an 'A' or 'B+' student).

I worked for six months last year with the top AU engineering grad who came in to do a project we had going begging. He got a Rhodes Scholarship and is now at Oxford doing his PhD. He had a 8.85 GPA (about 98% average marks). He got that by being quiet and boring and working very, very hard... in his case it *is* going to help in the long term, because he certainly couldn't have afforded to go to Oxford otherwise. But I don't think that academic performance is a primary indicator of how happy you'll be when you're 40.

[Milky]

too right