Work w/ me here D-V lol. No i get what youre saying. For me its largely a motivation thing, not ability. Im like a roller coaster. And it shows when i look at my gpa by semester. After my fall 11 semester i've been a whole lot better about taking school more seriously.
Nah I feel you, I was messing with you. I was thinking about your post from the perspective of a meeting I was at a few years back. When I was on the National Exec. Board for NSBE, I got flown out to Seattle to meet with other leaders of the major minority enigneering, business and professional societies. It was held on Microsoft's campus and on Microsoft's dime. Even met a number of their executives over dinner at some swanky restaurant. Anyway, the basic subject matter surrounded how we could get more minorities and women into the "pipeline", K-12. For the uninitiated, it just means how we can get more K-12 kids on track to becoming scientists and engineers.
One of the more memorable moments for me during that time was a study the President of SWE (Society of Women Engineers) talked about her organization had commissioned. I typically hate studies because they rarely have an effective "control" group (like Chemistry, where no other differences exist except that one thing you're testing), so the conclusions of many studies can be challenged as being caused by other reasons. Well not this study. This one was simple. It asked respondents a single, simple question:
"What was the minimum acceptable grade you could bring home to your parents?"
Goddamn. It can't be misunderstood or misinterpreted. It's not the kind of question that causes people to lie and say what they wish were true. People just put the truth on the table.
Answers? For Black and Latino families, the average answer was a "C". For white families, a "B". For Asian families, an "A".
Our people chronically underachieves, and in part because the expectations for our children are lower than they are for people of other ethnicities. If we (including teachers and parents) don't expect excellence from ourselves and each other, nobody else will either...and when they finally kill off Affirmative Action and similar programs, most black folk are going to be perpetually stuck going to Colleges with less impressive academic reputations. I remember back when I first got to college, I read that exactly 1 black person got admitted into UC - Berkley's engineering program. ONE. Why? Partially because they killed off Affirmative Action, and had decided that even those black inner city kids that were getting A's weren't going to be able to cut it at Berkeley because the quality of education they received wasn't sufficient. So the kids weren't even going to get a chance to prove that they belong.
Blah blah blah. Anyway, if you or anyone can fight harder, do so. If you can get a tutor or surround yourself with over-achievers that study well, do so and learn their techniques. There's no swag in having to go to your second or third choice for your college experience because your first and second options said you're not impressive enough.