Is not getting 100% a failure?

#77 - exciting exams followed by exciting visits to 'Cam' (?)

Hi there,

It feels a little odd to be starting my Sunday night ritual later than usual, yet in broad daylight.

A week in which we got our exams done 🎉, a similar standard of difficulty to the first week, followed by my first ever visit to Cambridge, going around the compact city, seeing the colleges and having a good time.

Highlight of the week ⭐ : spending the weekend in Cambridge; a pretty town with lots of old buildings, students every way you turn and plenty of similar-looking colleges. I got the chance to visit a few, chat with some Maths students, get free lunch (the best part of course) and achieve 10k steps…twice in 2 days!

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One feature of these Year 12 exams has been the presence of past paper questions that many have seen before, making them not quite an unseen test in some cases. Whilst this is a beneficial thing in the short term¹ when you’re in the exam hall, it means that you can find out whether you did well or not very quickly and if you don’t, this can be demoralising, potentially affecting further progress in exam season.

Along with discussing with friends, one of my friends managed to compile all the answers for our Maths paper; he messaged me with these followed by “I lost 1 mark. I am so triggered…” and then “I wanted 100% adiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” (that’s 16 ‘i’s by the way). I consoled him by saying “Who doesn’t?” briefly followed by “If you stress over small stuff like this, phew…life will keep throwing them at you”, ending with a “You’re right, I can’t lie”.

This year, I have made a conscious effort to accept scores of less than 100%. There is a glorification of full marks in education, exemplified in mathsy subjects where it’s easier because of shorter mark questions vs 30 mark essays. Maybe it’s an elusive chase for 3 figures or the knowledge that you couldn’t have done any better, but it’s a sought-after score, and why not?

Where the issue lies in making all other scores, still very good, unworthy of their commendation. Another friend walking home one day said to me, “I got 77% in that Further Maths test, terrible” to which I paused and said “It’s the hardest test we’ve had in Further this year and it isn’t “terrible” - the language we use is important”. (Although I didn’t know this at the time, I got 98% on the same test but swiftly moving on… 😝)

Maybe it’s my learning upon reflection at how missing out on that last 9 of a straight ten made me feel on Results Day but I have lost that ‘toxic’ desire of 100%, about which I spoke to another friend one break. He said that he’d noticed it in me and said for him, it’s what keeps him going: never resting on your laurels and never being satisfied.

There is a slight quirk with this general societal theory for me, I’d love to know what you think - by aggressively chasing 100%, you are minimising the chances of you being happy. When most of our actions, dreams and goals seem to lead towards the lifelong strive for happiness (whatever ‘happiness’ is and whatever it means) when boiled down, only being satisfied with full marks is ‘setting yourself up to fail’ at your goal.

The other thing I’d argue is that, really, your motivation shouldn’t be getting full marks in an exam. The aim should be being better than your previous result and making progress. This comes along with learning new stuff, improving your exam technique and generally getting better. As they say, enjoy the journey and you’ll reach the destination; after all, you spend more of your time getting there. The love of improvement leads to sustained success and the joy in being able to do something, a physical or mental skill, that you weren’t able to before is what should be your motivation, your driver and your fuel. Running after a score in an exam (in which you don’t have control over what is asked) is the end product, but you need to go through the process first and it’s the process that you control.

At the same time, I get the balance between not satisficing oneself (that’s a fancy turn of phrase) for less than you can achieve and constantly seeking to improve. But there again, it’s about improving, not getting a higher score - a subtle distinction I think.

In the past I’ve explored my feelings on advice that seems careless: keeping expectations low is the secret to happiness, then concluding that we should “aim high and expect little. No one is destined or entitled to any amount of success so we should do everything in our power and control to shape how much we do get.”

This time, after exploring this topic, I finish on the view that it is still very important to aim high and dream of great success, setting it as your target and moving towards it. However, being happy with a score that isn’t a full century doesn’t mean settling for less. As I reiterate, it’s all about perspective: switch on your growth mindset and see it as an opportunity to learn, another reason to keep working hard and grow, rather than a failure to achieve a score that you (on face value) have a probability of 1/100th of getting.

P.S. Sorry about missing last week - a longstanding guest coming round followed by heavy prep for exams meant I couldn’t find time for our weekly chat

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Hmm, that got pretty deep, far away from recent posts. As you can probably tell, it’s a very debatable subject that I’d love to get your views on - reply back to this email, I promise a good reply.

Podcast of the week 🎙️

The Future of Everything: NASA Plans to Bring Bits of Mars to Earth. It May Change How We See Space

Despite not begin a space nerd myself, I really loved this episode on why Mars missions are important. An exciting explanation in a good amount of time pitched at a correct difficulty level - good listening!

Article of the week 📰

The science of curiosity: why we keep asking “why”

Maybe an underrated skill but can certainly lead to getting to know new people and topics

Quote of the week 💬

Strength doesn't come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn't - Rikki Rogers

Remember to zoom out this week and focus on what the week’s occurrences actually mean; wishing you well

Adi

1. Taking a more longer term perspective, doing exceedingly well on these exams both could make you overconfident, providing less incentive to work hard (as explored today!) and to be specific with this situation, inflate your UCAS predicted grades, ending up with a perhaps unrealistic university offer which it would be devastating to fail at.