“What did you get on your PSAT?”

“I only got a 1020, but I basically slept through the entire math section.”

  This is an excerpt from a conversation that I recently had with a friend, and it made me think about how dumb that kind of statement is. Why do people feel a sense of pride in not trying in assessments? It’s so common to hear “I didn’t even try” at school, and it’s strange that people would feel like that qualifies a bad grade in some way. Putting forth low effort is nothing to brag about; it’s something to be ashamed about.

  It’s ridiculous that students think that people could be impressed by poor effort, especially if they do poorly on a test. It’s time that students stop making excuses and start trying to actually succeed. Nobody is impressed if when students say “I didn’t even try”; the only thing that people care about is how they did.

  Living life without any effort will give terrible results, and saying “I didn’t even try” will never work, and nobody would ever be impressed, and it’s the same with school.

 Imagine crashing your car and boasting about it. It would be completely ridiculous. Saying “My car is totalled, but I was going 60 in a 25” wouldn’t be impressive at all. Anyone who heard this would think “what an idiot”, and nobody would think “wow, he’s so cool.”

  Imagine accidentally if people cut their finger and told everybody that they didn’t even care. It would be weird if someone said “Whatever, I was just chopping up some carrots, but I wasn’t even paying attention.” That would be absolutely ridiculous. Why would anyone care? No one cares if someone doesn’t try in school either.

  Picture a kicker missing a game-winning field goal in a big game, and then telling his teammates about he didn’t care at all in the locker room. If he said “it doesn’t really matter though, I wasn’t even trying to make that kick. I didn’t line up right and I didn’t even attempt to follow through”, the team would think he is a total idiot.

  Think about if someone fell off a ladder and broke every bone in their body and bragged to their friends about it. It would be incredibly stupid to say “I fell off that ladder so hard that I broke every bone in my body. Isn’t that so cool?”

  If you wouldn’t brag about failing in life, it makes no sense to brag about not trying in school. Stop telling people you don’t give effort and maybe you’ll be able to start telling everyone that you’re passing your classes for once.