Personal Blog of Carl Pei

I’ve graduated from high school and I feel it’s time to gather my thoughts on it one final time. This post is pretty long, so if you’re not a big fan of me or extremely interested in the private lives of others, it may be wise to skip.

By all means read it if you want, I just don’t want to bore you.

My Time in High School

High school was great. In Sweden, high school is three years and in each subject the grades can range from IG, G, VG to MVG. IG equals fail and MVG is the best grade, roughly meaning pass with special distinction.

I chose the Natural Science program. Ideally, students of the Natural Science program become researchers, doctors, dentists, mathematicians and engineers. After a year and a half I realized I wasn’t interested in becoming any of that.

During the first two years, I messed around, but still hovered above the average in terms of grades. All work was done last minute with minimal effort; I participated very little during lessons and never spoke to teachers outside of class. I played a lot of computer games back then, it was fun and I had a great time. I believe having fun is the best way you can spend your time and do not regret anything.

This last year, I’ve gotten MVG in all subjects except for two. This was better than what I originally hoped for. I didn’t add much effort. I think the difference was that I started taking control over my life. I weighed the difficulty vs. interest vs. reward of all the choice subjects and picked accordingly. Instead of higher levels of math and physics that I wouldn’t need, I took easier (for me, at least) courses like journalism and philosophy. Another thing was that I actively sought teachers to discuss my grades. Before, my mindset was: “I’ve handed in my work, they have it. Nothing can change anymore, whatever happens, happens.” Finally, my attitude towards my work was more positive than before. When I do work now, I’m confident that it will score well. Before, it was more like “Well, I’ve handed it in, if I’m lucky I will get a good grade for it.”

I guess what I’ve learned is the following: It is easier to be a pessimist, as with low expectations, you never need to disappoint yourself. Being an optimist is harder. In order to expect something good to happen, you must back the expectation with something concrete. Being optimistic pushes you to work harder, and even if you end up disappointing yourself, the end product is always better than that done under a pessimistic attitude. And when you finally do succeed, the feeling is similar to the best feeling in the world.

Graduation Thoughts

It’s hard to not sound bitter in this part, I’ll try my best.

Although I’ve graduated with, at least according to me, good grades, I feel that I am still being severely underestimated by some teachers. Their underestimation can not be entirely blamed on them, because they’ve based it on what I showed them in class, and it seems I didn’t show what they wanted to see. This could partially have been because some teachers immediately found favorite students, which weren’t me and directly and immediately undermined my motivation to do well in their classes – they’ve already picked.

On one hand, it is good that people have low expectations of me. It gives me one more reason to strive to be the best person I could possibly be. I will gladly show them that they were wrong and perhaps then even teach them a thing or two about assessing the worth of individuals. This is not my dream, but an actual event in the future.

I don’t carry negative feelings towards any teachers. Well, maybe one - but that’s a whole other thing. In fact, most of them have been some of the best, most interesting and inspiring people I’ve ever met. I will surely miss them.

I don’t either hope that I will be successful, it is something I also know. Why? The way I see it, a person’s success is determined by two things: that they are and what they think, which could also be described as their nature and culture. I see no flaws with my biological nature or intelligence.

My genes are great, seeing that both my parents have a PhD in the sciences I am at least not stupid.

My thoughts are also great, seeing that I’ve run through the natural science program in high school, and even if the actual knowledge will have little use, a whole new way of thinking and solving problems was acquired (strict scientific/logical deduction). All this internet [pseudo]business has also developed my thinking in other valuable ways. Doing this, I’ve improved my thinking in terms of leadership skills, creating community spirit, dealing with companies and clients, self-discipline, professionalism, rhetoric, etc. A final chunk of thought improvement comes from all the great books that I’ve been reading lately. How to Win Friends & Influence People, Way of NLP, Think and Grow Rich – to name a few.

My Class

It’s hard to not get sentimental during this part, but I’ll try my best.

I am extremely grateful to have spent three years with the people of my class; there could not have been a better class. In my class there are people with an abundance of raw talent, academic excellence, social excellence and lots of potential waiting to be unleashed. These people have made deep and permanent impact on my life and undoubtedly will continue doing so as we work together as equals sometime in the future.

The people of my class will eventually grow to live happy and fulfilling lives and it will be truly amazing to see where they all are in, say, 5 years time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.