Number Games

     Everyday, I hear the same few classmates complaining about how low their grades are because their just teachers are unfair. To you shallow people, and I think you know who you are (though you won't be reading this), stop. Just stop. Your fanaticism over your cume is your greatest fault. Your unrelenting drive to beat my GPA will eventually be the death of you. Or will it? After all, if you let your numbers define who you are, you are living a non-human life. You aren't experiencing what it means to learn, to live. You are only fulfilling your parents and teacher's expectations, and while the act is admirable, it is far less so than learning, not for your future's sake, but for personal enjoyment and want. The one who learns for another is a fool, a hypocrite, a fake. True knowledge exists only in the way that we want it to, not because it is required to be.
     Your grade is fair, dear complainer, as your actions and words have justified it. Your incentive for apathy is holding you back, and will do so until your dying day. Meanwhile, you become defensive at the slightest mention that you do not, in fact, deserve the number grade that you have, the rank and the credit you have "earned" due to the above. Your work ethic, you claim, is great,but in fact it is just that. It is a work ethic, not a learn ethic. For those of you who spit facts back, I have little reverence. I cannot accept that you wish to do well. However, when the two coexist in one body, an essential colossus of learning is spawned. There are very few; I am not one. Nobody I know is one, so why even bother continuing to talk about it? There is a difference between a person of wisdom and a person of knowledge, of learning. Your learning should not exist in merely an academic setting. One must carry what is developed in the classroom into life, and more importantly, bring learning to your feeble lives, for it will give them strength. Take notice of your thoughts. See just where they take you, and maybe, just maybe, you will escape your fate of numerical suicide.