We are all wired to react to immediate gratification. It’s human nature. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending), a person’s ability to delay gratification early in life is strongly linked to success later in life. That study was published in 2018, but similar studies exist going back decades. The most famous one is probably the “marshmallow test” first conducted in 1972.
Watch the video below. Then use the comment section to ask questions about how delayed and immediate gratification factor into our learning, especially our use of grade abatement profiles every three weeks.
The Marshmallow Test
Grades themselves are technically delayed gratification. Grades themselves don’t give anyone actual happiness; they’re simply a number. However, the potential a grade has, to make or break your future, makes it incredibly important. If you study for your SAT, and then you get a score you can be proud of, there’s a high chance you can get into a good school. Although a good school doesn’t equate to success, if you go to a good school and are sufficient in building connections with notable alumni or professors, you have a better shot at being more successful in your field. If you look at which schools produce the most millionaires, CEOs, or Fulbright scholars, they tend to be Ivy Leagues, or schools which are essentially equal to them, such as Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, or Stanford. Although you are certainly not required to attend a first class college to be successful, it definitely helps to go to a good school. So studying for your SAT isn’t going to give you gratification, but the success you might achieve seems to be worth it.
However, the point of this is not to say that this mentality is good. In my opinion, if students place so much emphasis on school, it can lead to even bigger problems with anxiety. The question we now must ask ourselves is how do we use grades in this matter, while removing its negative effects?
The first step is what you’re doing, which is to talk openly about grades, anxiety, and the pressure to do well. Those things affect every student, whether they’re hoping for Harvard or not interested in college at all. The second step, I think, is making the numbers mean something else. We can’t change the way transcripts and college applications work, and we can’t eliminate report cards and everything that comes with them. We can, however, change the toxic machinery that creates all that. I believe we can make the numbers mean something different.