Lambert High School’s official mission statement is, “All Lambert High School students will meet and/or exceed standards on the GHSGT/WT and EOCT measures.”

I’m not going to lie, I was a fairly stereotypical study focused kid as a child. My academics were the most significant component of my life. I was constantly studying and worried about exceeding my peers. Everything in my life focused on school, and things were going great. I wanted to be my family’s crowning glory and I felt that being the best academically would get me this achievement. And still to this day, I believe that school is one of the most important aspects of my life. 

Don’t get me wrong, I hate sitting in a classroom for hours on end completing what seems like endless amounts of busy work but I don’t think school’s importance comes from the boring assignments I complete. Instead its importance comes from the valuable lessons it teaches you about the real world. 

 Although a controversial opinion, expectations are important. Having expectations for yourself is what makes life worth living. Schools teach students how to match expectations (that expectation being having good grades). Regardless of your efforts, the school system is unlikely to change. Although this sounds defeatist, this trains discipline in students. Pushing through the hard assignments and stressful times to meet the standard of excellence that the school system wants from you will make you more disciplined. This discipline creates the difference between an immature child and a full-grown adult. 

School also helps students give a realistic view on life. Personally, it showed me the power of credibility. The credibility around your name helps other people formulate an image of you and what you offer as a person. In most scenarios, it’s the credibility and the resume that gets people jobs and not how nice the person is or how giving the person. A study done by Alan Krueger at Princeton University implies the effectiveness of credibility. Students who graduated from selective colleges such as Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania received greater earnings than students who graduated from less selective schools, according to the study. This conclusion was no different from conventional wisdom. That’s the sad reality. School has taught me that it’s not the feelings that matter, instead it’s the numbers and grades that matter. I believe this is why many people go to college. You can learn a lot from college however, from what I see, people go to college not to learn but to earn the prestige and credibility from that college. Nobody ever talks about the work that goes into college, everyone only talks about the degrees and the credibility that it will give you when you complete it. Take this statistic for example, Harvard University is a very prestigious school with credibility that is probably the best in the world. Harvard University has a total of 13,650 ultra-high net worth alumni which is the most out of any schools. My peers always say the cliche saying, “Other people’s opinions do not matter.” But the truth is, it does matter. The credibility that follows you as a person and the image you create for yourself will be a major factor on where you will end up in life. It can be said that a majority of students at Harvard are extremely intelligent and hard working and the prestige Harvard offers is because it only accepts the most qualified students. However, I believe it’s the grades and numbers that show the qualifications of these students at Harvard instead of the work they put in.

Education is a vital part of today’s society. In today’s society, having a college diploma is thought to be extremely advantageous for a successful profession and to be socially acceptable but maybe in the future success will be based on who the person is instead of what they can forcefully achieve.