For those of you that don’t know me, I am Luke Walocko, a senior who will be attending the University of Michigan next year. I want to take just a minute of your time to give you some flawless advice on how to be successful at this school in the most efficient way possible.
Here are your three options:
• Option One: Do all your homework, study all your homework, study all your tests, study in the summer, and freak out about school.
• Option Two: Take a gamble and try to cheat “the system”
• Option Three: Work “the system” to your benefit
You are probably asking “What is the system?” In the case of all of us, the system is Seaholm. We use Seaholm to try to get to the next level in our education. The intent of the system is to give back as much as someone puts into it. For better or worse, some of us have found ways to get around the system, and achieve the same goals as someone who blindly followed the system all the way through. All three of these options have been proven to work, but all of them are not completely foolproof.
So option one. If you follow option one exactly, you will get where you want: College of choice, job; it’s all yours. Unfortunately, you will probably have a miserable life and other social issues that will lead to your certain doom. I have seen option one do this to someone, so trust me on this: You don’t want it.
Option two. This choice can arguably reap the same awards as option one, but with much less work required on your part. You need to be very smart to use this option and you need to know what you are doing. The only catch is that if you get busted, it is all over. Good luck getting into the school you want to, and forget about being trusted again by your teachers. I have seen this option work before, but I have seen it blow up in far more people’s faces. The stress and risks associated with this option might not be worth it. Move along to the next option or proceed at your own risk.
Now on to option three. If done right, option three takes the best of both worlds between option one and option two. If you play your cards right, you can get the benefits of option one with minimal effort and without the baggage of moral issues that come along with option two.
I wish I could sit down with any of you and tell you everything, but I will lay out a basic blueprint on how you can work the system:
Only do homework you need to do: Only do the amounts of homework you need to do to gain a good understanding of the material. For some people this might be all of a homework assignment, for others it might be zero. Sure, you can take a lot of joke classes where you have to do your homework to pass, but when you reach the higher level classes, the tests are all that counts. For all you teachers out there who love giving busy work; know that you are wasting your own time.
You already know the grade you will get in a class: Some kids are just naturally smart; they know they will get an A in a high level class no matter how much they try in it. The point here is ***THAT FOR THE MOST PART*** even if you try harder to get a higher grade, it usually doesn’t happen. I really debated putting this in here, and I know a lot of teachers will think I am wrong, but they all know I am right. Don’t waste your time. You’re going to get the grade you are going to get.
Do not adjust your ways or habits for a specific teacher: Some teachers will not mind how you do homework, others will. Some teachers will not like you, again, others will. These are just things that are out of your control. There is nothing you can do about teachers who grade their students subjectively, and trust me; there are teachers at this school who do grade in this foul manner. Again, you are going to get the grade you are going to get from a specific teacher and there is no changing that. Don’t raise your blood pressure over one teacher.
Have common sense: It is up to you to decide how close or far away you want to be from option two or three. Every single person has different bounds or limits they are willing to cross to achieve the wanted result. It all comes down to how far you are willing to go to get what you want. Whatever your choice is, be smart about what you are doing, and finally don’t get caught.
To all the teachers reading this, I am not an idiot. I chose my words very carefully to not incriminate myself into anything that goes against the honor code. I will say this though; any student who is able to pull off option two is a genius in their own right.
I know many of you out there (you know who you are) have been waiting for me to write something like this for a long time, and I wish I could have told you more, but I am already 60 characters over what I was given to work with. To keep this short, I wish all of you the best of luck at Seaholm for your years to come, and I hope you follow my advice
