Transcription
Is our current school system broken? Should you even care about grades? What is the meaning of life? We're going to answer all but one of those today.
There's a ton of stuff on the internet about students hating school. It's useless; people can't even get jobs after they graduate from college. Being a StudyTuber myself, I see so much desperation—honestly, is the best word to describe what these students are feeling. Because that's why my—I think my videos do well. And I also think it's not the student's fault. It's not your fault.
You might also be commenting under study videos like, "Please help me, I have a test in 2 days. What do I do? Please help me, I have this problem, this problem." Overall, I see an aversion right now towards school and grades. Grades don't show your ability or intelligence, so why—WHY—should students work so hard to try and get good grades? And what happens when grinding that hard doesn't even get you job security in the future?
I have a perspective that will hopefully give some clarity to what is happening in our current educational system. And if you're a student, this might be the most important video you watch to ensure that once you graduate from college, you're not just another kid on the street struggling to find a job after grinding to get good grades. This video will also be helpful to parents, for how you can approach your kids.
Because even though I'm a few years out of school, I'm a private tutor. I attended Caltech, got good grades, and people call me wise. I'm actually quite a kid at heart; I'm goofy, I love having fun. I just want to YOLO and live the best life I can have, have the most fun experience, be able to buy the things, experience the things, love the people I want. So I have the same desires as any typical student out there. All thoughts will be yours truly—why is that a saying when it means it's mine? And I just hope that this will start a helpful conversation. This discussion will be holistic; I'll go over why people think grades are dumb, whether they're actually dumb, social media, my experiences, and what I believe the real value from school is.
If you're a student, your two biggest concerns probably will be straight A's—or at least good grades—and fitting in. On straight A's, that is the pinnacle of success, of being revered as smart, to make your parents proud, and to just feel better about yourself, feel like you are a functioning, worthy human being, right? It feels terrible when you get bad grades as a student because you're devoting hours and hours to school. In this TED Talk I watched, the girl talks about how grades are so silly because they are reducing our abilities or who we are into a number that will affect, you know, what colleges we go into and social perception of that person. However, things like a language barrier, or mental health issues, or situations with family at home can affect what kind of grades you get. Teachers will no longer encourage students to ask questions beyond the curriculum because they'll just say, "Oh, it's not on the test; you don't need to know that." And students will refuse to study the things that will not help them get the good grade. And I'm guilty of kind of using this approach as well, because there's so—there are only so many hours in a day. If you want to take the hardest classes and get good grades in them, you're going to have to cut out the unnecessary things for the purpose of getting that grade, right? It's really no longer about learning.
When I had classes that I was interested in at Caltech, I quickly learned that easiness trumps everything. Like, I don't care how interested I am to learn about machine learning and AI, if that class is obscenely difficult, you can bet your butt I am not taking it. So if the point of school was to make students learn, then are we not actually honoring that goal anymore? Plenty of geniuses in our history did not get good grades. Einstein didn't get good grades; Thomas Edison didn't get good grades. But what did they do? They are obviously super smart. So why are grades so important? What do grades do anyway? What if we change—CHANGE—the whole system and just get students to want to learn? Wouldn't that just solve everything and get rid of grades completely?
Well, if you use any kind of electronic devices and go on social media, you might think that you know that won't work. And I also think it won't work because students will be consuming too much content nowadays that completely cuts against the grain of what they should be valuing and what we as a society want our younger generation to care about in order to improve our society. So when students are consuming these silly cat memes or like fashion videos on TikTok, you are going to be training your brain to love that more because it's comfortable; it takes little effort. When learning, by definition, means discomfort, because that discomfort means that you are stretching your brain and improving your knowledge and problem-solving skills. After school and you get home, given the option of doing the work out of your own proactiveness just because you want to learn, choosing between studying and TikTok—well, I think we know what students would pick.
Thus, grades are an incentive because, unfortunately, I just don't think kids have the maturity to realize what they're doing now will inform their future. That's why I think that grades are a system put in place such that we can somewhat standardize this incentive structure and make a concrete goal that students can work toward such that they will better their future. Because actually, several adults have reached out to me like, "Oh, I regret my decision of not working harder in school," right? So at least grades are an explicit thing that you as a student can have your eye on versus just very arbitrarily saying like, "You should learn more; you should gain more knowledge; you should gain more skills," right? Because it's just too hard to set kids free and let them roam and be like, "Do something useful with your life."
Just because we know that grades are a way to better encourage students to study does not mean that it's actually making it easier on students. So a lot of students comment about how they just cannot bring themselves to get off their phone. Like, I can hear the desperation in these comments: "I just really want to get a good grade to finally make myself or my parents proud, and I have my phone there, and I just can't get off it." Or, "I've studied only half the syllabus, and I still have the other half to go; my test is in 2 days, but I'm doing nothing; I'm just sitting on my bed, and I can't get myself to do it."
This is where I think school and the kinds of voices we are putting in students' heads needs to become more holistic. School should not only tell you, "You should learn this to get this grade," but part of the curriculum should be like, "This is why you need to learn this; in fact, let me give you some real-world examples of why working hard at your age will make you have the life you actually want." Currently, grades just seem like this cold, metal, robotic, like lifeless number to aim toward. So that's purely extrinsic motivation; it's this arbitrary number that students feel like they have to get. So of course they're going to feel a lot of internal conflict and desperation because they don't actually want the grade; they want it because of what society says: "Like, you need to have this good grade," or the parents are like, "You need to have this good grade," right? So I think that's a big part of it. But what's really important for you to know as a student is that it's not your fault.
The reason you're struggling so hard with getting off your phone and studying harder and doing what you're supposed to do is because you think that it's your fault for not being disciplined enough. You need to realize that this capitalistic society is the one making it so hard for you. Stop fighting against yourself. If you have the mindset that it's your fault, that's exactly why you're not winning, because you cannot win against yourself, because that means you're also losing. You are not the problem. The solution is that you need to realize what you're actually fighting against, and that is fighting against—I didn't want to say capitalism—but you are fighting against these faceless companies that just want your money. Each second you spend giving your attention to these devices, think of that as not beneficial to yourself, but you are just giving money to these corporations, right? Money rules the country; it runs society. So this constant push of more content, of more ads, of selling more to you just permeates every inch of your life and all of your time to the point that you think it's your fault that you can't step away from it. No, you're literally being bombarded by these things.
I am so conflicted. I talked about this with my fiancée, Sha, about whether I should let my kid have a cell phone when all the other kids have a cell phone in the future. And the issue is like, I don't want them to feel alienated and to be left out, but I also know that to have a cell phone and to fit in, you will have to be consuming some form of social media; it's just not possible to have one without the other. So yeah, realize that you are in a hard situation; don't feel so bad about yourself and be like, "I'm so bad at this; I'm so bad at this." Like, you are literally plopped into a really, really tough situation where people are telling you you should get good grades, but at the same time, the society who wants you to get a good education so you can contribute to that society, they're also making it actually really hard to learn and to develop the skills that will be of an asset to them.
Once you start protecting and loving yourself instead of thinking you're the problem, that's when you can be fighting against the things that are harming your potential. Because you need to realize that by giving these companies a second of time, you're giving them that money, but that is the money that you could have earned yourself in the future after you've acquired the skills. This kind of mind reframing is what I had for the longest time; I don't even remember when I started thinking this way. And that's why a lot of people ask like, "How are you so disciplined?" I honestly don't even think of myself as disciplined because, to me, it's a simple choice of not giving random people my time and money. It's a simple choice that since I have the same goal as you of living my best life, I am going to protect myself; I love myself, and I'm going to give myself all the care and attention that I need. And that means that I'm not going to just be generous with my attention and be scrolling on TikTok.
In fact, my perspective of social media and scrolling on short-form, in particular, is that why would I want to subject myself to content that I might not even like? Why would I subject myself to the risk of swiping on a video that just makes me feel upset? With so many things we cannot control in the world—we cannot control our family; we cannot control our parents' wealth; we cannot control the body that we were born in—so why would we let one more thing that takes up our time be out of our control? With so many important aspects of our life—our relationships, our wealth, our well-being—time is also one of those. So I just don't want time to be out of my control.
This seems like I'm digressing a lot, but again, this is a very like holistic approach to education and the desperation I see in students and my subscribers, my viewers, on a daily basis. The point I'm trying to make here is number one, to help spark your realization, to light your light bulb of how you can actually break your social media addiction without deleting it completely. But number two is also to show the kinds of mindset that I wish school was teaching. Because I'm going to be frank, I was known to be pretty sure for my age, like all my life my dad would tell me this all the time. And what I think is just that I have a greater age like mentally where I kind of time travel in my mind and I'm like, "You know what would my future self be thinking if they were in my position?" Because I don't want to have regrets. The way to not have regrets is to know what my future self would have wanted my current self to—to do—is to realize on a big-picture level why I'm doing something, what this will even get me in the future, instead of just looking at grades as this thing that everyone says you should do, or this is just what I need to focus on for the next few months. I always think about the greater picture, and that makes it just easy to make the right decision. And at the end of the day, if schools were teaching these kinds of mindset things—not only actions—then that will make students' actions automatic. I still think that we need grades, but we will then automatically, way more easily, be making the right choices that will make getting the good grades easier.
Even though I said the social media addiction is not your fault, yes, it's not your fault completely. You, as a determined person—person who wants to achieve your potential and to get the best you can out of life—you can make that hard choice; you can get over that big bump of activation energy to fight against social media. So there is a certain amount of accountability that students still have to take. Similarly, that's also why I do think that students sometimes are just simply not working hard enough, and that's not because they're not studying hard enough, but it's because of the other things like screen time that are canceling out their efforts. I keep interchanging like third person and calling you a student, so I hope you can still follow along. Students are desperately emailing me, DMing me questions: "What do I do in this specific situation? Tell—tell me what to do here. Can you give me tips? Can you tell me what the study plan should be?" And that's exactly another problem of school: stop outsourcing your critical thinking.
The stereotype of school and the nerd is to be able to follow instructions such that then you are just an obedient, perfect employee in the future. This is why the students will ask me questions because they are not able to coach themselves and just take a moment and be like, "Actually, I am smart; I have a brain, so I need to come up with solutions that are not just handed to me on a checklist of things to do." I don't have to be given instructions for every little thing. To students, their classes and all they have to do is written out on a nice syllabus telling you exactly what you have to learn, but life isn't like that, and critical thinking is not like that. You are asking a YouTuber on the internet—me—for a syllabus of what to do in your particular life, and that is just not right. So that's also something missing from school; school needs to be teaching critical thinking within their current curriculum.
If a student has a bad grade, it is not just a one-dimensional reason; shrinking it down into, "Oh, just not smart; oh, they're just not hardworking." No. School should be encouraging creativity and problem-solving skills to achieve that certain goal. Grades are a way, like I said earlier, to create like an incentive that students will be working toward because, in life in general, you need to have things that you are trying to get. That's part of the beauty in life is to be growing. When you get in the workforce, you want to get a certain salary; you want to move to a certain place; you want to get a certain house. So instead of grades being this one-dimensional thing that you can get only if you study long and hard enough, why don't we think of that as a goal where we should let the students roam free and think critically and problem-solve to be like, "Here's your goal; figure out a way of how you're going to get that." And in class, you know what, let me give you a few stories of inspirational people who achieved other things against all odds, and maybe this will be a guide to inspire you to apply your own tips to your own life.
It sucks if you have bad grades because you might be treated as inferior; teachers might think of you as, "Oh, they just don't have it in them." Again, there are so many other areas outside of that. But I, personally, you know, even though I was—I was valedictorian; I attended Caltech, one of the hardest STEM universities in the world, and I actually got a 4.0. How I did that was not being a bookworm. I believe that I'm a pretty creative, resourceful, determined, dedicated person, and I was able to do that while being healthy. I would introduce my videos of like, "Oh, I was valedictorian as a varsity athlete with 8 hours of sleep." I said that as credibility, kind of thinking it was cringe because, "Oh, why do I have to say that 8 hours of sleep?" Apparently, that was a key—key thing that students wanted to hear. I got so many comments like, "Oh my gosh, like 8 hours of sleep; that's the most impressive thing." And to me, I was like, "What?" I didn't realize that because I just use a holistic approach—not a bookworm, brute-force approach—toward school and of reaching my goals, and I think that's the best way to do it because I prioritize health above all else, which I think you should too.
So at the end of the day, if it's my goals are held and good grades, well, I need to be creative and just figure out a way to get it done. I don't know how I'm going to achieve it, but I'm going to get her done. That's the attitude that will serve you beyond school; that's what schools should be teaching. So kind of back on to the thinking you're inferior if you have bad grades—I didn't think people were inferior if they had worse grades than me. I just looked at someone depending on their kindness, their dedication, their effort. I really, really value effort and respect someone who gives it their all for something they want. I value someone's passion; these are the things that I look at in a person. And just because they don't have these, I don't—I don't think like they're inferior, right? Inferior is a very like strong word; you should never think anyone's inferior. But my point is just like grades are so one-dimensional.
Another—another issue with the school system is bad teachers. And kind of going back to the critical thinking thing, the worst teachers in this current school system are math teachers. If you hate math and if you struggle in math, it is literally not your fault. Stop beating yourself up for it; you should be hating on your math teachers. And if you have a good one, okay, they're rare—like, like this special Pokémon out there—but I—I was lucky enough to have good math teachers. The issue with math teachers—and this is so funny because now I'm playing into the stereotype of people thinking all Asians are good at math—but the reason is because the way math is taught in Asia is just different; it's like mind-blowing. "Whoa, why is math in Asia better in the US?" Oh, maybe it's just taught differently. Yeah, because as a private math tutor, the questions I would ask my students: "What did your teacher say about this? How did your teacher explain this formula?" They didn't. My students are like, "Oh, they didn't say why this worked," and my students are like, "Oh yeah, I asked why this number is two, and they said it just is." And I'm like, "That's like the worst thing in the world." And imagine years and years of that kind of teaching from, you know, Algebra 1—"Oh, it just is"—all right? So the students like, "I'm just going to have to memorize that." Algebra 2, geometry—it stacks, you know, math is not horizontal; it's vertical. You stack one level on top of one another, and eventually the student is just crushed by the weight of these memorizations that they think they have to do when math is not memorizing, and it's literally the fault of your teachers because they are just setting you up for failure year after year by giving you no foundation, no problem-solving, no critical thinking whatsoever. So I'm very passionate about how bad math is in the US, if you couldn't tell. But what was I talking about again? Oh yeah.
On a more positive note, bad teachers actually come with some benefits because school, even though it seems like the safe place of structure and where students will learn how to tackle certain things that are more standardized for them, just like life, there are going to be struggles. If you had good teachers all your life, I think that's actually not a good thing. For example, I had a really, really bad AP Environmental Science teacher, but my goal at the end of the day was to still get an A+ and to still get a five on the AP exam. So just like I was saying before, like you have a goal, you have to think of your own way to get it. So I was like, "Okay, how am I going to get this A? I went on Amazon, found the Princeton Review book, and I was like, 'Mom, can you please buy me this?'" So we got it, and I read that thick book—I've never had to do that in my life before, like a complete thick book, right? I read that for like 20 minutes almost every night, quiz myself, I read like every page of it, probably like—that is crazy. And I could have just thought like, "This is not something I should have to do because I never had to teach myself and read a complete textbook because the teacher is supposed to guide me through with the one and a half hour lessons each day." But it doesn't matter; it doesn't matter if I thought that that was the way it was supposed to be because it's not. The current reality is that I have this teacher, and regardless, I have to find some way to get her done. So I did that, and I got that five—my self-made accomplishment. What did that build for me? That built resilience; that built proof of my own ability that I can get whatever I want in life given enough smart and hard work. So that experience made me, a few years down the road, when I last minute decided to apply and be a consultant—I was very late on the recruiting timeline—and for context, to become a Management Consultant, you have to get really good at casing, which is kind of like the technical interview but for business—oh man, I was behind; people were preparing for the case interview like a year earlier than me. But I didn't think of it explicitly at the time, but that AP Environmental Science experience was part of my portfolio, proving of what I could do. So without any paid resources, without a coach, I was resourceful, and I found people to help me case; I use an online platform and found strangers to case with; I watched tons of YouTube videos; I got tons of free guides and read things online. And guess what? I got the job; I got the job. Again, I proved to myself.
Then, on YouTube, I was struggling for the longest time; I had no one—no one to help me with YouTube, how to do anything, honestly. I learned everything from scratch. But did it even add me at the beginning? No, cuz I was like, "I don't know it; I don't know how to do this," but I'm going to know how to do it cuz I'm going to make myself be able to do it. There are free online resources out there, and until I tap out of every single free resource I can find, I'm not going to say I can't learn; I can't do it; it's too hard. Until I reach my upper limit, I'm chilling, you know? Like, I—I didn't. And even then, when I thought I was working really hard, I was getting discouraged by like 10 views on a video. Did I give up? No, because all the things I did in the past, I had struggles, but I prevailed; I always prevailed in some way, no matter how long, how much effort it took. And YouTube was honestly the hardest thing I ever did, but I—I still achieved; I—I accomplished, and—and I'm proud of myself. And this again all seems so unrelated because this video…
The topic was about education, right? But this is the holistic way of thinking. People assume that I'm a nerd. I did math competitions; I was so, so good, and I took AP Calc BC and AP Stats sophomore year. I'm not a genius, okay? I know what geniuses are like. I went to Caltech. They're probably not even Einstein geniuses. Also, the bell curve—that was too complicated.
The stereotype of a straight-A student or valedictorian is that, again, you're a nerd, you're a bookworm, you're always studying. But instead of being called a nerd most of the time in school, I was called a genius, and that's funny because, again, I am not a genius. I trust me, I'm not just saying that. And this smart approach is what makes getting those smart results just easier; they just like fall out. And that's why we need this holistic way of approaching school, of approaching grades, of approaching any goal, because you're building that repertoire of tools, skills, and knowledge you gained from trying to reach a goal that will carry you farther in life beyond the classroom, after you graduate from school. And those are the things that no one can take from you if you gain those skills in school, regardless of how the job market is doing, because then you'll be like, "No, I'm strong, I'm resilient; I'm going to find some way to get a job." And if not, I'm going to make my own job; I'm going to start my own business. And I'm not saying that's the easiest thing in the world, right? But in this market, with jobs being hard, heck, starting your own business and working 8 hours a day for yourself, building your own dream instead of building someone else's—does that actually sound that terrible or so hard compared to the other option? I don't think so, not in my perspective. And maybe my perspective is only because I have built that trust and pride in what I can do.
So yeah, that's why, even if you grind hard for grades, if you were actually that bookworm and could only follow instructions and are just going to be that devoted employee in the future, that's where things go wrong. That's when you realize, "Oh, grades weren't everything. Oh, that's why getting this degree doesn't mean I will have that bright future." No, you got—the grades are something that can be taken away from you, right? I know it's this like diploma or like transcript, whatever, right? But that is an arbitrary meaning where society can deem that unimportant at any point in time. But what is universally important is your—is what's inside of you. And I've said those words so many times before, but you know, like, blah, blah, blah. So, so for parents, you need to focus on the process, not just the results. Instead of telling your kid, "Why didn't you get that A?" or like, "Agent parents," B—B is for, you know, encourage them about the process. Like, "Hey, are you—do you think that you are trying to be smart about the way you're doing this? Do you think that you are using your time in a way that you're happy with? How can I help you? Is everything okay in your personal life? Are you happy? Are you—are you healthy? Are you energized? Am I cooking good meals for you? Am I being someone that you can feel inspired by? Does—do my struggles set an example for what I want you to do?" So, like, my parents, honestly, yeah, I think that they helped with a holistic part where my parents would talk about their struggles coming to the US, being immigrants from China, and yeah, that—that lit sparks for me. So yeah, as parents, don't focus so much on the results, 'cause again, the results are so one-dimensional, right? Focus on what we can control in this process. Your kids will probably appreciate you more because you're like, "Let me help you." Like, if you're not getting the good grades, maybe there's something that I can be doing better, because your kid wants to make you proud, right? They want to do their best, but being—being so young, like, they might not know what kinds of things to cut out, and they might not have that more mature awareness of what they're fighting against. Instead of scolding your kid for them not having self-control, why not talk to your kid about the mindset of, "Oh my gosh, these phones are so evil, man. Let's figure out a way to fight against them together." It's like that couples therapy advice, right? If you and your partner are fighting, you're not fighting against each other; you should think of you two fighting against the problem together; you're a team. So as a parent, you can be with your kid as the team and work on the motivation, the drive, and those other aspects more. That's what I think will—will help both parties.
The school system is kind of old, archaic, and what would be ideal would be to incorporate those elements I said before about how to help students achieve beyond school, beyond the classroom, within using the same curriculum. Because something I didn't say yet was like, "Oh, why do we have to learn biology? Why do we have to learn chemistry? Why do we have to learn this calculus?" Well, as students, there's no way to narrow down your interest if you don't cast a wide net and try everything first, right? Also, knowledge and exposure to all these different subjects will—will really help you. I mean, sometimes I'm like going about my life, right, and like I know not to stick a fork in the toaster because of conduction, right? Like, sometimes just like basic common sense knowledge you get in school, but that's also why you need critical thinking, because if you have critical thinking, you can connect the things you learn in school to your real life and apply it, and everything just boom, makes it easier. You'll probably do better on the test, too. So yeah, the educational system should still use the same kind of curriculum in terms of like subjects to cover, but just use a different approach of teaching, more holistic ways of achieving certain goals. And instead of honing the student's brain in terms of knowledge that you stuff in there, how about we shape and train the brain in terms of mindset? And not to—toot my own horn or anything, but—but just to like, you know, also kind—kind of hone the things that I found that I've learned and taught myself through struggles and through experience. When you have obstacles and things to pursue, that's the way to learn. I—I—I think like another thing about people thinking that um studying is easy for some people, or like people with good grades just love studying. I personally, I don't. I get a lot of joy from growing and like achieving things, so I don't just learn for the sake of learning. So that's why I think like having some kind of pursuit and being able to see visible progress is helpful for progressing in school and in life.
No one learned how to be successful in life by sitting at home and watching TikToks all day about random things, or even if you watch videos about how to be successful. No one gets successful by learning how to be successful. You have to do it yourself. You should learn from examples so that you can get there easier, but you've got to just do it yourself. You know, life is out there for you to live it in your own way, to go on your own path, and you are doing yourself a disservice by sitting at home because you're not letting—you're not letting life progress; you're not letting a chain of events unfold to take you further and further and go somewhere where you couldn't never imagined you would have gone. And that's the beautiful thing about life: like every day is an opportunity. You step outside; you don't know what's going to happen. You might meet someone amazing; you might see an adorable dog, but you would never know what you were missing if you were just watching Netflix at the end of the day. We need school because you think kids are going to do something proactively beneficial with their time, right? Einstein and like Newton, right? Okay, Newton was sitting under an apple tree when the apple fell on his head. Do you think that if Newton had TikTok when he was scrolling on his phone and the apple dropped on his head that he would have discovered gravity? No, he might have not even felt the apple on his head because he was too absorbed in the cat videos. Okay, so stop using these geniuses back then as reasons for not going to school. Okay, there are still few entrepreneurs I think in this day and age who like they just skip school and they go and build a business. Okay, that's something different. Go quit school and build your—um, dog-walking app or whatever, just a useful app. Like you can do that as long as you're doing something useful with your time. Like I don't really see that you have to use it in a specific way determined by society; it just has to be useful. Okay, at the end of the day, just use your time wisely.
The school system isn't currently doing the things I proposed, so now that you know this, go do it yourself. DIY your ideal school situation. And to all the math teachers out there, I'm sorry. I know it's probably not your fault either. Okay, I got a little fired up at you earlier, but you know, you can improve too. You might not be a little young and student anymore, but you can still improve, and you can make your students better. It'll be less reading for you too. It's getting goofier anyway. I don't know if people will like this or they even—I don't know. I was just really, really, really excited about this topic, and I have so many thoughts swirling in my head. I was like, "I need to get them out off of the paper and out into the world," because that's what we do nowadays, right? We have a thought and we put it on the internet and hope—I mean, I hope this video does well, but I'm not wearing any makeup, unfortunately. It's like all the videos where I try to look good, they don't do well. And then anyway, that's all. Stay in school, kids. Bye. This is Amy, by the way. I didn't say my name this whole time.