the school system sucks: measuring progress

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, an 18 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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btw, feel free to reply with topic ideas you want me to write about for future posts.

onto today’s topic: measuring progress 📏 

progress isn’t measured in school.

a “c” grade to an “a” grade isn’t progress being measured, it’s your capabilities to memorize being measured.

even with projects, progress isn’t measured — only the final result which presents itself as a submission box. progress is a monthly, weekly, and even daily thing. this incremental improvement isn’t recorded. in turn, no progress is truly made. ⌛️ 

you can only move forward if you truly internalize what you accomplished and failed at today. in school, you’re only told the result at the very end, and not during the process. your grade is the final and only measurement.

what about those school progress reports?

that’s nonsense to be honest. those reports just have checkboxes and give you a couple letters, the actual progress is left up to your interpretation of those scarce symbols.

school doesn’t have you set any goals beyond reaching x grade. you don’t set measurable goals about learning new skills, building projects or even just growing a club.

even if a teacher does do a one-off goal setting session for the class after new years, where’s the follow-up? 📋️ 

there’s no checking in after a month on those goals.

that’s why we don’t really get anything out of school. grades aren’t progress in the real world, so we don’t know how to move forward with things outside of that.

we don’t know if we’re actually making impact. if we’re growing. if we’re learning something valuable. if we’re making progress.

there’s no metric to measure real progress, because school isn’t built to help you make progress. 🏃 

so, you have to follow-up with yourself, and keep yourself accountable.

what is progress to you? how do you measure it?

daily opportunity + resource drops 🔍️