Sembreak | Grades and Learning

Everytime sembreak arrives, I always have this dilemma of looking for something nice to do. While most of my friends actually enjoy doing nothing during vacation (e.g. movie marathon, malling, out of town - yeah, that's nothing for me) I, on the other hand, keep on making myself busy with - guess what - academics. I do this because 1) I want to be prepared for the next semester; 2) I wanted to be productive and; 3) I simply want to study.

Most of my close friends tell me that I'm overly grade conscious because of this. Well, I'm actually fine with it. After all, studying is a very nice thing to do, but not really easy when you are in school and everything happens very simultaneously. I think that is why it is important for me study every now and then and have good grades in school because it constantly motivates me to do better on it and it tells me if I am actually good with what I am doing. Failing and even Mediocrity is never in my vocabulary. Good grades bring me satisfaction, or that's what I thought.

Last semester, I was able to get "the grade." Actually, this is already the second time that I was able to make it (the last one was during summer sem though, so I really don't consider it. But hey, I had a really tough summer). While my blockmates were happy for me, I was shocked to realize that I felt nothing towards it. Yes, I'm satisfied with my grade (what could get any higher?) but I think there's something missing.

Perhaps I was too much anticipating for this that it killed all the excitement and thrill when it actually arrived. Or it can mean another thing: I am not satisfied with what I've learned, which I think makes more sense.

I'm not saying that Ateneo is not teaching that much. I think that because I was too focused on academics I actually forgot to give time to myself to learn more about other things. Friendship is one of those.

I guess I should give focus on this one. I don't want to fail on it.