LvC Part 1: The School Complacency

Applying yourself is never as simple as it looks...

Abstract

When in a consistent environment it can be difficult to step back and evaluate your situation holistically, especially without any incentive or challenge to do so.

Evaluating holistically to me means to analyse from various perspectives and then issuing a judgement based on the information/evidence provided.

It is key to evaluate even outside of essays and school, as it provides clarity and may open your eyes to an element you couldn’t see before.

In a personal context, it asks of you whether your decision-making is strategic, leading to smarter decisions.

Why this is important is because your standards can unknowingly assimilate to your environment as it provides a metric and a baseline for what you do.

Alongside this, by setting the benchmark based on what is around you, already comparison is taking place.

Therefore, with no questions as to why we should reflect, we won’t know its purpose and importance.

In this thought-piece we will explore my present reflections on my time at secondary school with reference to a friend’s experience also, where I invite you to step into our shoes as I will do for the rest of the series.

Discussion

What does it mean to be ‘smart’?

Towards the end of secondary school, I realised how the word ‘smart’ can promote a fixed mindset.

First as a false narrative, but second as a neat conclusion to explain the work you don’t see.

To some extent, I acknowledged the arrogance that comes with thinking of yourself as smart alongside the fact that only I can know how much work I put in behind closed doors.

As a label though, it almost dismisses all the hard work as if your results are a solely a combination of your inherent talents.

‘Smart’ in this context relates to being academically proficient.

Outside of school, at around Year 11, I substituted the word ‘smart’ for being ‘academically able’.

This is because, the idea of being smart at the time only adhered to the methods used to measure a student’s ability.

In light of our strengths and weaknesses, the way we are assessed dictates how we display our ability.

A person may be an adept writer, which aids them for their essay-based subjects, whereas another person may be an excellent speaker, which aids them for their oral exams.

Alongside the variances in our qualities, where applicable in a school setting, it meets the constraints of a syllabus and a marking scheme for each subject, which effectively narrows the scope as to how we can think and act outside the box.

Despite this, you may argue that there are a variety of extracurricular opportunities to put these qualities to use.

At the end of the day though, what gets assessed?

As the focus at the end of school is solely on grades, anything extra is just the cherry on top.

However, to encompass these activities fully, I recently came across a nice and concise definition of ‘smart’.

It went along the lines of how well a person can get what they want.

Although vague, it generally agrees with various situations and certainly bypasses the academic merit of being smart as a result of our ability to memorise what we have learnt.

Why I start with this though is because as I highlighted, it was only towards the end of secondary school I realised this, and this is where the story of complacency begins.

Not overconfidence, not arrogance, but something out of sight.

A blind complacency of being in the top set class for all but one of my subjects throughout secondary school and consistently being one to obtain the higher results in tests.

The reason I say ‘blind complacency’ in this case is because it wasn’t a straightforward and visible repercussion, rather a side product of a culmination of factors.

One of those factors that worked alongside my attainment was recognition.

Not only upholding the standard of myself, but also the reputation that comes with the recognition.

2021: Winning the Highest GCSE Attainment Award

It was a balancing act.

At the ages 11-15, my mentality questioned the point of risking that reputation - why publicly fail?

By publicly fail I mean putting your hand up for a question you may not know the full answer to, but trying anyways.

For me it was only if I knew 100 percent that I had the right answer (or believed so).

So the tightrope was assessing which difficult questions within my capability I would answer to show I was present, and my expectation was that further down the line the challenges will come as I progress in each subject.

The assumption was that with progressing years, the work will become inherently more difficult, which was entirely reasonable.

Firstly though, I never asked to whom the future work will become more difficult.

The present version of myself, or the version I project in a years’ time?

There was a clear weakness in my projections as I didn’t pay too much attention or too much mind to them.

I treated myself as a control variable in order to make sense of the expectation I had for the future.

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Side by side evaluation - 11+ exams

My friend was in a grammar school since Year 7 in comparison with me going to a non-selective school, where my objective was maintaining and advancing my standards, unbeknownst to me at the time.

We both did the 11+ which is something I’ll get onto in my next post.

Photo by Edurne Tx on Unsplash

First, I will acknowledge the disparity between getting a desired school in comparison to me getting my last choice school and its effect on mindset.

Being 10/11, from my perspective I already had a ladder to climb as I was exposed to what could have been, compared to what the fact of the matter was.

Conversely, I would think that getting into your top choice secondary school would have been incomprehensible as to the magnitude of the feat reached.

This was an age where we cared for this because our parents cared so much.

For me, this was personally communicated by highlighting the possibilities getting into a grammar school could unlock.

As a second-generation immigrant and my friend being a first, this was the door for our parents to achieve their ultimate goal:

For us to do better than them.

Being in a reputable grammar school from Year 7 though, can lead to complacency.

‘I am smart enough to get into one of the best schools.’

But this isn’t the complacency you are thinking of.

I’m not referring to overconfidence: walking around, chest out, and arms swinging like Conor McGregor.

At that age this was just our reality.

I am talking about the risk of complacently falling into a fixed mindset of being ‘smart’.

If all you see is getting into the best of the best, you would say the job is done.

The tutoring, the countless books of practice, even the fact that you had to do verbal and non-verbal reasoning which didn’t exist in my world only a couple of years prior to doing the 11+.

It all came down to that confirmation that you had passed.

That was the largest active commitment we had made to date.

It was only active and a commitment due to the effort our parents put in.

Given my friend had got into one of the schools his parent’s had desired, it would seem the future was written out.

All of the opportunities and facilities; from the teachers to the school grounds - that was the goal.

However, those facilities our parents were ramping on about would only be of use if we utilise them. 🤷🏾‍♂️

From where I sit now, I could only assume that complacency was one of my friend’s worse enemies.

Furthermore, there is also the point that a person can become complacent but also reliant on the standards of the institution itself:

• As long as they adhere to the class standard, they will do just as well as everyone else around them.

Potentially, there are two sides to this.

One side is being wilfully lazy as a result of your abilities being enough to fulfil the minimum standard expected of you already.

The other side is more interesting - a subconscious element.

Being off sighted to what the person can aspire to, e.g. already obtaining the highest grades available and therefore setting goals solely on that rather than developing another area alongside it.

Even away from the extreme case of obtaining the highest grades possible, there is also a tendency to say the grades obtained are good enough and then satisfice based on that belief.

Especially in the case of achieving a grade 8-9 at GCSE for example, which was the standard of some.

Only later down the line would we realise that these distinctions in marks, even before the grade itself, are so crucial.

The difference between your marks and the grade boundaries can be make or break.

But even when getting to this point of realisation, you have manifested in complacency.

In this case, it now presents a challenge for you to adapt your mindset drastically in relation to studying or exam preparation.

A key facet of complacency to be aware of is its ability to have complete oversight on everything you do.

In my opinion, being complacent in different facets of your life when aggregated, can make you complacent.

It’s almost like you have hardwired yourself to relax at a certain point, to which when only a severe repercussion comes as a result of it, you are forced to change.

It may be argued that this plays hand in hand with the laziness point made of being wilfully lazy once you have fulfilled the minimum requirement.

When looking at both sides, I think there may be a unifying element between them.

Both sides pertain to being a ‘product of your environment’ as dependent on our expectations, we can formalise why a person may sit on either side of the fence when it comes to the root of their complacency.

Complacency can feed into laziness or ignorance as a result of a fixed mindset or lack of reflection.

However, the later can certainly be forgiven, because at 11-15, what did we really care about?

Conclusion

Sometimes we can drift into states of mind that can hold us back.

Part of that can be as a result of our actions, but our environment cannot be ignored.

Whether the impact of it is counterproductive or beneficial is for us to decide in reflection, and it is also our responsibility to define our surroundings in our own terms.

To think that the thinking has been done for us is a perfect example of falling into complacency.

It then becomes the same old story of making minor mistakes, brushing over them, then only waking up when something goes extremely wayward.

One thing I took away from this post is how much goes into the triumphs we celebrate and the challenges we endure.

Few things become inevitable before we are able to take action on them; it is whether we realise our ability to act on them early on.

This post explored complacency through a common family goal, for me and my friend, and as time goes on it is on us to make and reach our own targets and goals.

So, one question I have for you is as follows:

Is the person behind your goal the same one who would hold themselves accountable in reaching it?

It is one thing to plan, another to execute, and finally another thing to be in the situation you intended.

P.S.

Watch out for Part 2!

Experience of 11+? Reach out and share your experience.

Where can complacency manifest in your life?

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