Grades.

Little letters that seem to determine everything. If you are an average student at my high school, A's seem to be the only acceptable grade, and anything less than perfection will ruin your precious GPA. If you do not get that perfect 4.0 (or higher) you will not get scholarships.
You will not go to a good college.
You will not get a good job.
You will ruin your chance at a happy life; or so it seems, because that is how much grades are stressed. In high school, we are being prepped for examination, building our resume to stand out compared to all others. Due to this, I feel as though many individuals' reasoning for getting involved and doing well in school is purely for college purposes.
Because all this hard work is leading up to so much of our future.
As a student, I believe I am able to make the claim that learning is now only considered how much a student can memorize before a test. And when you are only able to recall four of the six, you fall short of perfection and your percentage drops a few places. In hindsight, going from an 92%  to a 90% does not seem like a big deal, but when you put it one the scale, an A- looks a lot worse than an A. The margin of error is so incredibly small in the grading system, the idea of perfection should be every one's dream goal, but maybe not their realistic one. However, is it decided for us that it is our expectation to be A students, because there is no chance for us to succeed in the real life if we do not succeed now.
We most likely will not all become analytical critics of literature, or the next person to discover the 119th element. I am in no means trying to say that we should not be given the opportunities to be that if we want to be, but I feel as if we should not be judged based on our overall abilities in all subjects, when we should be judged on what we advance on.