Friday, December 17, 2010

In the coulda, shoulda, woulda category

Here's a new one on me. People who do better in school, are healthier. So if I had been a better student, would I be healthier?

In high school, I was not the academic. Can I just leave it at that? I didn't correlate the 'go to class' part with the 'get good grades' part. Well, not all the time. But I did relatively well on my SATs. It was actually a highly ranked public high school. I studied overseas twice in the summers. I did graduate, barely. The barely part was my failure to like wearing one of those nasty gym suits and attending gym class.

Then I took a year off - one of the smartest things I did and worked in a restaurant - where I really decided I wanted to do more with my life. I did go to a small college in the midwest which less than half the size of my high school. I actually studied there. But grades were tough. You could talk to seniors who had never gotten an A, even though they had studied. A's were rare. Failing a class wasn't that unheard of. I dropped a class once because I couldn't hack it - the professor was rumored to fail 1/3 and I wasn't doing well so I dropped it instead of failing.

This is the long way of saying I ended up being a B student with crappy health. So if I was an A student, would I be healthy?

2 comments:

Lauren said...

That is an interesting study. I think it would be interesting to know what they classify as "better" in school. I like to think B's would count since C's are average, but I have alway's been a B student. I'm choosing not to believe this study. Surely there is hope that our health will improve someday!

Debby said...

Nah. People who do better in school have a tendency to read more, be interested in their health, take preventative action, etc. People who don't are generally poorly motivated, don't read up on things, take no preventative action, etc.

It's a natural thing. There are people who strive to better themselves, and they do, rising above all sorts of difficulties. Some people begin life not striving, and they never get past it.

If I heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. Correlation does not prove causation.
Merry Christmas.

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