In the United States, most schools require students to spend approximately 180 days in school per year for about 6.64 hours a day, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This means that, assuming each person attends about 12 years of school, 6.4 hours a day, for approximately 180 days a year, each person will spend about 14,342.4 hours attending school in their lifetime. That’s 14,342.4 hours spent filling student’s heads with information that most of them will never need to use again in their life; 14,342.4 hours being defined by a number or a letter that is supposed to measure one’s intelligence. Now, while I do not necessarily believe that those hours are wasted, I do believe that school does not test your intelligence, but that it still ultimately succeeds in preparing students for their future endeavors.

I’ve always been a strong believer that grades are not a true reflection of one’s intelligence and that anybody has the ability to do well in school. Anybody can study eight hours in order to pass an exam, and anybody can memorize random facts only to forget them the following year. With the recent advancements in technology, cheating has become significantly easier to do, and many students rely on outside resources in order to pass their classes.

In addition, I have seen many of my highly intelligent peers not receive A’s in all of their classes simply because they do not enjoy certain subjects that they are required to take. Because of this, they choose not to apply themselves in those classes; instead they just show up to take the tests and hope for the best.

This is why students who find themselves struggling in school aren’t necessarily “stupid”, nor are the students with perfect A’s necessarily smart. As Peter Tait notes in The Telegraph, “measuring intelligence through examination is, inevitably, as limited as the examination itself.”

So why even go to school if getting good grades does not reflect your intelligence? Why suffer through 14,342.4 hours and 180 days, knowing that you’re being graded on information that you will never need to use later in life?

Although grades are not a true reflection of one’s intelligence, they do show the amount of work ethic each student has, and who is willing to apply themselves even when they do not want to. While they teach information that most students will never need to use again in their lives, they also teach students how to still be successful when given an unstructured, confusing world. This is because one must be able to learn, adapt, and persevere through challenging subjects through school. School challenges you with difficult circumstances to help you grow as an individual.

This is why colleges and jobs accept students based off of their GPA, even though it doesn’t measure intelligence. They don’t care about the gifted individuals who are highly intelligent — they care about the people who aren’t going to quit when things get hard and show resilience when given a challenging task. They care about the people who can adapt to different teaching styles, yet still be successful in any environment. From a GPA, people may not necessarily be able to tell how intelligent you are, but they can still see if you’ve mastered basic skills, such as the ability to ask for help, the ability to overcome challenges and build social skills.

Now, many people will argue that they are a good student and have mastered the skills mentioned above, yet they are still not receiving the grades that they would like to. This is because people have been conditioned to believe that a bad grade means stupidity, when in fact it means that your strengths lie elsewhere. People don’t tell you that you’re stupid for being a bad artist, so they should stop telling you that you’re stupid for being bad at math (or any other subject). As Albert Einstein said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Even so, by grading a person on their capabilities (whether it be through academics, the arts or athletics), and acknowledging that nobody is perfect, people can begin looking at their grades as a way to determine what path they should follow in their future, rather than a way to show their intelligence. Stop thinking of yourself as being stupid if you are not happy with your grades and don’t get cocky with the assumption that you are smart if you have good grades. Have faith that school will prepare you for your future by teaching you that a good work ethic leads to success and by helping you find out where you belong in the world. Just remember: although grades don’t measure your intelligence, they don’t have to be a bad thing.