I have always done well in school my whole life. Throughout both elementary and high school, I had rarely gotten close to a failing grade in anything. And even the few times I did, the weight of those assignments or tests was not that significant, and as you eventually learn, high school marks don’t matter that much once you reach a certain point.

When I got to university, I had planned on taking school a bit more seriously. Unlike high school where you have numerous tests, assignments and exams per course (and thus, failing a single test probably does not affect your final mark too much), university courses tend to be composed of fewer components that are worth more. As a result, messing up even one test could now significantly hurt your final mark. For example, the microeconomics course I took last year had two tests (25% each) and one final exam (50%). The final exam itself had just 40 multiple choice questions, meaning that each question was worth 1.25% of my final mark!

However, the bigger reason why I wanted to take my university academics more seriously is because I was interested in eventually applying to medical school. While medical schools differ on how much they value GPA, the fact of the matter is that given the competitive nature of the process, it makes sense to do your best. You will never know when that extra point might just be the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.

Nonetheless, the reality is that university is more difficult than high school. And while I wasn’t expecting it, I did hit a rough patch during the fall of my first year. There was a particular week where, back to back, I got the two worst marks I have ever received in university so far – 60’s on both a physics and chemistry test. I was partly upset because of how it could affect my final marks in the course, but I think I was even more hurt because I expected to do better than that.

However, did this mean I was now a C-student in my physics and chemistry courses?

Expectation and the Long Run

The short answer is no, not necessarily. What you achieve on a single test is not a perfect indicator of your ability – that’s why you normally have more than one evaluated component to a course. The idea is that the more times you need to be marked, the greater the probability that your scores will converge on your long-term expected mark. So while it may be possible for you to fail or ace a single test due to unforeseen circumstances or random luck, it is way more difficult to do so over many tests.

For example, say you and I decide to flip a single coin. You pick heads, and as it turns out, the coin lands heads. Does this mean you are way better at flipping coins than I am? Not necessarily. Something working out once or a few times doesn’t mean that it is always going to turn out that way.

Why do you think major sports leagues tend to have multi-game playoffs? For example, in both the NHL (hockey) and the NBA (basketball), the playoffs involve teams playing a best of 7 series (i.e. the first time to win four games moves on to the next round). The idea here is to reduce variance by having teams play more than once.

Although it is possible that a technically worse team could defeat a better one in a best of 7 series, that is less likely to occur than in a best of 1 series. The fact that one team loses a single game does not mean it is a worse team than the other – so many factors could have affected the result (e.g. injuries, mental lapses, etc.). Even if one team is so much better than the other that it should win 90% of the time, that still means the better team should also lose 10% of the time. It is nearly impossible for a team to have a 100% success rate against any other team in competitive sports.

In the same way, just because I got 60% on my two tests, does not necessarily mean that I am a long-term 60% student in first year chemistry and physics. However, in the same way, achieving 90% on those two tests isn’t enough proof to suggest that I am not a long-term 60% student either. In either case, the sample size just isn’t large enough.

As it turned out, thanks to some luck and hard work, I was able to pull off A+’s in both those courses. Although those results are by no means definitive of my abilities, I think it is pretty safe to say that my long term expectation in first year physics and chemistry courses is closer to an A than to a C. While analyzing a random test result during the year might say otherwise, one of the things you must constantly remember is that the long-term is always more important. That’s why your final mark, which takes into account an entire year or semester’s worth of evaluated components, is what you find on your transcript and some random single test is not.

If you studied hard and fell sick the morning of one of your exams, what more could you have really done? Imagine a hypothetical scenario where you had to take the same type of exam everyday for a year. Perhaps when healthy, you would average 90% on the exam. However, when sick, you would average 20%. And let’s say that you always get sick 10 days a year (out of 365 days). In that case, if this exam occurred on any random day, your long term expected value for this specific exam would be [355(0.90) + 10(0.20)]/365 = 0.88 = 88%. So while your expected mark for this exam is 88%, it is very possible to have a bad, sick day where you actually achieve ~20% and there was nothing you could have done about it.

If you do fall sick on the day of your exam and do poorly, it helps to ignore the short-term result and realize the fact that over time your hard work will pay off, and that if you had to do this exam again, you do extremely well it most of the time. Your university years will be full of tests and exams, and understanding your long term expectation in the process will go a long way to keeping your self-confidence stable no matter what unfortunate circumstances are thrown your way.

Problems with Being Results-Oriented

Sometimes you are going to fail miserably in the short term; on the other hand, sometimes you will do absolutely fantastic. Realize that whether you succeeded or failed is not as important as understanding why that result happened – this is an important concept that results-oriented individuals have trouble understanding.

Being results-oriented refers to basing one’s understanding of events primarily on the specific results. The major problem with being results-oriented is that it relies on the false assumption that results are constants. People who are results-oriented tend to think only in terms of absolutes, with ideas such as “events will or won’t happen” instead of “events are more likely or less likely to happen”.

For example, say you are travelling by passenger plane and it almost crashes. A results-oriented person on that flight would immediately say flying is too dangerous and never fly again. Instead of trying to figure out exactly why that specific flight had problems, a results-oriented person just takes that single horrifying event and assumes all other flights will be like it.

While that example might seem absurd to some of you, I would bet that many of you are results-oriented in every day aspects of your life.

Say you are taking a course with a final exam that involves writing an essay. You are given four topics beforehand, and are told one of them will be used on the exam. Obviously, the smart thing to do is prepare for all four topics. However, maybe you were lazy or low on time, so you decide to only prepare for Topic 1. As it turns out, Topic 2 is used on the exam. More often than not, you will leave the exam saying: “I knew I should have studied Topic 2!” Yet the fact of the matter was that Topic 1 was equally likely to have shown up on the exam as Topic 2.

Imagine if you were results oriented with everything in your life. If you failed one test, you would just go ahead and quit school – if you can’t pass one test, then maybe you can’t pass any of them. Or if you didn’t get into medical school your first try you would just give up and think you weren’t capable. Or, worse, if you survived jumping off a building once you would think you are immortal and try it again – okay that was a bit extreme, but I just wanted to illustrate the problems with results-oriented thinking.

Results-oriented thinking is illogical. It’s like thinking that because you rolled a six with a die once, you will keep rolling six for the rest of your life.

It’s important to not let the results of events affect your decisions. Just because you over studied one time for a test does not necessarily mean you should start under-studying now. Or just because you do poorly on one test does not mean you can’t do better on the next.

Once you realize this, it becomes much easier to deal with failure and frustration.

If you work hard, in the long-term, the results will come.