Would you rather be lazy or a good student?

Today I’m going to talk about the decision of being “lazy” or being a “good student”. First of all we need to distinguish what a good student is. When I talk about a good student, I mean the person that never fails a subject, someone that have good grades, attends every class and is always on time.

So, what does “lazy” means for me? Well, for me it means the opposite of a good student, someone that doesn’t go to every class, someone that doesn’t care if it is a good grade as long as it is a grade good enough to pass the subject.

So, what have I decided? None of them. Of course, you can be both, or you can be somewhere in between a lazy student and a good one. I mean, you can still pass your subjects, you can still attend to every class and you can still be a “good student”, but that doesn’t mean you have to be the best or a remarkable student. Why? Well, because I’m a human, and I know that being a good student is what we are supposed to do, but I can’t be happy knowing that the only reason I wake up every morning, the only reason I eat and keep myself alive is to be a “good student”.

In life, we are supposed to study at school, get good grades to get into a good university to have a good job, to earn money and pay your bills as part of the society that we live in. But why? Why should we do that? Because they say so? There is a story about an experiment that I always think about, and it says (I will make a summary at the end if the story is too long):

“The experiment involved 5 monkeys, a cage, a banana, a ladder and, crucially, a water hose.

The 5 monkeys would be locked in a cage, after which a banana was hung from the ceiling with, fortunately for the monkeys (or so it seemed…), a ladder placed right underneath it.

Of course, immediately, one of the monkeys would race towards the ladder, intending to climb it and grab the banana. However, as soon as he would start to climb, the sadist (euphemistically called “scientist”) would spray the monkey with ice-cold water. In addition, however, he would also spray the other four monkeys…

When a second monkey was about to climb the ladder, the sadist would, again, spray the monkey with ice-cold water, and apply the same treatment to its four fellow inmates; likewise for the third climber and, if they were particularly persistent (or dumb), the fourth one. Then they would have learned their lesson: they were not going to climb the ladder again – banana or no banana.

In order to gain further pleasure or, I guess, prolong the experiment, the sadist outside the cage would then replace one of the monkeys with a new one. As can be expected, the new guy would spot the banana, think “why don’t these idiots go get it?!” and start climbing the ladder. Then, however, it got interesting: the other four monkeys, familiar with the cold-water treatment, would run towards the new guy – and beat him up. The new guy, blissfully unaware of the cold-water history, would get the message: no climbing up the ladder in this cage – banana or no banana.

When the beast outside the cage would replace a second monkey with a new one, the events would repeat themselves – monkey runs towards the ladder; other monkeys beat him up; new monkey does not attempt to climb again – with one notable detail: the first new monkey, who had never received the cold-water treatment himself (and didn’t even know anything about it), would, with equal vigour and enthusiasm, join in the beating of the new guy on the block.

When the researcher replaced a third monkey, the same thing happened; likewise for the fourth until, eventually, all the monkeys had been replaced and none of the ones in the cage had any experience or knowledge of the cold-water treatment.

Then, a new monkey was introduced into the cage. It ran toward the ladder only to get beaten up by the others. Yet, this monkey turned around and asked “why do you beat me up when I try to get the banana?” The other four monkeys stopped, looked at each other slightly puzzled and, finally, shrugged their shoulders: “Don’t know. But that’s the way we do things around here”…”

In summary, what the story talks about is about how we follow everyone else just because they say so. And that’s when I say: Why? We are living the only life we have, at the age we will never be able to be again. So if they ask me, what would you rather be: lazy or a good student? I will always, always! Choose lazy, because if being lazy to you, it means living life for me, I don’t want to be a good student, I want to be alive.