Laura: The single biggest lie we're told about college? That your grades matter. In fact, chasing A's might be the very thing holding you back from a truly successful and creative life. Sophia: Whoa, hold on. That's a huge claim. My entire life, from kindergarten to my last final exam, has been about getting good grades. Are you telling me that was all a waste of time? Laura: Not a waste, but maybe a misdirection of energy. And it’s a provocative idea, I know, but it’s the central argument of a fascinating book we’re diving into today: What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain. Sophia: Okay, so who is Ken Bain to come in and just blow up the entire GPA system? What’s his background? Laura: That's what makes this so compelling. He’s not some pop-psych guru. Ken Bain is a highly respected historian by training who became one of America’s leading experts on university teaching and learning. He founded four major teaching centers at top universities. So he’s spent his life studying this from both sides—how great teachers teach, and how brilliant students actually learn. Sophia: A historian studying learning. That’s an interesting combination. So he’s looking at this with a different lens. Laura: Exactly. He’s not just looking at test scores. He conducted a deep, qualitative study of people who became highly creative and successful after college—people like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, comedian Stephen Colbert, and MacArthur 'Genius' grant winners. He wanted to know what they did in college that set them up for that kind of life. And his research starts by completely dismantling that myth about grades.

Laura: Bain makes a critical distinction right away between three types of learners. There are "surface learners," who just memorize to pass the test. Then there are "strategic learners," who are really just hunting for A's. They’ll do whatever it takes to get the top grade, but they might not actually care about the material. Sophia: I think we all know people like that. Maybe we've even been that person, figuring out exactly what the professor wants to hear on an essay. Laura: We've all been there. But the people Bain profiles are what he calls "deep learners." They're driven by curiosity. They want to understand the underlying meaning, the 'why' behind the facts. They're connecting ideas, not just collecting them. Sophia: That sounds nice in theory, but in the real world, you need good grades for grad school, for med school, for your first job. Isn't this advice a bit out of touch or maybe even a little privileged? Like, it's easy to say 'don't worry about grades' if you're not worried about paying off student loans. Laura: That's a fair and important critique, and it's one some readers have had with the book. Bain acknowledges the practical pressures. But his point is that the intention behind your learning is what matters for long-term success. He cites a study where physicists tested 600 students before and after an intro physics course. The shocking finding? A student's grade had no correlation with whether they actually understood the core concepts of motion. A-students were just as likely to have learned nothing as C-students. Sophia: Wow. So they got an A but still didn't get it. They were just good at playing the game of school. Laura: Precisely. And the book’s foundational story is about someone who learned to stop playing that game. It’s the story of Sherry Kafka. She grew up in extreme rural poverty in the Ozarks, moved so often she attended sixteen different schools. She was brilliant, but her background was anything but privileged. Sophia: Sixteen schools. I can't even imagine. Laura: Right? But it taught her to be incredibly adaptive. When she got to college, she made a rule for herself: every semester, she would take one class "just for me," regardless of how it looked on her transcript. One semester, she chose a strange course in the Drama Department called 'Integration of Abilities.' Sophia: 'Integration of Abilities.' That sounds incredibly vague and probably useless for a resume. Laura: Completely. And the class was as weird as its name. It was held in a theater with four stages and revolving chairs. The professor, Paul Baker, sat casually on the stage and told the students, "This is a class in discovering your own creative ability... all you will have to help you is yourself." Sophia: That sounds both terrifying and amazing. The opposite of every lecture hall I've ever been in. Laura: It was. The exercises were totally unconventional. Students had to walk across a stage to express tragedy, or draw lines from nature and then physically 'walk them out.' Baker's whole philosophy was that every single person is unique—your background, your family, your 'soil,' as he called it—and that your unique perspective is the source of all creativity. He wasn't teaching them facts; he was teaching them to understand themselves. Sophia: So what happened to Sherry? Did this 'useless' class actually lead to anything? Laura: It changed her entire life. She said it taught her that she was the only one responsible for her own education. She went on to become a world-renowned designer and urban planner. She redesigned cities, published a novel, made documentaries. And she attributed all of it back to that one class, which taught her how to integrate her abilities and think creatively, not just what to put on a test. It wasn't about the grade; it was about her own growth.

Sophia: Okay, so if the goal isn't grades, but this kind of deep, creative thinking like Sherry Kafka developed, how do you even cultivate that? It seems like you'd have to be willing to fail a lot, to take classes where you don't know the 'right' answer. Laura: Exactly! And that's the second massive idea in the book: the most successful people have a completely different relationship with failure. Bain builds on the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her famous theory of mindset. Sophia: Oh, the 'growth mindset' versus 'fixed mindset.' I've heard of this. Laura: Right. Dweck found that people generally fall into one of two camps. Those with a 'fixed mindset' believe their intelligence is a static, unchangeable trait. So when they fail, it’s a devastating judgment on who they are. They avoid challenges because they don't want to risk 'looking dumb.' Sophia: That makes so much sense. It's like thinking your brain is hardware that you're just stuck with. Laura: A perfect analogy. But people with a 'growth mindset' believe intelligence can be developed through effort and learning. For them, failure isn't a verdict; it's just feedback. It's information. It's a sign they need to try a different strategy. It’s like seeing your brain as software you can constantly upgrade. Sophia: And the best students in Bain's study all had this growth mindset? Laura: Overwhelmingly. He tells the story of Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm Pilot and the Treo, which was essentially the world's first smartphone. After college, Hawkins was obsessed with one question: how does the brain work? He went to Intel and pitched them on building 'brain-like memory chips.' They basically laughed him out of the room. Sophia: Ouch. That's a pretty big rejection. Laura: Then he applied to the AI program at MIT, the best in the world. They rejected him too, saying his focus on the biological brain didn't fit their programming-centric approach. Sophia: Wow. Most people would just give up after being rejected by both Intel and MIT. They'd figure, 'Well, I guess I'm not smart enough for this.' Laura: But Hawkins didn't. He had a growth mindset. He didn't see it as a judgment on his intelligence; he saw it as a problem to solve. He thought, 'Okay, that path is blocked. What's another way?' He went to work at a different company, taught himself biophysics through correspondence courses, and kept tinkering. He eventually invented the Palm Pilot, made a fortune, and then used that money to start his own neuroscience institute to finally answer his original question. Sophia: That's incredible. He had to build a billion-dollar industry just to fund his own research project because the establishment said no. Laura: Exactly. He embraced what Stephen Colbert, another person Bain studied, calls the art of 'bombing.' Colbert learned in improv theater that you have to be okay with failure, you have to love it, because that's where the real learning and creativity happens. A fixed mindset is about proving you're smart. A growth mindset is about getting smarter.

Laura: This resilience isn't just about 'grit,' though. Bain argues it comes from a healthier internal toolkit. And this might be the most surprising idea in the book. Sophia: More surprising than 'grades don't matter'? I'm intrigued. Laura: It's the idea of choosing Self-Compassion over Self-Esteem. For decades, we've been told that high self-esteem is the key to happiness and success. But a lot of research, which Bain highlights, shows that the frantic chase for self-esteem can be toxic. Sophia: How so? We're all taught to 'build our self-esteem.' It seems like a good thing. Laura: The problem is when our self-esteem is contingent on external things—like getting an A, winning a game, or getting likes on social media. It makes our sense of self-worth incredibly fragile. One bad grade, one rejection, and our whole world collapses. It creates massive anxiety. Bain connects this to the mental health crisis on many college campuses. Sophia: That's a powerful point. The pressure to constantly perform and prove your worth is exhausting. So what's the alternative? What is self-compassion? Laura: It's a concept from researcher Kristin Neff, and it has three parts. First, self-kindness: treating yourself with the same care you'd give a friend when you fail. Second, common humanity: recognizing that suffering and failure are universal parts of the human experience, not something that isolates you. And third, mindfulness: observing your painful feelings without being consumed by them. Sophia: That feels so much more stable. It's not about being better than others; it's about being human with others. I can see how that would build real resilience. Laura: It's a game-changer. And Bain tells the heartbreaking story of Eliza Noh, a student at Columbia. She grew up under the immense pressure of the 'model minority' stereotype. Her older sister, who faced even more pressure, tragically died by suicide. Eliza was devastated and tried to write her senior thesis on the topic, but the trauma was too much and she had a breakdown. Sophia: Oh, that's awful. Laura: It was. But her healing began when she started to see her sister's death not just as an individual family tragedy, but as part of that 'common human experience.' She connected it to the societal pressures on Asian American women, the impossible beauty standards, the academic stress. By contextualizing it, she could be kind to herself and her family. She developed self-compassion, finished her doctorate, and became a leading scholar on that very topic, turning her pain into purpose. Sophia: Wow. That's an incredible story of turning trauma into a force for understanding. It really shows the power of that 'common humanity' piece. Laura: It does. And that leads to the final, unconventional tool in the toolkit: embracing a broad, and what some might call 'useless,' education. The book is a huge argument for the liberal arts. Sophia: Ah, the classic debate. The pressure today is all about getting a 'practical' degree in business, engineering, or computer science. Laura: Exactly. But Bain shows how the most creative people use their broad knowledge to make unique connections. The best example is a student named Emma Murphy. She was a Political and Social Thought major at the University of Virginia. She never took the MCAT exam. And during her junior year, she won admission to the prestigious Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Sophia: Wait, how is that possible? No pre-med, no MCAT? Laura: Because her application was all about her deep, interdisciplinary thinking. She had taken a Russian literature class where she led seminars for incarcerated youth. She wrote about connecting Tolstoy to her own past struggles with an eating disorder and the feeling of being confined. The medical school saw someone with profound empathy, critical thinking skills, and a deep understanding of the human condition. They realized those qualities were far more valuable than a perfect score in organic chemistry. They saw a great future doctor, not just a great test-taker.

Laura: So when you put it all together, Bain is offering a kind of three-step dance for a more meaningful education. First, you redefine success away from the fragile metric of grades. Second, you build a resilient growth mindset that actually embraces failure as data. And third, you fuel it all with a more stable internal toolkit of self-compassion and a wide-ranging, ravenous curiosity. Sophia: It’s a fundamental shift in perspective. It moves the central question from 'How do I prove I'm smart?' to 'How can I become more interested, more capable, and more connected to the world?' It’s about the process, not the proof. Laura: Precisely. And Bain's ultimate point is that the most creative people—the ones who truly change things, like Jeff Hawkins or Sherry Kafka—they aren't trying to be creative. They're just so lost in solving a problem or exploring a passion that creativity becomes the natural, inevitable byproduct of their deep engagement. Sophia: It really makes you wonder, what's one class or project you could take on, not for the grade, not for the resume, but just for you? What would that even look like? Laura: A powerful question to sit with. And a perfect place to start applying these ideas. We’d love to hear what our listeners think about this. Find us on our social channels and share your thoughts. Sophia: This is Aibrary, signing off.