The Quest In Hope For Flowers By Trina Paulus

Life has become a quest: a quest for grades, a quest for money, and a quest for identity. Starting at a young age society conditions us to join this quest and sadly few people question the intentions of it. Similar to Yellow and Stripe in Hope for Flowers by Trina Paulus, we are constantly on a mission to get to the top of the pillar, to the top of society. It begins in school where we learn to compete with our fellow classmates to get the best grades, to get into the best colleges, to get the best jobs, to make the most money, to have the best identity. I know, it is quiet a mouthful and a run on sentence, but it is the truth. The quest of our lives is a chain reaction leading from one place to the next, all with the same purpose: to be at the top of society. We have become programmed machines, robots, constantly competing to be the best.
We are taught that grades define our future. If you want to get into a prestigious college, you must get all A’s and have an extremely high GPA. If you want to get into medical school, you must be at the top of your class. If you want a well paying job after graduating from college, you should go to this or that prestigious school, which requires good grades. These are statements many of us students have heard since junior high. Our schooling now revolves around grades and test scores, not around learning. Lawrence Lu summarizes this point quite well when she states, “No one cares that they don’t remember what they learned last quarter because they are relieved they kept up their GPAs” (Bell, McGrane, Gunderson, and Anderson 2011: 23). Once we are done with one semester we go on to chase the next grade. Sadly we have come to value grades over learning and expanding our