Use of drugs to enhance academic performance

[twofish-quant]

One thing here is what do you mean by "performance"? One thing that I've noticed when I drink coffee is that it keeps me awake, but it's not "real awake" since I can feel that the muse in my brain is still asleep. I remember that people at MIT used to drink vast amounts of coffee to stay awake to do the problem sets, but I don't think that anyone really tried to do that for the tests.

The other thing is that "performance" may mean different things. One thing about my education is that everyone *de-emphasized* the importance of grades. If you got a B+ instead of a B-, but you still didn't understand the material then that didn't help you much at all. One thing about MIT is that financial aid is not keyed to grades, and it's difficult to flunk out.

heh. Come on. Its a university. You drink because you're IN COLLEGE, not because "you're stressed", at least I hope that's the case.

Universities are places to learn physics and engineering. At MIT, the drugs of choice on the weekend were alcohol and I think that there was an LSD subculture there. People tended to drink massive amounts to get away from the stress on the weekends.

 

[DukeofDuke]

twofish,
by performance I mean being able to do 12 hours work in 8 hours (by increasing focus/efficiency).

Also, many of my rich friends (me included) have absolutely no fear of losing money, nor do we have a fear of flunking out. The point is, grades lead to "better" graduate schools and law schools and business schools and ibanks.

And yes, I realize that its a continuous chain, and that its rather arbitrary, and at any given level of "excellence" there's always another and you'll always be running the rat race etc etc.

Those are facts that come a priori to any of our reasons for participating in the grade frenzy. For many, x or y level of accomplishment is enough, and they can quit the race and sit back self satisfied. And yes, that level is arbitrary, and yes, that's linking your self esteem to external things that one may look down on (such as a chaired professorship, or certain level of income, or certain level of prestige). But I don't think people could live rationally, so they live according to other (from my view, arbitrary) standards, and many of those standards will heavily notice the difference between a B+ and a B-.

SO, people care about grades. Telling them off won't solve anything. Neither will trying to convince them that they'll never reach "the top"- because their reasons for wanting to be at the top in the first place are feelings, not logical deductions from agreeable first principles. Not to mention, plenty of them don't even want to be at the top, they have arbitrary levels of success which would sate them (and for those goals, a B+ and B- will make a very real and noticeable difference).