Why I don't do mediocre

Two days ago I got the results from my exam before x-mas. I got an A.
I didn’t fail to mention this to the lovely, brown-eyed waitress at the café. She was impressed. I was cool. And there we were. Discussing my supreme genius. I never hold people’s inferiority against them. Thank God nobody noticed I’d put the sweater on backwards..

On a more serious note, I only handed in 1/5 exams last year. All the others.. I was just too busy.
This makes me believe that going down to 50% would be the smart move right now, if I don’t just put the whole study-thing on ice. I mean, it’s not like I bother to read anything I don’t fancy. But I have a student loan now based on my status as a 100% student. And people have been telling me I am way too hard on myself. That I have too high standards. "Why don’t you just hand in the other exams too? It’s not like you are gonna flunk!" But I beg to differ.

The raison d’être of studying, is reaching understanding of previously unknown subjects or perspectives on these. To me understanding is merging a created mind with the material. ‘Created’ because your everyday mind is filled to the brim with "common sense", presuppositions and prejudice. So you create an infinte test-mind, open to everything, like a sandbox. A good reader is jeopardizing him or herself by reading. But many others (Hegel, Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Nietzsche, Freud) has written about it, so I’m not going to dwell on that particular subject. I just wanted to point out that the process of reaching understanding is hard, and it requires effort and sacrifice. But the gain is so much richer than what you get just reading text superficially.
That is why anyone should study. Not to get a degree.
Real life is way too complicated for the pure academic subspecies anyway.
Just take navigation under extreme conditions, for example. Or navigating sweaters.