Editor's Note

IN SOME OLD BOXES RECENTLY, I came across a high school end-of-term report: a few A's, some B's -- and a handful of actual C's. Why was it, I wondered, that I'd always considered myself a top student? I remember much of that time vividly. So this wasn't just an example of fading memory. It was a reminder that, back in the day, high school grades didn't generate the obsession and terror they do now. Bring home a few C's in 2008, and you can write off not only elite colleges but second-tier and even some third-tier schools.

Thirty-some years ago, a few C's just weren't that big a deal.

I got into the University of Florida -- into the honors college-- with a 3.4 grade-point average. Now it takes a 4.0 GPA and astronomical SAT scores. My daughter seemed to spend her high school career with her nose buried in textbooks, but I can't honestly conjure a clear image of any prolonged bout of study I did outside the classroom. On the other hand, everything that I did do and accomplish, I did on my own. Where my wife and I felt driven to stay on top of our kids' every assignment to avoid the catastrophe of their falling behind, I doubt my parents ever once asked me if I had any homework.

"I don't think my parents even knew I took the SAT," Magazine assignment editor Lynda Robinson told me. "And I'm sure they had nothing to do with my college applications."

Robinson, who worked with staff writer Liza Mundy to produce today's cover story on the emerging generation of super-achieving college grads, was making a good point. Those of my generation may have stumbled into adulthood, but wasn't there something gained in the fact that we stumbled on our own?

There's no way I could have competed for internships or jobs with any of the young women and men Mundy interviewed for the story that begins on Page 8. Compared with their résumés, mine would have looked like finger painting. While they spent their adolescence being tutored and coached and private-lessoned into near perfection, I spent mine in someone's basement playing Mad Libs. Instead of doing innovative philanthropic projects during the summer, I dug ditches in the sun with a bunch of preliterate Cro-Magnons. But what could never show up on any typed list was the sense of self-confidence I gained from figuring things out on my own -- even if that meant sometimes screwing up, or slacking off. When things get tough, as they always do, will these brilliant hothouse flowers find the self-belief that will keep them balanced?

Ah, who am I kidding? The truth is, it's more likely that the upcoming generation is better prepared, more focused and will simply achieve more than mine has. At least I hope so, considering the mess we're leaving.

Tom Shroder can be reached at shrodert@washpost.com.