Very much agreed. I've definitely encountered the attitude that my high-school grades or my undergrad GPA define me. And by "define me", I mean that my undergrad GPA of 3.45, higher in just my CS+math courses, is considered a little on the low side to be applying for STEM grad-school. My GPA was sufficient to graduate with Latin honors, but it's low for STEM? Come on.
Yes, we definitely treat STEM as a competition to see who can be the closest to "perfect" at set tasks and classwork, rather than as an exploration (or even exploitation) of structures and spaces through strictly logical reasoning.
Yes, we definitely treat STEM as a competition to see who can be the closest to "perfect" at set tasks and classwork, rather than as an exploration (or even exploitation) of structures and spaces through strictly logical reasoning.