I'm in university now, and I hate seeing the people around me more concerned about their marks than how much they are learning. For one thing, it's been shown that people enjoy things more - and do better - when they are motivated by an internal desire instead (say, curiosity or a desire for education) of an external reward (marks).
I am in the fortunate situation that I don't have to prove myself to anyone [1] (although I try to keep my options open for grad school), so I can focus on learning instead of pretending to. That isn't to say that everyone who gets straight A's is pretending; but in my experience someone who's main motivation is to maximize their marks does so at the expense of their education. In theory the two are perfectly correlated, but in practice they aren't.
[1] I don't mean to say that I don't have a psychological need to prove myself to others and others do, but that I don't have an immediate need to keep high marks. Between scholarships, marks, internships, etc. most people I know need to stress over marks for one reason or another.
I am in the fortunate situation that I don't have to prove myself to anyone [1] (although I try to keep my options open for grad school), so I can focus on learning instead of pretending to. That isn't to say that everyone who gets straight A's is pretending; but in my experience someone who's main motivation is to maximize their marks does so at the expense of their education. In theory the two are perfectly correlated, but in practice they aren't.
[1] I don't mean to say that I don't have a psychological need to prove myself to others and others do, but that I don't have an immediate need to keep high marks. Between scholarships, marks, internships, etc. most people I know need to stress over marks for one reason or another.