I feel I need to focus more on motivation than benchmark. The fixation on academic ranking is frustrating because it’s ALWAYS relative to fellow students.

I have zero control over fellow students’ performance, abilities, effort….

Grace Dong seemed to suggest that poor grade is always due to limited effort. I feel that point of view ignores the relative ranking. If you double your effort but other people also double their effort, then you would still score low in the bell curve !