My advice is to let go of the idea of “standards” or “tests” that you just need to pass and you’ll be golden. Too many people think of life as a class where you get graded fairly, but life (even academic life) is more like recess at school, where accurately reading people and being on point wins the day. Imagine academia as a circle of cool kids talking to each other, and you coming in from the outside. If you aren’t even listening to what they’re saying now, how can you jump in with a remark and hope that everyone will go “oooh”? Almost nothing in life works like that! If you want to make a contribution that will be appreciated, you can’t do that while being blind to the field and the people composing it. That, and not some random standard of rigor, is why you need to learn.
My advice is to let go of the idea of “standards” or “tests” that you just need to pass and you’ll be golden. Too many people think of life as a class where you get graded fairly, but life (even academic life) is more like recess at school, where accurately reading people and being on point wins the day. Imagine academia as a circle of cool kids talking to each other, and you coming in from the outside. If you aren’t even listening to what they’re saying now, how can you jump in with a remark and hope that everyone will go “oooh”? Almost nothing in life works like that! If you want to make a contribution that will be appreciated, you can’t do that while being blind to the field and the people composing it. That, and not some random standard of rigor, is why you need to learn.