Half decade ago, at the end of my first semester teaching at Wharton, my student Kevin stopped by for office hours. He sat down and burst into tears. My mind started cycling through a list of events that could make a college junior cry: His girlfriend had broken up with him; he had been accused of cheating in exams; he forgot to turn in papers before the deadline. “I just got my first A-minus(减),” he said with his voice shaking.

Year after year, I watch in depression as students are crazy about getting straight A's. Some sacrifice their health; a few have even tried to charge their school after falling short(倒挂). All hold the belief that top marks are a ticket to best graduate schools and rewarding job offers. I was one of them. I started college with the goal of graduating with a 4.0. It would be a reflection of my brainpower and willpower, showing that I had the right stuff to succeed. But I was wrong.

The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the connection between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and unimportant within a handful of years. Take Microsoft for example, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance. (Of course, it must be said that if you got D's, you probably didn't end up at Microsoft.)

Academic grades rarely assess qualities like creativity, leadership and teamwork skills, or social, emotional and political intelligence. Yes, straight A students master large amounts of information and reproduce it in exams. But career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem—it’s more about finding the right problem to solve. This might explain why Steve Jobs finished high school with a 2.65GPA, and Martin Luther King Jr. got only one A in his four years at Morehouse.

It’s been four and a half months since 46-year-old man called George Floyd died after pleading he couldn’t breathe as a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck. The four officers involved were fired and Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee on the man’s neck, was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. In the days since Floyd’s death, thousands poured onto the country’s streets to protest the killing and those who died before Floyd as a result of police brutality.

The demonstrations began in Minneapolis and spread like wildfire across the U.S.Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Miami, New York City and Chicago all saw crowds demonstrating. Many protests were peaceful, with people holding “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe” signs, shouting loudly and armed with face masks for protection against coronavirus. But some groups turned violent over the weekend, setting fires to buildings and police cars, breaking through windows of businesses, looting and fighting with police forces. Police responded forcefully, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowds and arresting hundreds throughout the countries. In New York City, a police vehicle was seen driving through a crowd of protesters. In Atlanta, two officers were fired after their violent arrest of two college students was caught on video. It’s still unclear what the coming days will look like.

To help control the violence, at least 40 cities lawfully established curfews and more than a dozen governors organized National Guard army. In the nation’s capital, a similar scene. Just before 8 p.m. Sunday night, armed officers and protesters remained in a standoff in downtown Washington as crowds threw water bottles at police and police responded with flash bangs and pepper spray. In New York, a group of protesters remained in Manhattan as night fell, facing off with police after several fires were set and some stores were looted. Officials in several cities have warned that those who are looting stores and creating scenes of chaos are not there to protest Floyd’s death.

Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless gadget may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet connected security camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they’re being recorded while you all watch the big game together?

“It’s certainly new territory, especially as home security cameras become easier to install.” says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America’s foremost manners advisors. “I think it will be very interesting to see what etiquette emerges in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it’s not a security issue.”

Post wants to make clear that she’s not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preferences. She also wants to explain that there are no right or wrong answers regarding manners on this front yet, because the technology is just now becoming mainstream. Besides, the Emily Post Institute doesn’t dictate manners.

When it comes to security cameras, Post says it’s a host’s responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. “I’m always a fan of being open and honest. “For instance, if the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about it, that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.

However, if a contractor is working in your home, you don’t need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the air of accountability that the camera generates can also work in contractors’ favor. “If anything does go wrong while they’re in the house, they don’t want to be blamed for it,” she says. In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn’t steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.