Just to share with u what I've learned from a published article. It expresses my thought on students' elective selection in our university, in a scholarly manner. Here goes..
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has shown that the way children view a task affects their persistence and performance over time. Some children think of human ability or intelligence as fixed and, consequently, think of school tasks as performance opportunities - moments of truth that prove whether or not they're smart. For these children, performing poorly on an assignment or a test would demonstrate that they lacked intelligence rather than indicating that they had more to learn. Believing that the point of execution is to demonstrate competence, they go out of their way to pick easier tasks. Of course, this means they lose out when it comes to learning.
I try to keep myself out of flowing with the river current, making me the odd one out, or the outstanding one? :)