I hate grades. Why are there arbitrary letters and numbers to measure success? And is success really something that can be measured? All it shows is how well you did on one particular group of things at one particular time by one person’s judgment. There can be so many things that can get in your way. Like that teacher that won’t give more than two A’s a class. Or you’re so stressed that you just can’t focus on the test. Or you tried to take a test when you were sick. Different teachers, schools, classes, different everything measures it in different ways. Like in one class a 94 can be a B and in another class it could be an A. A 79 could be a C+ for one class and a D+ for another. How do getting 79 percent of the points go from average and really close to above average to just barely passing?
I’ve reached the point where I’m just tired of it. I love to learn. And I’m not afraid of working hard. Like I just want to take a class, learn as much as I can, work hard, and not see my grade at the end of it because I just don’t care. Like I don't mind writing a paper, in fact sometimes I might even enjoy it. But then someone with a Ph.D gets to stamp on a number based on how good he thinks it is. The paper I crank out the night before and BS my way through it might get an A. One I actually spent a couple of weeks writing and got proofread by a tutor might get a C.
One time when I was writing a paper at the coffee shop I overheard a study group next to me where someone was all, “I don’t care about that; I just want to know what’s on the test?”. And then someone else said, “That’s the problem with American students. All we care about is our grades. We pay all this money to get the grades but not too learn”. And that’s true. That’s all we care about is what’s on the test. We’re sitting in class learning great information and all we ask is, “Do we need to know this for the test?” We don’t care about discussions or interesting facts. And then of course there’s the test that you spend hours upon hours studying for and nothing you studied is on the test, leaving you with intense frustration.
I used to be one of those students very focused on grades. If it was a class I thought I was good at like English or social studies, I’d get so mad at myself over a B+. Even in math and science I would still try everything to get a B and be a little disappointed if I fell short and got a C. I continued this into my freshman year of high school, and at some point during my sophomore year, probably when grades started being posted online, I just gradually starting giving up. The stress was just too much, and I saw that I couldn’t be perfect. I was mad at myself for my first semester in high school’s GPA of a 3.2. But at that point by junior year I was just so focused on maintaining a 3.0, which was good enough for me if it wasn’t for others. But even that was a struggle. I thought I’d do decent going to an obscure, small Christian college I’d never heard and found on the internet that wasn’t selective in admissions at all. And little did I know about the skewed grading scales and all the smart people there.
What if there wasn’t this whole focus on grades? I think grades can just be this whole competition thing. There are people that can never be satisfied with an A-. Yet other people struggle to get their C. It just becomes a number game of how can be the best at each stupid assignment. A GPA is just a stupid number, it shouldn’t define your self esteem but sometimes it does. My high school was super competitive on class rank. A 3.2 was in the bottom half. I don’t think it had anything to do with grade inflation. It was because I just lived in a city filled with A listers. There were students who could take four honors classes and get weighted A’s in all of them. Everything focused on success. In school we all compete over grades. In life, we just start competing in our careers. Who can make the most money and who can have the biggest house and the nicest car. And then that’s when some people will cheat to get ahead. Students are struggling with their grades and decide that a peek on the test next to them won’t hurt. Collabarating on an assignment that’s supposed to be done independently is no big deal; whatever has to be done to get ahead. And then that just starts bad habits. It continues in the real world. People continue cheating to get ahead. Enron lied about their profits. Martha Stuart traded secrets in the stock market. Everyone is just trying to reach an arbitrary measure of success. What if people cared more about other things? What if honesty and compassion were valued more than success and intelligence?
I’m not saying grades are completely bad. They teach you to work hard. They can get you into good schools and get you scholarships and help you keep scholarships. But I think the system could use improvement.
"The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." Albert Einstein
