Written by Daniel Kiser
A+… B-… C… D-… F… Whichever dastardly fellow transformed these lovely letters from our kindergarten joys into our college nightmares ought to be excused from the classroom, severely reprimanded and punished with a lifetime supply of “Fs.”
Besides skipping “E”, which is a sure sign that he needs to go back to kindergarten anyway, he made school a whole lot less fun. Which sounds more interesting: discovering the secrets of the universe, or passing a chemistry test? Theoretically, you could do both at the same time – unless your grade determines whether or not you pass the class, graduate on time, find a good job and live a generally happy life. In that case, who cares about the secrets of the universe?
Of course, the teachers are not responsible for this system, and neither is the university. If we’re going to point fingers, we would have to have a lot more fingers and not very many friends. Besides, the system is here, it’s been here and it looks like it will be here for a while, so we’ve got to deal with it.
Now, you may be surprised to hear this, but quite often grades are not what they seem. Here are their real meanings:
A: Though it implies that you have fully mastered the material, it really indicates that you have mastered 90 percent, which means that the other 10 percent probably went in one ear and out the other. What is it about the last 10 percent that seems so unimportant? When doctors make “As”, they get sued.
B: Depending on the class, this means either “good,” “okay,” or “bad.” If you like easy classes, try to find a class where “B” means “bad.” Of course, if you do that and get a “B,” you have a problem.
C: Once indicated mediocre – now suggests something slightly less. Don’t feel bad, though: According to the system, you’re still on par with your grandparents.
D: Stands for “drop,” as in, “It’s time for you to drop this class.”
F: Though often taken to mean that your work was absolutely worthless, it really indicates that your work was so incredibly unique that the professor didn’t know what to do with it. Realizing that students like you are a threat to academia and a danger to all professors everywhere, the professor marks an “F,” hoping that you will be forced to drop out of school and get a job at IHOP.
Great. So now that we have carefully defined grades, what do we do about them? My suggestion: Ignore them.
Now, I have to be careful because “ignore them” probably means different things to different students. To some, it may mean a party for each day of the week and bedtime from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon. Though there’s nothing wrong with the occasional party or nocturnal liveliness that’s not what it means to ignore grades.
Rather, we ignore grades by trying so hard to truly master chemistry, English or Spanish that we bust out of the grading orbit and leave all those worries and stresses behind. When the subject becomes our guiding desire, grades become tick marks by which we gauge our level of understanding, not some monstrous sphinx that will eat us if we don’t correctly guess the answer on the multiple-choice, standardized riddle.
So who cares about grades? Let’s learn something.
