Grades

I know this is a touchy subject, but it's one that has been on my mind this semester in a way that's distinct from the mentality that one ought to always strive for As.  So I will tread carefully and with the acknowledgment that I have not yet fully overcome my human desire to prove myself within the pretentious boundaries of a polished GPA. 

To provide context to this post, I think it's notable to mention that my Asian American parents have never pressured me about grades. I'm sure they emphasized the importance of academic effort at one point in my life, but I have never, ever had a conversation with them where they coaxed, threatened, or nagged me about trying harder or bringing home a stunning report card.  All the way through high school, I did well enough that they never had to be concerned, but I was never the student who smoothly sailed through every subject.  I asked my teachers many questions, reviewed my notes for hours on the nights before exam days, and definitely dealt with little grains of stress whenever tests were gingerly passed out.  And let me slightly go off tangent and dedicate this sentence to how much I loathed Trig.

Anyways, regardless of the "we'll love you no matter what xoxoxox" vibes that I continually got from my parents, I (and this is the part where you can totally roll your eyes) had a very difficult time accepting grades that were not As,  settling for an occasional A minus if it came from a science or math class, since those were my most challenging subject areas. 

Although I had to slightly adjust the parameters of my snooty standards in college, taking mostly humanities classes kept me from having to face significant academic challenges that my brave e-school and pre-med peers occasionally encountered, and I nurtured a complex that culminated in a visit to a professor's office hours that I'm still pretty embarrassed about in retrospect.  I had just received a mediocre grade for an assignment, one that lessened my chances of getting an A for the semester, so I paid a visit to my professor on the grounds that my TA had not graded my project properly.  Regardless of whether that was the case or not, she immediately saw through my facade of righteous reasoning and knew that I was sitting on her plump pleather office chair because I wanted a good grade in her class.  And instead of convincing her otherwise by playing the cool "this isn't really about the grade, I just want to learn" card, I rather shamelessly admitted that I did not want this class to negatively impact my GPA.  And then my eyes got watery. And in that moment, there was nothing that distinguished me from the next biggest jerk in the world.

And then, she said something along these lines:

Christy, I'm not sure you have what it takes to be a good teacher, and here's why. When you look at students, you won't see their potential unless it is measured by grades, because that is how you measure your own worth.  Students deserve teachers who can look beyond grades.

She then handed me a box of tissues and watched me sniffle and mechanically nod with a silly apology or two. 

Her words had pricked my ego, but they also brought me to my first genuine realization that I should not, could not place so much value in my GPA.  By associating my perfectionism to the unlikelihood of becoming an effective teacher, my professor really inserted an element of urgency to why I should change my mentality on grades.  Not only was I using them to determine my self-worth, but doing so ultimately meant that I had been measuring the self-worth of others with this standard as well.  BAM. All of a sudden, this became a much more serious problem. 

My professor actually ended up giving me most of the points back, but fortunately, this didn't stop me from remembering our conversation from the fall semester and allowing it to impact the course of this semester.  Sure, there were a couple weak moments, but in general, I stressed less, involved myself in a well-rounded assortment of extracurriculars, enjoyed the company of people more, and paid not a single visit to a professor for the purpose of discussing grades.  I studied, but not in excess. 

And academically, though not egregiously so, this has been my worst semester out of the six that I have gone through so far...haha.  Although, depending on which lens I use, it was also my best, because I think  I enjoyed life a little more by putting a practical lesson into good use.