Most every student has hit that gut-wrenching moment of realizing grades determine their value. That blows, majorly. It’s a small reminder that you can’t be proven unless you can be profitable. I don’t have any ways to change the system and I personally don’t think anyone will figure out a good universal solution while I’m receiving grades. But I can suggest ways to not put that much pressure on yourself to perform at the level of perfection.
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Treat Yourself!
As simple as it sounds sometimes we tend to neglect ourselves for our victories, no matter how small. Did you nail the final and pass the one class you battled with this semester? CONGRATS! I’m proud of you and you deserve that nail fill or ice cream cone you’ve been craving. Do something for you and you only. The effort you put in for that grade deserves to be congratulated. No matter A, B, or C! To schools a pass is a pass, no matter how you write it.
2. Forget GPA’s.
Easier said than done I know. All throughout high school, this was the one thing I could not let go of. I was super keen to get my grades perfect but my GPA had to be outstanding (a simple case of cognitive dissonance). Once I got into college though, I would not be able to tell you what that decimal was if you threatened my life for it. A little breakaway but still connected tangent is that no one at my college saw my final grade for any particular class. They didn’t know that I barely skimmed a C- in both Pre-Calculus and Advanced Placement Calculus. They didn’t see that one failed AP Human Geography test in freshman year. They didn’t see any of that. All they got was the credits I transferred in and the weighted GPA because of those AP exams and dual-enrolled classes I passed. All that to say it’s a joke. I know people with worse GPA’s in schools my high school self would’ve only dreamed of going to. What mattered was what you did outside of the classroom (as cliche as it sounds). Truthfully band gets you on better ground than a 3.5.
3. Live and Forget.
As per my last paragraph, I don’t remember my high school GPA right now, and I’m just a junior. Now we can chalk it up to bad memory but it’s just not crucial information to my life anymore. I’ve started thinking in this new frame of mind, that if it won’t bother me in 3 years, I’m not going to waste my time and let it worry and bother me now. You wouldn’t believe how much stress and anxiety I’ve let go because of this. I can’t press on overthinking something if I just say “It can’t bother me after this semester” or this year or this degree or whenever!
So to make a complicated ideology less bland there are 3 tips. Are they perfect? No. Will they work? With practice and diligence. Pulling through the other side of the semester is what you really should be proud of. Pass or fail, it doesn’t matter, you preserved beyond what you thought you could.