Grades You "Deserve", Grades Your Professor "Gives" You, and Grades You EARN!

It's finals time...that magical time when students spend 23 out of 24 hours each day in the library (the remaining hour is spent playing beer pong). My students are preparing to take their final exams and head home for the summer and maybe (just maybe) check their final course grades on eServices. So this seems like a delightfully appropriate time to talk about grades.

There is an enormous disparity in the way different people on a college campus view grades. A recent article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=grading%20colleges&st=cse) talks about the expectations that college students have for the grades they receive. Students frequently talk about a course grade as something they "deserve", or that a professor "gives" TO them, whereas college professors refer to grades as something a student "earns". So what causes all of this miscommunication?

As students progress through junior high and high school, they are given certain standards for their work. They are told that if a project incorporates certain factors (X amount of visual aids, Y number of pages in a written report, etc.) then they will receive an A in the course. This is the standard in the public school system, for good or ill. The problem occurs when students enter college.

College students (again, for good or ill) are held to a higher standard. Yes, there are certain things that each student MUST do, and those things are usually spelled out in the course syllabus. But just because you do the bare minimum of things spelled out in the syllabus does not mean you are guaranteed (or deserve for that matter) an A in the course.

Let's use a fairly recent example: because I work with Performing Arts students, I'll talk about an "artist" who did the bare minimum of work, and was absolutely slammed by critics. I am speaking, of course, about Britney Spears at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. Take a second and refresh your memory of this truly atrocious performance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HTnWbIyx2g

Now Britney did the "work" for the performance: she memorized her song (to be fair, she didn't sing the song, but who does nowadays?) and she memorized all of her steps. But there was something missing, wasn't there? There was no extra effort. Britney did the bare minimum of work to get by--she practically slept through the performance. If you were a professor of "pop studies", what grade would you think Britney earned for that performance?

Because at the end of the day, you (the student) EARN your grades. Your professor doesn't just randomly assign grades. He or she doesn't "give" out A's or B's to the students that he or she likes and D's and F's to all the rest. The work that you put into a course is directly correlated to the grade that you earn.

So if you find yourself disappointed by your grades this semester, think back. Did you sleepwalk through the semester, miming all of your choreography and lipsynching your songs? Your grades probably reflect that you pulled a "Britney" this semester. Maybe some changes are in order for next semester?