Is 82 an A-?

It is the end of the semester and in my world, this is known as bargaining time. This is the end of year number TEN of teaching for me and by now, I thought I heard it all. No, I didn’t. There is always a new story and another disaster that only I can avert if only I could put myself into the shoes of the student whose life I am about to destroy with an A-. So, today’s post is a letter to all my students. Consider this the wisdom of the extra 16 years I spent in school getting grades myself and grading others. And yes, someone just asked me if 82 is an A- despite the clear sentence in the syllabus stating that the range for an A- is between 90 and 93.

Dear Student, please stop whining. And please stop using ineffective arguments to sway me into giving you an A when you just got an 82 with a ton of extra credit. Here is the deal: it probably won’t make any difference to your life if you get an A or a B in my class. Are you going to the uber competitive medical school and my B will kill your 4.0 GPA? Whhhhat? You have a 2.5 and are never going to school again? …Are you going to get into a Harvard MBA program? No? OK.. how about a PhD? Still nothing? So please tell me why do you care so much about your grade then? I don’t get it.

I am lying. If you are like me, then I am totally getting it. If you are one of those students that needs to get As because that’s what you do and because you decided that’s the way to go through school, then I will tell you a secret. Your life will not end if you get a B. A 4.0 or a 3.8 GPA will absolutely make no difference to your happiness, success, or accomplishments in life. And I know this because I have been there. Here is my personal story. I managed to skate through my undergrad with a 4.0 GPA and I got a gold medal for it. [I doubt it’s solid gold but if it is and I can one day sell it, then OK, I see why you all want to get As.]

However, my GPA had nothing to do with my ability to get a job or become a good person. After my graduation, a colleague from UPS, where I was interning during my senior year and who was graduating at the same time as me, made the comment of “I didn’t realize you were the College of Business student of the year, highest GPA in the school type of student”.. I am not sure what to make out of that comment but that tells you how much grades matter in a work environment. No one at UPS cared about my grades. All they cared about was my ability to manipulate excel spreadsheets. 

Now, dear student, I was not always an exemplary scholar. The first time I got a B, I thought my life was over. It was my first semester in the MBA program and I managed to get a B in economics after getting 2 high As on the exams. How in the world do you f*** that one up so badly? Don’t even ask. I will never forget that class for 2 reasons: (1) I had a fight with the professor when he returned my C- paper with the comment “Take your Unfunded Liabilities of Defined Benefits paper to the accounting department for an A, this is an economics class and I don’t know what you are talking about…. jerk… and (2) because apart from a boyfriend who broke up with me, this was the best personal experience to learn from and learn how to deal with disappointment. So, dear student, you should thank me now for that B I am offering you instead of the A you want. It is for your own good. I really, really want you to learn some valuable lessons in life and learn how to deal with disappointment.

Now, once I got that B, I decided by MBA career is ruined and let it go completely, adding another B and an A- along the way for a sad GPA of 3.83, a GPA I deemed unworthy of my time to be “wasted” on actually going to graduation. I am just kidding about that one. I was working 80 hour weeks at Citi and had some big project coming up the week after. Don’t worry though, I did “shape myself up” for a 4.0 again during my PhD (another worthless cause as my GPA certainly did not make me a better professor). 

Why in the world am I telling you all this? Because I want you to know that an “A” won’t make your life any better than a “B” unless you need to get into a subsequent graduate program. That’s it, that’s when the grades matter. Apart from that, forget about your grades and just learn SOMETHING. 

Dear student, imagine how much better your life would be if you spent the effort on reading, thinking and learning instead of finding a way to dig for shortcuts and hunt for grades. I spend a lot of time on thinking about my classes and trying to make them better for YOU. I am sure I already know this material by now. I do my homework. So, when you come and give me some bull**** story about how you forgot your homework (for an online class nevertheless) over spring break (who does homework in Cancun over spring break anyways?) ,I do take it as an insult. Seriously, dude? Get out of my office.

Dear student, please stop defining your life by your academic achievements and just be a nice, humble, hardworking person. You will get further in life. You spent the last 16-17 years focused on grades and now, it’s over. No one will give a s*** about your grades once you get that diploma. The worst student in my book is the jerk who knows everything and who demands an A. I do not want to hire that person because I will have to work with him (is it just me or is it more often a him than her?) My favorite student is the one who will show interest and ask me what to read and how to learn more. At the end of the day, I only care if you got something useful so please, stop focusing on the grades and focus on improving yourself. After all, isn’t this a big part of college?

That’s it. That’s all the wisdom I got for you. I got to go and deal with the last bunch of final grades now. I need to see if Johnny’s cousin drove the 2 hours though the Mexican drug cartels to get to an internet connection and email me his final essay.. and I am only partially joking about this one. His name is not Jonny. The rest of the story is the latest I received from a student this morning, after I already submitted his F.