Monday, May 17, 2010

Sure, you want to know your grade, but ...

As the semester draws to a close, students start bugging professors about their grades: "I gotta get a B," "are you sure you received my term paper?" "Is my grade ready yet?" and so on.
Give your profs a break! They know what they're doing (well, most of us do anyway) and they'll post your course grade when they're ready to. Don't be in a rush to get your grade. You had all semester to work on it, and you can wait a week longer.
But you know what I think? A lot of this wasted energy (and that's what it is,wasted) is just an irrational fear of the inevitable. You know you're not going to pass the course, but you hope that somehow the grade will be a D and you're anxious to see if that miracle can happen. Miracles rarely happen, though: that's why they're called miracles.
A few students seem to think that by putting pressure on their instructors, they can intimidate them into recording higher grades than the students earned. Take my word for it: that doesn't work. Antagonizing people to get what you want is not a good strategy in school or elsewhere in life.
The time to worry about your course grade is the first day of class, and every day thereafter. You've heard that before, I'll bet. Why not try it, next semester.