SWILUA's Grading Philosophy; Just so you know.

AT the beginning of my semester in Math 113 I had the second worst grade in the entire class. I’m not talking B+ kind of bad. I’m talking a 41.3% testing average. I was failing. It was a weird concept for me, failing, especially because I was working 3-4 hours every single stupid day trying to understand the stuff. I mean, how could I be working so hard and still be failing?

Then, one day, like a miracle, a boy named Christopher came up to me and revealed that he was the only person in the class with a worse percentage than me (his was 38.7%) and that we were going to be study buddies. I think that was his term. Or maybe my mother's. My memory is fuzzy.

But I do remember that we worked. We worked six days a week. 7-8 hours every weekday and 8-12 hours on Saturday. We spent every second we could in the math lab (they often had to kick us out at night). We got two or three assignments ahead so that by the time we got to class we already had a pretty good understanding of what was going on. We worked our trash off.

Finally, one day, I had this epiphany deep in my brain cells. All of mathematics seemed to open up and I understood what the entire thing was about. And it was beautiful. By the end of the semester, I had raised my testing average from 41.3% to 105.6%. I went from the second worst grade to the second best. I became a math lab tutor and the only person admitted to my graduate literature program who got a higher math score on the GRE than English.

What’s my point?

There is a happy indignation in assuming that hard work should be rewarded with high grades. The problem is, if we’re rewarded solely for our effort and not for what we produce, we don’t reach as high and we don’t work as hard. It’s the reason communism fails while capitalism succeeds. Grades push us. Should they define us? Absolutely not. Should you jump off the Kimball tower when you, inevitably, get that first A-? I’m thinking probably not. (In fact, I have this other speech, that I won’t give here, where I encourage all of you to get at least one C in your life. It’s a good speech. Remind me to give it if I don’t remember to myself.)

But should you let grades push you to learn at a new depth?

Absolutely.

The majority of your grade (more than 70%) in this class will come from things you have written. (Seems fitting, really, that in a writing class you’re graded on writing.) I don’t grade on a curve. I have had classes where the entire class got an A and classes where no one did. Most classes do seem to have a variety of grades. And one happy bit: if you do every single assignment and come to every single class, I will personally guarantee that you won’t fail the class no matter how much of an F you got on each paper. That’s just because I’m nice.