In about ten seconds, you're probably going to hate me.
See, I'm going to complain about something that will, at first, make you think I'm a humble-brag at worst. Then, once you realize that I am, in fact, dead serious, you will probably side-eye me so hard my mother feels it. And I deserve it, and I'll tell you why, but first it has to happen.
I'm going to complain about an A-.
No, that's not entirely true--I'm going to complain about several A-'s. Or, no, still not true--I'm going to complain about the concept of wanting to complain about an A-.
Trippy, I know. Bear with me.
From the time I was a wee little nugget, playing foursquare on the playground and reading The Magic Treehouse, I've been told that I am Very Smart (TM). I even remember, somewhere around sixth grade, a fellow classmate exercising our new vocabulary by referring to me as "a child prodigy." My 10-year-old ego was inflated at the same time that I silently judged her hyperbole.
This kind of praise sticks with you. It wasn't just her, either--I was a teacher's pet half of the time, and their worst enemy the other half because they knew I knew the answers but wouldn't raise my hand (sorry). I was constantly lauded as being a tiny child genius, asked for help with homework, made to sit next to the "bad" kids in class because my teachers thought I would rub off on them (I didn't). I was Very Smart and this became my identity and shaped a striking amount of who I am today.
I'm not telling you this to brag--I'm telling you this because this shit has got to stop.
Praise is good. Encouragement is good. Building up a child's entire sense of self around an arbitrary concept of intelligence and education is... not so good.
This semester, for the first time in my life, I have received an A- on more than one assignment. One, I can deal with--that's an outlier, I wrote it the night before, and it won't bring my GPA down that much. It happens. More than that? I'm checking the side of the road for cardboard boxes big enough to be my post-graduation home.
I have been conditioned to feel that anything less than perfection is shameful.
I have been conditioned so that any downgrading is a vicious and personal blow against my intelligence and my character.
You see why this shit has to stop?
Our education system is built on regurgitating the right answer at the right time to get the right grade. It is built on statistics and memorization of facts and gauging our self-worth by the red letter at the top of the page. It teaches us, through our most formative years, that the biggest indicator of our intelligence is the GPA we achieve.
Your GPA means nothing in the real world.
I know this. I do, I know this, and I know enough to have confidence in myself that is based on my abilities and not entirely on the grades those abilities receive--but it isn't easy. More than that, it doesn't even feel natural for me to disregard a grade, because I've had it hammered into my head so much that those grades define me. It takes work to look past this. It takes work to look at that A- and focus on what is there rather than what's missing. It takes work to remember that there are all kinds of intelligences and that no one can be defined by any one of these--and that most of them cannot be measured by an arbitrarily-lettered system that serves little purpose but to rank us above one another in worth.
I still can't be entirely proud of an A-. It won't be hanging on my fridge anytime soon. But the next time it's lying crumpled at the bottom of a desk drawer, that will be a reflection of the work I feel like I put into it--not of the letter at the top of the page.
