Dear College Student,

So you may have discovered that your grades have become your identity. What do you do when you realize you care more about what your A (or lack thereof) says about you than what you say about you? What do you do when you value a good grade more than sleep, having fun, spending time with God while practicing your faith, and living a healthy life for someone as young as you are?

It seems like the only way in college that we feel like we can be heard, let alone listened to, is by our achievement. Everything equates to the higher GPA, the amount of campus boards and organizations we are involved in, the credit hours we take in a semester. This somehow means we are better people, not even better students. Why is this?

I think some of it has to do with the fact that often the first question someone asks a college student is "What is your major?" While it is a relevant question and it can tell someone a lot about you, it often becomes the first thing someone looks for about you. Your major is like wearing a name tag with what you are good at on it on your chest that bears more weight than your name. For some students in smaller or possibly more niche programs that some people may not see the worth in or worry about your inclination for employment after graduation, this can be an added frustration because they feel forced to justify what they are studying and more indirectly, themselves because their capabilities (which are inexplicably tied to self-worth) seem less clear. Another factor is that many majors and career paths require certain grades, classes, and qualifications which become more important and more associated with the quality of a person than their actual identity and the capabilities it affords them.

To you shy people for whom "participation points" are condescending and dreaded, you only need to speak up if you want to, not to prove that you are competent and knowledgeable simply because you have the confidence to speak.

To you in humanities and liberal arts programs, you are smart and hire-able period. There is no "even though", what you have to offer is important. Your programs are valuable and they will be used to do great things. We need the thinkers and creatives, but you are even more than that. You do what you do because you love it and are capable of doing it well to change your world.

To you STEM majors, you are more than where you want to go after your degree. You are not the token "smart person", you are not the algebra class that it is okay to throw aside until calculus later, you are not a degree that makes a lot of money. You are valuable and you are in this field ultimately because you love it and you are also capable of doing it well.

To you education majors, you are more than the pitying looks because of your assumed grossly low future paycheck. You are, as everyone else, entering this field because you love it, and you have a passion for people and helping make what they want to of themselves. You are smart and brave.

To you non-traditional college students, you are as welcome in your program as anyone else. You are driven, passionate, and accomplished. You are here because you want to be and you did not let anyone take that away from you or stop you. You will go places.

To you students for whom grades have stolen precedence over other more important things in life, it should not be this way.

One of my favorite childhood movies is Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron which is about a wild stallion named Spirit who is captured by humans. Spirit spends much of the movie trying to escape physically and metaphorically. In it is one of my favorite motivational songs called Can't Take Me in one of the pivotal moments of the movie where men capture Spirit and take him to be "broken" to use him as a warhorse. Spirit refuses to be broken; he refuses to lose his wildness because he will be nothing but free so even as he is led away, he goes fighting. The best line in this song is "don't judge a thing until you know what's inside it".

My advice to you is to use that line.

If you let someone judge what is inside you when they do not know you, you are letting them program you. Programming molds someone into to be a utility, they are but a replaceable resource that is just like everyone else on a conveyor belt line to produce the manufactured. You are going to college to be equipped, which is teaching that person to use any utility and opportunity in reach, to be an indispensable team member that produces the unique. Remember when I said that Spirit had to escape bondage metaphorically? It does not matter how physically uninhibited you are if you are internally hindered by the expectations placed on you to prove yourself. Other people can hold your accomplishments over your head as much they like but you are only as trapped as you let yourself be.

You are not a degree, you are not your grades, and you are not your achievement or perceived lack thereof, so do not ever let anyone decide who you are and what you are capable of based on your supposed "credentials". That is not to say to throw away internships and the pursuit of excellence all together because that is not the point. The point is to not let those things define you. Being and doing your best are what college is for, not a class gateway, not a diploma that will get you stability and money, but a life experience that will teach just as much (if not more) outside of the classroom as in it.

Get those grades and get that degree not to speak for you, but as a foot in the door to speak for yourself. Understand that sometimes the people who can help you get where you want to go will only listen to A's and Summa Cum Laudes, and sometimes you will have to be prepared to give it to them to speak in a language they understand but only in order to teach them a new language that tells them they do not have the right to weigh people's worth when they do not know them. No one can take you, no one can beat you because only you can bring what you bring.

You should be not a mere part that will fit neatly into a box, you should be MacGyver who can build the box out of anything and you will be what can do that, not an A or prestigious degree.

Sincerely,

An Almost-Sophomore Who Learned This the Hard Way