One of the most frustrating things about Harvard is that you never really know how you are doing in your classes. Every day, you go to class, do your readings or psets, write your papers, and take your exams, but for some reason Harvard does not have an online program that lets you see your progress in your classes. Because of this, we are all in the dark, having to guess what our grades are.

I can understand why the university wants us to focus on the material in class rather than our grades in class, but it would be helpful to know how well we are grasping the material and how well we are performing. The way it is now, we could either be scraping a C or pulling an A and we wouldn't even know it. The only time we see our grades is the day that they come out at the end of the semester. At this point, it is too late to do anything about it. At least if we knew that we were under-performing in advance, we could save our grades before finals (probably not, but we can only hope).

With access to online grades, students would be motivated to work harder instead of being naively content. We would be able to track our progress in the class and proficiency with the material. And perhaps most interestingly, there would be no confusion as to how our grades became so deflated.