Every college student remembers the first time that they got a low grade on a test or an assignment. You receive your paper thinking that you are going to get a good grade because in high school you may have always gotten good grades. And then, you feel the sudden blow when you see a lower grade on your assignment. The truth is, everyone at some point in college has faced this, especially as a new college student.

The thing that nobody explains to you when you first go on a tour for college is that you're going to get a bad grade at some point or you're going to find yourself struggling in college. It's not like high school where you've gone through classes easing through with good grades, or if you've ever gotten a low grade, you were able to easily bring it up. In college, sometimes you will spend hours studying and it won't make a difference.

This is because every professor is different in college. They each have a different teaching style, and sometimes you won't have the option to choose different professors. In addition, college requires a lot of work from you, which can be extremely hard on a lot of students. It requires you to constantly study, complete homework, and finish projects on top of having a social life or a part-time job. It also requires you to use critical thinking skills where you're required to evaluate your own thinking, which is a lot different than simply memorizing information.

In addition to all of that, in high school you had teachers reminding you of assignments or talking to you when they noticed you struggling in their class. But in college, if you are failing in a class, there are a lot of professors who won't come to you first. And this is because in college you're treated as an adult and are expected to make up your own time to come and talk to a professor after class or visit their office hours. But this can be a huge transition for students coming out of high school.

I remember when I was a freshman in college and the first time I thought I had gotten a low grade in a math course. I was used to being great in math in high school because I had always gotten straight A's in all of my algebra courses. But when I took my first math exam in college, I left crying on my way home because I was sure that I had gotten a low grade. College is a whole different experience from high school, and you can't expect yourself to do well the first time you start a course in college.

When you first go to college and you find yourself sinking, it can be easy to begin feeling low about yourself or feel like giving up. However, what a lot of students don't realize is that everyone is in the same scenario as you. It may seem like other students in class are doing better, but the truth is that they're likely hiding the same amount of stress and anxiety that they are experiencing about surviving their classes. I've talked to a lot of college students who have told me that they used to get a 4.0 in high school until they went to college and their GPA began to sink.

One thing that's good to keep in mind is that college teaches you that grades aren't something that determines your worth. At the end of the day, what matters is how hard you tried and how determined you were to bring your grade up. Grades don't show the amount of work at home that you did to get that grade. When you're working on a project for months or staying up late at night, your grade won't reflect how long you stayed up to study for the test.

College prepares you for reality. In real life, your worth won't be measured by a grade. As students, we are taught from the time that you first went to school that grades mean everything. We are taught to also compare our grades to others and that if we aren't doing well in school, but others are, then we should feel ashamed of ourselves. The truth is though, they are important, but they shouldn't be the only thing that you determine who you are as a person or a student. And when you get a job, your life won't be determined by a grade but rather by determination and hard work.

Plus, sometimes as students we set extremely high expectations for ourselves with grades. You may, for example, think that getting a C is a low grade when in college a C really isn't that bad. If you finish a class with a C, you still will pass the class, and it shouldn't affect your GPA too severely as long as you don't get multiple C's in your other courses. We set these extremely high expectations on ourselves, and we don't allow ourselves to take a moment to factor in all of the hard work that we put into getting a good grade.

So, when you go to college and you find a low grade on an exam or project, don't cut yourself down too much. If you are studying, going to class, and making the effort to get your grade up, then you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. College is extremely difficult, no matter if you're a new student or a current student. You're doing your best, especially as a new student who is transitioning from high school to college, and you should give yourself some credit for doing the best that you can.