Many students have a lot of negative feelings toward receiving a C as a grade. Teachers and professors alike will always tell students who are upset with receiving anything in the C-plus to the C-minus range, "a C is average. Don't be upset." But for us, it's not average.
Still, I received these exact words from an administrator recently: "However, the grades you shared with me were not failing grades. In fact, a B+ and 81 percent and 77 percent are all grades that are above average."
Guess what? We work hard. We study, we do most (if not all) of our homework, we get As or high Bs across the board, and we do slightly above average in all of our classes, activities, sports, and somehow also manage a personal life, sleep, and maintain mildly-reasonable hygiene. We are not average people. To us, "average" people sit on the couch and skip class every day. Average people don't work two part-time jobs and play a varsity sport in college. Average people don't work even a quarter as hard as we do. We could never live that way. It's not saying our way is better, it's just the only way we know.
So to us, a C isn't average. It's failure.
I didn't get into my dream college on the first try, because my grades weren't as fantastic as many of the other students who applied early decision to Assumption College. I was waitlisted, added to the regular pool of applicants, and then accepted less than three days later. But those three days were the worst of my 18-year-old life so far. The agony was awful and all I felt was failure. I had gotten too many low Bs and one unholy C in trigonometry. I knew that was what kept me out of the pack. In fact, upon asking the admissions counselors what could have impeded my acceptance the first time, they almost flat-out told me my grades were the reason. I wasn't an A student. I was an A-ish student. A and A-plus students get accepted for early action. I had to wait with the "other" pack of applicants.
I don't hold myself to be better than everyone else, but I do hold myself to what I believe is a high standard of academics, and many other students in today's academic world, high school, or college, do as well.
School is getting harder. Just having one club on your academic résumé won't get you into college anymore. One internship won't get you that great post-grad job, and graduating below cum laude pretty much cuts the amount of graduate schools that will accept you in half. When it comes down to it, if you want to be anybody in the academic or post-undergraduate world, a C is no longer average.
If a C was average, I would have been accepted to Assumption the first time. If a C was average, students wouldn't be scolded by their parents every single day for bringing home grades below a B-minus. If a C was average, my geography professor would not curve the class average until it was at 80 percent, because he understands that holding us to a higher standard means holding himself to one as well. If the class's overall grade can't be above average, maybe he isn't teaching us well enough for us to understand him. If a C was average, I wouldn't have had to meet with my economics professor twice per week to make sure I "understood the material well enough," the same way the students who were failing did.
Due to today's academic pressure on students of nearly all grades, a C is no longer average, and I think somebody needs to clue in the professors who try to tell us otherwise.
