My name is Anna and I am not a straight-A student. Never have been, not afraid to admit that I probably never will be either. My grades tend to be on the more volatile side, with extreme highs and extreme lows, usually averaging out to something in the B/B+ range, lovingly earning me the nickname “Anna88” by my parents in high school. I’m not the kind of student who doesn’t have to work hard to get good results. I can’t put off a paper until the night before it’s due or barely put time into my studies and expect things to go swimmingly, or in my favor at all. In fact, if I’m not working to some degree of hard, things tend to downswing pretty damn quickly.
But I’m okay with this. After years of struggling to feel like I could be successful to any given degree, I have come to terms with this seemingly unavoidable fact of life. Let me start out by saying that just because I have come to terms with it, doesn’t mean I embrace it. Working hard is incredibly important no matter what, and when I say that I accept the fact that my grades tend to be in the B range, I mean exactly that. My grades, just my grades. At our age and in our time, it’s easy to forget that barriers exist and that school isn’t everything. Sometimes, it’s hard to not let those Bs on your transcript stop you from feeling like a B of a person--like someone who will constantly come within reach of, but never actually accomplish their goals.
This is how I felt for a long time until I realized how effed up it truly was. While I was busy stressing over how I ended up with an 89 in a class when I was just on the cusp of getting a 90, I was isolating my friends and family who loved me and supported me no matter what, ignoring the fact that I had a pretty baller internship, and not to mention, the amazing summer I would have ahead of me in Ireland as well. Everything else felt worthless in comparison. I had adopted a negative and futile attitude that everyone, myself included, found unpleasant to be around.
And therein lies why I’m okay with being a B student, and why, if you’re in the same position, you should be too. So long as you vow to work hard and strive to be better, focusing all of your energy on something that can’t be undone is a waste of time. That B+ may have stung when I first saw it, but at the end of the day, academics is only one aspect of who I am. It's not absolutely everything. Relish in your successes and learn from your failures: take every B as a lesson. Analyze every paper and every study session to figure out what you could do differently next time around to yield some better results. Grades matter now, and perhaps for a few years after graduation, but 10, 15 years down the line you maybe won’t even remember your GPA, and probably won’t want to hang around with anyone who does.
