It’s graduation season for students across the country, and honors go to those who have performed well according to the most common measure in academia: grades.
I just wrapped up a year of college classes myself. After 33 years, I found myself thrown right back into the pressure and panic to “get good grades,” along with wondering what happened to that permanent record I was always being warned about, nail-biting fears about whether I can write an essay, and trying to understand why my classmates are perfectly comfortable attending an 8:30 a.m. online class in their pajamas from their unmade beds. (My adult children tell me this is an indicator that I’ve crossed some generational gap line.)
Going back to school as an adult with grown-up experience and accompanying responsibilities forced an admission that there are areas of study (and life) where a C is the absolute best you can do. If you’ve done your best, that’s what counts, not the subjective grade attached. “C’s get degrees,” I’ve been told. It’s true. I don’t like it, but it is true.
Fitness guru Tony Horton’s admonition to “do your best and forget the rest” is easier for me to accept than “C’s get degrees,” but the premise is the same. And it might just be a healthy approach to the rest of life beyond grades and exercise performance. Perfection, after all, is a transitory illusion.
What’s better than perfect? Learning and applying new skills and information. Growing and improving as a person in character and conduct. Making progress toward a goal, however slowly. Those are the things that count in the long run. Maybe we should be giving ourselves grown-up grades for those things. (Don’t fret, Mom and Dad, I still have my A’s.)
BY NIKI TURNER | [email protected]
