Emily Hoeven | Lessons from the Bard

Growing Pains | Why we ought to value meaning over metric

By Emily Hoeven 10/31/16 11:08pm

I got a C-minus on my last Shakespeare test.

For the past week or so, I tried to think of ways to write this article without mentioning my grade. I considered augmenting the grade slightly so that it wouldn’t seem as bad. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my desire to erase, hide and alter the actual grade that I had received was at complete odds with the honesty I seek to share in these articles. How hypocritical would it be for me to write about how we ought to react when we receive bad grades, while pretending that I hadn’t actually received a bad grade myself?

So I’ll be honest. When I got my test back and saw my grade, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “I wish I could drop this class.” How was it fair that we hadn’t received a grade on anything until after the drop deadline? How was it fair that an entire question on the test had been based off of a secondary reading that had only been mentioned briefly on the syllabus and alluded to once in class? How could only one person in the entire class have received an A?

I started berating myself for not dropping the class while I still could. If only I could drop the class now, then I could pretend none of this ever happened. I could erase my bad performance on the test. The grade would never be able to make a dent on my transcript. I wouldn’t have to work like crazy the rest of the semester to compensate for that grade. I would have way less stress. Everything would be great.

I was contemplating filling out a petition for a late drop when I noticed that the principle behind what I was doing didn’t sit well with me. As much as I would have liked to bypass all the worry I felt by simply erasing the worrisome situation, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the solution I was pursuing wasn’t actually a solution. It was an escape mechanism. I wasn’t confronting the problem; I was running away from it.

It’s easy for me to tell people I love my classes and how challenging they are — when I’m doing well in them. After all, we generally like things we’re good at, and we’re good at telling people about the things we’re good at. But the second we fail at something challenging, our rhetoric changes.

In other words, I never would have contemplated dropping this class if I had received an A on the test. I would have gone around telling people how much I loved Shakespeare instead of griping about my inability to distinguish certain passages from “Henry V” from those of “Richard II.”

This test made me aware of two expectations I have in regard to my Penn education. On the one hand, I expect — and want — Penn classes to be challenging in every way possible. On the other hand, I also expect and want to do well. And because I want to do well, I sometimes feel entitled to receive certain grades even if I know that I might not have earned them.

Why did I think that I deserved an A on this test, even though I knew I hadn’t done some of the secondary reading? It hadn’t seemed significant, but it was on the syllabus. We were expected to read the syllabus and work the secondary readings into our schedules independently. And don’t we, as college students, often reassert and reaffirm and remind professors, parents, adults, that we are independent young adults and ought to be treated as such?

And shouldn’t we try to recognize — even as we acknowledge that our grades are important and our GPAs do matter — that we cannot always correlate the worth of a class with the grade we receive in it? We have to challenge the notion that the only things worth doing and spending time on are those that we know we’ll excel at. We have to separate meaning from metric.

The thing is, Shakespeare might have kicked my butt on this test, but he would have kicked it more if I had dropped the class. And I would have kicked myself. Because running away from things that challenge us to improve and learn in new ways and wanting to erase any indication of upheaval cannot be the mission of education — nor, indeed, of life. And it seems to me that understanding, accepting, celebrating this fact — that Shakespeare and school and life are not always smooth-sailing, and that that’s the point — is both half the battle and half the victory.