Unlike most students, I won't receive my first semester grades until March.
As one of around 600 juniors, I studied abroad this past semester. And at this point, I have no idea what grades to expect - especially because the University of Seville has yet to discover the wonders of e-mail communication between students and professors.
I don't think I did poorly, but it's hard to guess when your professors refuse to reveal what standards you have to live up to.
One of the questions I had to answer for a history class was, "What do you know about compasses?" No, I'm not kidding. Oh, and that question was worth 1.25 points out of my ten-point total grade.
That ten-point grade gets put on an American scale and calculated into that number we all love: our GPA.
I can try to tell myself that a GPA is, like age, just a number - but please, I'm a Penn student. Those three digits are always at the top of our worry lists. For now, I'm left to agonize about the potentially ravaging effect that studying abroad will have on that bothersome number.
Who knows if my compass answer stood up against the ambiguous grading scale of the Spaniards?
Out of the Ancient Eight, Penn is the only university to calculate grades earned while abroad into a student's GPA. On their international program Web sites, every other Ivy says they exclude overseas grades from the GPA (excluding a few specific programs sponsored by American universities).
Harvard Communications assistant Emily Simon wrote in an e-mail that "Harvard doesn't count grades earned abroad into a student's GPA because those are not Harvard grades. They are grades issued by another institution."
Every university abroad holds students to different academic standards, so Harvard's logic is that a Barcelona grade can't equal a Harvard grade. While these classes' credits count toward graduation, Harvard doesn't allow them to be weighted into their students' GPAs.
Penn, however, maintains that a class "worthy of Penn credit is worthy of a grade" that gets counted toward your GPA, according to Office of International Programs director Geoffrey Gee. He added that Penn "wants students to work with the same academic pressure" they work with at home.
The fact of the matter is that classes abroad, while considered equivalent to classes here in West Philly, function on a different level and on different scales.
Penn's faculty (along with faculty from other universities) have to decipher and translate that number into an American grade.
And they have to do that for every country and every university.
These grading ambiguities aren't the only problem. If we're told not to worry about our GPA, then shouldn't we be out in the world learning outside the classroom as much as we are inside?
After all, studying abroad isn't a purely academic endeavor.
Wining and dining with the locals holds just as much importance as integrating yourself into the university system.
As Harvard junior Susan Yao told me, "when you're abroad, the focus should not be on the grades. It should be on the cultural transition."
But as GPA-centric as Penn students are, many of us can only suffer from that nagging worry that jumps to the front of our minds as exams and paper deadlines approach. And those grading worries can cause us to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Gee admits that he's questioned whether or not to factor grades from abroad into a student's cumulative GPA.
He adds that Penn might want to consider relaxing students' concerns over their GPAs, saying that he thinks "it's more important to work for a grade beyond the transcript."
The decision to go abroad should allow students to acquire an education that they can't receive at Penn - not only academically, but also culturally and socially.
If going abroad is really about expanding our view of the world and how it works, then how can the University put a number on that?
Christina Domenico is a College junior from North Wildwood, NJ. Her e-mail is domenico@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Undersized Undergrad appears on Fridays.
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