One morning, a few weeks ago, I woke to an email that made my heart race. The subject line? “Fall grades are now accessible”. All of a sudden I was in a mad dash to load my school portal, and there was one grade, in particular, I wanted to see.
And there it was, “Spanish 205: D+”. I wasn’t totally surprised, I knew I hadn’t been doing great in the class. But I had been hopeful, maybe a little bit too hopeful, that I would pass the class with a C.
I took Spanish in high school. I hated it every step of the way, but my school required two years of a language, so I acquiesced. I suffered through one year with a teacher I didn’t like and one with a teacher that I did. I barely passed both and could not have been more relieved when I was done. I had been told several times by tutors and learning specialists that based on how hard my dyslexia had made learning to read and write in English, learning a second language would be incredibly difficult.
In college, I began tutoring at an after school homework club for elementary school students who spoke Spanish as a first language. While they all spoke English with relative ease, they did so in slow and hesitant tones, as if they were walking in shoes a size too small. But when they spoke Spanish, words ran off their tongues as if they were wearing their favorite pair of running shoes. They spoke to each other and their teacher with so much happiness and richness in their voices, I could never help but feel just a bit left out when they reverted back to their unenergetic English for my sake. Tutoring these kids each week is one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had, it’s showed me that teaching English Language Learners is something I could be happy doing as a career. But how could I do that if I couldn’t even talk to my students in their own first language?
With this in mind, I registered for the fall Intermediate Spanish course at school. This time around, I told myself, it would be different. Before, I had had no motivation to learn a language, and now I had all of my passion and aspirations to back me up.
The first few weeks of the class were difficult, I was spending several hours a night on assignments and still receiving C’s and D’s. During conversation practice, my classmates formed full and grammatically correct sentences on the spot while I struggled to put together simple words into intelligible sentences. The day before our first exam I went to my professors office hours for help and the first things she said to me was “I’m not sure you’re going to make it.” During the next several months, my stress and frustration with the class grew. The amount of work became a constant headache and although I was now going to office hours weekly for extra help, I was constantly berated by my professor for not trying hard enough.
As the deadline to withdraw from the class without record approached, I felt increasingly tempted to give up. Everyone told me I should drop the class and that it wasn’t worth it if it ruined my GPA. But despite everything, I was learning. When I went to tutor, I was able to hold conversations, albeit rudimentary ones, with the students in their own language and nothing, made me feel happier or more connected. I was making progress and wanted to get even better. So I worked as hard as I could and pushed through to the end of the semester, but I still got a D+.
Even admitting my grade here is pretty uncomfortable for me to be honest. It’s not that I’m ashamed, I know I did everything I could. But I grew up in the private schools of Silicon Valley. I went to high school twenty minutes from Stanford with classmates getting early acceptance to the likes of Harvard and Yale. It was the type of school where everyone took AP classes they hated and would constantly be bragging over how little sleep they’d gotten because of how hard they’d been working.
Grades are everything. Good grades mean you are amongst the best and the brightest, the most deserving. Bad grades mean you aren’t working hard enough, you don’t have your priorities straight, you don’t want it badly enough.
The day my Spanish grade came out, and I saw that big fat D+ staring at me on the computer screen, I was in Costa Rica on a family vacation. I only had a few minutes after seeing the grade before I had to hastily pack my computer away with my other belongings so we could check out of the hotel and begin the next part of our trip. Our driver on the way didn’t speak any English and asked my family if any of us spoke Spanish.
“Un poco,” I responded.
I sat in the passenger seat and talked with him as best I could for the hour long car ride. Translating between him and my parents when necessary, asking him about the towns we were going through, and listening as best I could as he told me about his dogs. Towards the end of the car ride, he turned to me and said,
“Hablas español muy bueno.”
In that moment, I realized just how petty grades really are. Some letter on a transcript told me I had learned next to nothing in Spanish class, but here I was holding a conversation with a complete stranger in a language I had once given up on entirely. And that told me more about myself and my abilities than a thousand A’s and F’s ever could.
I’ve come to realize that a bad grade isn’t anything to be ashamed. The more I think about, the more proud I become of my D+ grade and everything it represents.
I’m proud because D+ means I didn’t get an F, even though there were more than a few times I feared that’s what I would end up with. I worked and struggled and fought for every single percentage point, so damn right I’m going to be proud of them.
I’m proud because D+ means I didn’t get a W for Withdrawal, even though I was more than a little bit tempted on multiple occasions. Everyone from my parents to my best friends told me I should just drop, that it wasn’t worth all the stress. Maybe it wasn’t, but I kept going anyways. And why shouldn’t I be proud of that?
But mostly I’m proud because D+ took the class in the first place. And I didn’t take it for a grade or as a requirement, I took this class because I wanted to. I knew how hard it would be for me. I knew I would probably hate it every step of the way. But I decided that learning Spanish was something that I want to do, something that would bring me one step closer to being the type of person I want to be and living the life I want to live. Using only that knowledge as motivation, I finished the class and learned a lot along the way. Would I have learned more from a professor willing to work with me rather than against me? Of course. But this was my only option and I took it. I think that’s something to be proud of.
On paper, a D+ looks pretty bad. My transcript would definitely be prettier without it. But I didn’t take the class for the grade. I took this class because I wanted to be able to connect with people, be they students, friends, or strangers, and now I’m one step closer to accomplishing that goal. And maybe that’s just a tiny bit more important than a grade.
