Dear College Professors,

As finals are right around the corner, we are all wondering what we need to make in order to ace your class... or not fail your class. But how are we supposed to take the time to calculate this, when all we have is a single letter midterm grade? You may not realize but grades are the central focus of the school, and better yet, college. We strive to get an A and we study endless hours so we can achieve that goal. And for you to not be able to do us the simple favor of putting in that grade, is absurd.

Let's just say, Billy, with the purple hair who sits in the back corner, slacked the entire year and is assuming he has no better than a C in the class. We have a month left of school and he wanted to try to bring up his grade in creative writing, maybe not to an A, but he has come to the realization that he cannot fail the course because his parents cannot afford for him to retake the class. He recently was in the library writing his paper, and even missed the new episode of Game of Thrones episode, to make sure that his paper was golden.

Now it's been two weeks since he handed in that paper. Still no grade. The countdown is on, 10 days left of class and barely enough assignments to pull that grade up. He has 9 work shifts, 5 finals, 2 study guides, and 1 teacher that inputs all his grades. Poor Billy. With not a clue of what any of his grades are, and barely any time to go personally ask every professor for his grades, he's just going to strive to do the best he can on all of his finals.

Two weeks later...

Turns out Billy had a C+ in creative writing, but a D in logic, the class he assumed he was doing well in because he has only had a few assignments.

So the points is, professors, that if you are not updating our grades regularly or at least a few times before and after midterms, we won't know what we are working with. Also being able to look at our grades directly, motivates us to want to fix a lacking grade or ultimately get the best grade possible. We become more determined when we see the number directly rather than when we're just guessing at it.

In high school, all my teachers always put our grades into the computer immediately, but now when school is more challenging and assignments are time-consuming and lengthy, THIS is when we're unable to see how we are doing. How is that fair?

So moral of the story, while we are studying for 5 exams, writing 2 papers and working a part-time job. Take a little stress off our backs and at least give us an estimate of where we are standing.

Thank you,

A frustrated student trying to raise her GPA