Again, I found myself crunching number in my professor’s office to calculate how I would manage to get that desired grade. It was that moment where one calculates how many points they need to get an ‘A’. We’ve all been there. As I sat there frustrated with myself, my professor asked me what I wanted in life and my plans on getting there. He then proceeded to ask me what stood in my way. I looked at him in an ignorant way and proceeded to list off the nightmares of a college student who doesn’t have the perfect GPA. How deep down I had no idea what I was doing and I felt like I was wasting my time. To me, at that time as I sat in front of him I truly believed no post-graduate program would ever accept me because of that letter that would show up on my transcript.

He then looked into my eyes and told me to put the calculator down. He said “the grade you get in this class does not define your ability to do good things.” Your GPA is simply one of the misrepresentations of who you are that people see on the page; but your GPA isn’t a thing that defines you. These numbers that you care about do not capture the good within your heart. These numbers do not state the great things you will achieve. By no means, do these numbers define the battles you’ve been through. It doesn’t represent those moments you helped one in need, or the moments you grew and challenged yourself. Your GPA is simply a number that captures a misrepresentation of one’s knowledge in a stage of their life. That’s it.

So why are we all obsessed with this two to three-digit number? Why do we spend hours beating ourselves up and feeling like a failure because of a misrepresentation of our knowledge? I recognize that grades are important, because one has to demonstrate knowledge one way or another; however, we all have bubbled in the wrong letter and have had life get in the way. So keep in mind during this hectic finals week, that this number is just one of the many things post graduate schools glance at.