When I started college, I was terrified that I would fail. Most people who know me now don’t believe me when I say this, but I honestly just hoped that I would pass. That was my goal my first semester freshmen year, pass. There were a myriad of reasons why I was scared that I’d fail but one was that I didn’t know if I was smart enough. I did well enough in high school but doing well in high school and doing well in college are two totally different things. I honestly didn’t care that much about school in high school. I did my work, did exactly what I had to do, and that was it nothing more and nothing less. Because of this, I was scared that maybe I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been for college.
Because of this fear, my perfectionism went into hyper drive and I became obsessive about school to the point where my first semester of college I did almost nothing but study. While this was a little over the top, and I drove myself a bit crazy, I learned a lot that first semester, and it wasn’t all from a book. One of the biggest things I learned was that I could do it. Despite my biggest fears, I could not only do well in college, but I could excel. A girl who thought she might fail out got straight A’s her first semester. I was completely shocked when I got my final grades back. How I ended up with an A in my biology class I’ll never know.
My freshmen year people liked to call me a genius, which sounds nice, but one that puts way too much pressure on a person, and two I couldn’t accept that compliment about myself. I did well in school because I worked hard is what I told people. I said I was smart because I studied. What it took me far too long to understand was that I was smarter than I thought I was. There are plenty of people who study just as hard as I do and don’t get the grade I make. I realized that my not admitting that my grades come partially from my being smart came from a place of pride, not humility.
It was this realization that made me finally start taking real pride in my grades. Because of this, naturally, I wanted to share my success with my friends. I’d tell people, if they asked, how I did on tests not to brag or be mean, but because I took pride in my ability. Once I realized that I wasn’t some little freshmen anymore, I finally was able to admit that I could do it. Walking into my freshmen year of college I felt like the tiniest fish in the biggest pond so imagine my surprise when I suddenly became one of the biggest fish and I could actually handle it.
This realization about myself didn’t come without its struggles. I was teased and picked on for my grades. People thought I was a goody-goody because all I would do is study and I had someone even call me a loser. It was bad when I got good grades because I got teased, but it was worse still when I didn’t get as good a grade as I usually did. If I made a B on a test, people who I considered my friends, wouldn’t let me forget it. They’d try to pull me down asking me why I couldn’t do better. It got to the point where I was self-conscious about the grades I made. It got to the point where people who used to ask me for help in class stopped asking me because I “made them feel bad.” I even had someone wait after class when the teacher would give us our grades back to try and see if they did better than me on the test. Because of all of this, I stopped sharing my grades with people, and my last semester sophomore year I hid the grades I got so people wouldn’t judge me when I “ruined the curve.”
Everything leading up to this part of my article was background to the real point I'm trying to make which is this: I’m a college senior and I’m tired of being ashamed of my grades because they’re good. I’m tired of when I mention my GPA people freaking out like I'm judging them if their's isn't as good as mine. I’m tired of feeling like I have to hide my accomplishments in school. I’m tired of people telling me I do well in school only because I’m smart like I don’t study or work hard. Yes I am smart and yes there are people who struggle more than me, but that doesn’t mean I have it easy. I do put my school before everything else, and I do make sacrifices with my social life. Scholarship is my life and my grades reflect that.
I’m not trying to put other people down for their grades. I believe that if you do your best that’s all that matters. If your best work is a B, then that’s great. If your best work is an A then that’s great too. It’s not just about the numbers and letters associated with how smart you are. You need to consider how much effort you think you put in the class, what grade you honestly think you deserve, if you pushed yourself as far as you could, and if you feel like you genuinely learned the subject. It seems as if too many students care about having a certain letter by their classes name after finals and not whether or not they learned the material sufficiently.
What I’m trying to say, in my very long winded way, is that I’m not going to hide how well I do in school anymore or even how bad I do. I’m going to start being more honest with myself and others. I don’t want to let other people control my life or make me feel like I should be ashamed of my academic accomplishments. And if anyone has a problem with that, then they need to remember that this is about me and not anyone else.
