Last week I got a perfect score on a midterm. I had worked really hard on it and spent the entire week stressing over it. It was a take home exam, and a coworker, let's call her L, who is in the same class (different section) and I formed an unofficial study group. We didn't share our answers, and we never saw each other's midterms, we just bounced ideas off each other for some of the questions. It was really helpful.
When our grades were posted, I happened to be at work, so went to ask L if the instructor had posted the grades for her section yet. He had, so we thumbs-upped each other to signal that we had both done well. The director at our library was standing behind us while we had this conversation, and she kind of scoffed and said "I hate to burst your bubbles, but it's hard to get a bad grade in grad school."
Yeah.
I think she meant that most of the people in the class probably did well**, which is probably true, because as I said earlier, people in grad school care. But the way she said it implied that L and I shouldn't be celebrating our good grades, because grad school itself isn't hard. I mean, her statement is factually wrong. It would have been a lot easier to get a bad grade. I could have disregarded grammar, done fewer essay drafts, half-assed my research. It would have been a lot easier to use shitty examples rather than squeeze my mind grapes. I mean, seriously- the hours upon hours L and I spent working on this midterm was hard. I don't appreciate having my accomplishments belittled.
Whatever yo, I worked my ass off on that assignment and I earned that 100%. And my mom bought me tiramisu as a reward for being awesome.
*I could not think of a good title for this post. This seemed kind of all-purpose.
**I have to do a lot of this kind of interpreting. Some people just need to think before they speak.
No comments:
Post a Comment