Grades: Please pardon a brief moment of vanity.

[rax]

I got my grades back for the semester. Out of three classes, I got two As.

...

and an A+.

Now to a certain extent, when you are in graduate school, anything less than an A means you sort of screwed up. An A- means "you could have done better, but that was OK," a B+ means "this was kinda borderline, really," a B means "you need to get better at this material," and anything lower means "you should consider leaving graduate school." This depends on your program, of course, but most funded positions require you keep your GPA around a 3.5 (a couple I've heard of are as low as a 3, but I've also seen positions that required a 3.85 just to keep funding) and so this matters. Still, getting As means I did not screw up, and the A+? Well, that apparently reflects better than just not screwing up.

This matters a lot to me because I screwed up my undergrad so hard. I only managed to get my final GPA to like a 3.2 because my senior year I took thirteen classes in two semesters and averaged a 3.8 in them. (I'm converting to a 4.0 scale for convenience here; my undergrad had a 5.0 scale.) Other than that year, where I worked like a crazy person, my undergrad work was atrocious, and that combined with some other things has sometimes made me feel like a giant flake academically. This year marks four full years of graduate school --- three years in my MA program, and one year toward the PhD --- all of them while working full-time for a tech company. In all four of those years, I have never gotten a grade that was not an A, except for this A+; I feel like I have karmically purged my four years of undergrad. I did all of the work, I went to all of my classes, I took my education seriously, I feel like I genuinely understand a whole lot more as a result of this work even though I still have a long way to go. It feels really good. I am not a fuckup.

Now all I have to do is... around five more years of school, and then I'll have a PhD! yay

Comments

[poussifeu]

Hey congrats :D :D :D

5.0 system? What is this madness.

[rax]

Thanks!

Yeah, I dunno about the 5.0 system; my high school did it too, so it didn't seem weird at the time, although at my high school it was basically a way to make sure that you couldn't take certain classes if you wanted to have a high GPA and vice versa --- honors classes gave one more GPA point, and some classes didn't have an honors track at all. In retrospect what the hell.

At MIT it was just "A=5, B=4, C=3, D=2, F=0, don't fuck up!"

[poussifeu]

Yeah that makes like no sense to me! D: My school did the "honors is worth extra gpa points and so is ap" thing but they still were supposedly on a 4.0 system, and the extra gpa points went toward a weighted total (which could be higher than even a 6.0?????) but not the unweighted total. Supposedly they used the unweighted total for most things (in order to keep the not-honors students from feeling bad I guess), but idk if that's true. :\ So it's a 4.0 system that... doesn't stop at 4.0 which I guess makes even less sense but that's what I know.

[q10.livejournal.com]

yay!

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Go you!

Nine

[doma.livejournal.com]

That's really cool. I had no idea about your undergrad grades, by the way. You've always been "Rax the academic superstar" to me.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Believe me, if it weren't for freshman pass/fail, it would have been even worse. Possibly lower than a 3 worse; I don't feel like pulling out my transcript and doing the math. :P

[doma.livejournal.com]

I think that will make the biopic of your life more exciting, so that's okay.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside the ridiculousness of anyone making a biopic about me to begin with: If my biopic spends that much time on my undergrad career, I didn't have an interesting enough adulthood. ;)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Many Congrats!

I messed up my first year BA and blew it big time on one of the second year courses. My dissertation was A but my degree a B.

I adored grad school and sailed thru my PhD while people around me with First Class BAs struggled. Some of it was maturity but most was about the more tortoise like demands of grad work

One big issue: it's made me a better teacher because I remember that awful sense of Not Getting It while working my socks off.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That's an interesting point about teaching --- I'm not sure if it's made me a better teacher (I need another ten years of experience before I can really start talking about that, I think), but I do notice that a lot of my favorite students aren't my A students.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

but I do notice that a lot of my favorite students aren't my A students.

I was for the most part an A student and a lot of my favorite students aren't A students. The students with not quite as good grades are more interesting as human beings.

(And then I wonder what this says about me as a human being.)

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

(Also the A+ means you screwed up. It means you tried too hard in your classes; don't you have Real Work to do?)

[q10.livejournal.com]

this actually depends substantially on the field and the class.

my sense is that if the classwork is not, and is incapable of becoming, interesting original research, then an A+ means you're probably trying too hard. if the classwork is, or can become, interesting original research, then an A+ is an endorsement of that research as promising.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. I was joking; you're being serious.

(Original research rarely comes out of math classwork. Unless I totally misunderstood how math grad school works, which is very possible.)

[q10.livejournal.com]

yeah. i know you were joking, but there is an important truth lurking behind your joke.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I did in fact do original research for this class, and I feel like my time was well spent.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Go you! :-)

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

Woot! Go you!

[lindseykuper]

Well done. From my outsider's point of view, it certainly seems like you're extraordinarily diligent and serious about grad school.

I like your breakdown of what the different grades mean in grad school. It's interesting that IU does the A+ thing. It's no difference, points-wise, than an A, so to me it really just means something like "A and we want you to know that you're awesome" -- it's a good feeling to get one of those.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I figured I would only be ordinarily diligent, but apparently other people don't work this hard all the time? I dunno. :)

It is definitely a good feeling! I think not all professors give them out, but apparently some do.

[takatsukishiori.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I know well the feeling of accomplishment, when one sees the little "+" at the end of one's grade. That such a tiny thing makes such a big difference is overwhelming, at times.

I flubbed around, my first couple years of undergraduate, riding high on my high school accomplishments and sense of entitlement, thinking I didn't need to try to succeed. Well, I was wrong, and had to pull it together in the end, much like you did. Thankfully, graduate school has been better, and has given me a much-needed sense of humility.

Going off a thread I saw above: When I taught women's studies, my favourite students actually were my A students. I gave them an A because they participated, not necessarily because they answered every exam question perfectly.

[schrodi-kitten.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

[natashasoftpaw.livejournal.com]

Woo! That's awesome, congrats! :-D

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

You are not a fuckup, and I am hell of proud and happy for you. <3

[sabotabby]

Awesomecakes!

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Go you go you go you!

You are, in fact, quite good at grad-school. It is one of the things you are good at. And you work hard at it, and it pays off.

And you are awesome.

Just saying.

<3

[niamy-tak.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! =D It sounds like you've done really well!

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, candidate!

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

Now to a certain extent, when you are in graduate school, anything less than an A means you sort of screwed up. An A- means "you could have done better, but that was OK," a B+ means "this was kinda borderline, really," a B means "you need to get better at this material," and anything lower means "you should consider leaving graduate school."

Heh, in my program, a 3.5 for a grad student gets you into the CS honors society (I am just barely below being able to qualify right now), and a 3.0 with at least Bs in "core" classes keeps you in good standing.

I wish my final undergrad GPA had been anything like a 3.2/4.0.

Congrats on the A+!

[merin-chan.livejournal.com]

A bit belated, but way to go! ^^ Keep on keepin' on!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm impressed. I was recently told that my grades are good, but my recent grades are not all As. More than that, I have never tried working for a company while going to grad school. How did it go?

[rax.livejournal.com]

Well, the grades thing really depends on your program --- I'm familiar mostly with humanities programs where you have to keep mostly As to keep funding. And as far as work goes... I don't get out much? :) I don't know who you are so I don't know what you know, but basically I wake up, take a shower, have breakfast, and work until it's time to go to school, and then go to school, and then go home and work until dinner, and then eat dinner, and then do homework until it's time to go to bed, with like an hour in there of doing something fun like playing Pokemon with one of my housemates or skyping with one of my partners. I also do lots of work on weekends that I don't travel --- and use most of my vacation days to deal with final papers or conferences rather than actual vacations. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this course of action to anyone else, but it works for me; the money I get from the job lets me have the lifestyle I want (plenty of space, nice kitchen, traveling regularly to see my partners) and the graduate program gives me the intellectual stimulation the job doesn't, and hopefully in another few years the opportunity to consider a career switch into professorship, though we'll see how that goes.

Plus I like both my job and my graduate studies, and don't really want to give either of them up. It is possible that one day I will wake up and say "WHAT WAS I THINKING" and want to stop doing one of them. I save money so that if that happens, I'll be able to choose between them, and not just have my hand completely forced. I'm hoping it doesn't happen though. :)