Missing the Mark

A month into school, and just as everyone has settled in, midterms descend upon the general first-year population: gen-chemists have already suffered through one, and calculus students either have theirs over with or are preparing to suffer them this week.
Along with papers and tests, of course, come grades—something that students here are naturally preoccupied with. Of the freshman students that came from ranked schools, Columbia claims that 92 percent were in the top 10 percent of their class and I’m sure that most of the others were straight-A students. That is to say, the classmates of 2011 are the cream of the crop.

This, however, also poses a problem. While most students here were used to A grades in high school, there are only so many such grades to hand out in classes here. Assuming that grades are curved such that only 30 percent of each class receives top marks, we’ll have the vast majority scoring below their accustomed levels.

I’ve had a lovely share of disappointments already. As a pre-med, I came into school set on easily achieving a 4.00 GPA as long as I worked hard and kept focused just as I had been taught my whole life. I realized this might be an issue when, during orientation ice-breakers, I found that nearly half of the freshman class is pre-med, but I was still certain that I could get what I wanted without feeling remotely like Sisyphus.
What a shock it was, then, as the avalanche of not-A grades descended upon me, I felt slightly overwhelmed and cheated. What happened to the “work hard, reap the rewards” rule?

As time progresses, I have gotten used to my math marks after receiving a grade similar to the first on my third assignment, but with a large “Good job!” written next to it and I’m hoping the famous college curve will kick in. I’m still reeling from calculus seeing marks ranging from 5/30 to 30/30 in my pile of homework—I’ve yet to figure out how the TA grades. I guess that I’ll get there eventually.

Perhaps the worst of the hits, however, was the chemistry midterm: the grade I received, which would have still constituted an A in Ontario high schools, was below the mean of the class. This, then, is the greatest change: at my old school, you could still be at the top of the class, despite making a few stupid mistakes, because chances are that most other people made them, in addition to being less prepared for the test. Here, however, classes are full of people who simply do not make those mistakes. The competition is less obvious than it was in my old school—there, stolen glances at papers, if not blatant inquiry about marks, were very common and made it easy to figure out how you stacked up. Here, while impossible to know exactly who got what in a class of 200 people, it’s easy to judge from the late-night study sessions all around campus that most people are serious about their stuff.

I guess what I’ve found so far is the simple advice offered to me by a friend: “Just breathe.” I suppose that it’s the best I’ve heard because while it’s a month into school, it’s only the beginning. Other exams will be had; lowest marks will be dropped; more studying will be done. It isn’t going to get any easier to get good grades, but it will certainly be more bearable if one follows the profound advice of my grade 10 math teacher: “Suck it up, princess.”

Plus, I can’t help feeling kind of bad-ass getting B grades and C grades for the first time in my life. I think I’ll don a Pink Ladies coat, declare myself a future English major, and toss care to the wind. Yes, that’s it—I’ll party every night and plan on living in a box after graduation. This feeling of rebellion will surely continue for a while—that is, until I pull an all-nighter in Butler for my next exam to make up my grade.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.