By Laura Jane Wey
To begin with, there’s the phenomenon of the Crazy Grades within the department. You might, after missing half the lectures and skipping the midterm for a certain course, get 75 for a final grade. Yet again you might be a straight-A student, show up for every class, and faithfully fulfill every requirement made by the teacher, but end up with a 78. What I’m saying is, there’s absolutely no guarantee you’ll get what you deserve at the end of the semester simply by being a hard-working (or not so hard-working), God-fearing, law-abiding student–indeed, waiting for your grades may resemble a lottery in some extreme cases; there isn’t much else one can do except cross one’s fingers, and pray for good luck. Freewill? Not much of that; everything seems to be predestined–or decided in arbitrary ways by arbitrary gods! And then there’s the problem of all the classes people are taking in other departments, either out of the necessity to fulfill requirements for double majors / minors, or purely out of personal interest. Needless to say, widening the scope of one’s knowledge is something to be encouraged; unfortunately there is on the other hand the all too real technicality of each department having its own standard for grading. Numbers? Well, in some courses offered by the College of Management 100 is the not-too-difficult-to-reach limit, whereas in many Science or Engineering courses an 85 would be a remarkably good grade. All of this has led me, along with countless others, to wonder: should the President’s List even exist? As every first-grader knows, quantities can be compared with each other only if the unit of measurement is the same: one could say, for instance, that the speed of light is greater than the speed of sound, but certainly not that the volume of the fish-tank is larger than the length of the driveway. How is it then that we’re stacking up all the little numbers on students’ transcripts and pretending they are comparable, when no two students are taking exactly the same classes? To make an already muddled situation even more complicated, students actually receive a grade for Physical Education which gets figured into their GPA. Racking my brains as I have I am still at a total loss as to what on earth has swimming, pitching a softball, or dancing to do with one’s academic performance–although that could be because my mental powers are none too great. And while we’re at it it would be unforgivable if I should fail to mention the extraordinary number on the transcript known as the ‘behaviour grade’: this grade is theoretically given by a student’s academic advisor, but in reality everybody gets an 82 unless there’s some special circumstance. The fact that everybody gets the same grade is an acknowledgment that the grade is meaningless, and one can’t help but wonder why it is there at all. There is really very little we as students can do to remedy the situation, except perhaps to stay away from certain teachers and certain departments, to avoid P.E. after one has fulfilled the required number of credits (unless one is a remarkably good athlete), and above all to get down on our knees and say our prayers every night. So perhaps it is time someone who has real power do something. Abolishing the President’s List would be a good start, having P.E. pass-fail or without credit would make better sense, and the behaviour grade should most definitely be gone. As for the Crazy Grades–well, that one is certainly beyond me, though that could be due to my own imbecility. Someone smarter, HELP!! a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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