With spring comes final grades and graduation, evidence and reward of the work UNC students have put into their studies. But grades can also reflect lack of work. Spring also brings panic, as potential failing or even low grades can derail post-graduation plans and, at the very least, make that graduation party your grandparents were going to throw you a bit awkward.
Hence, late April heralds the curious and unseemly practices of begging, pleading, threatening, crying and organized complaining up the hierarchal chain of command in order to get inconvenient Fs removed.
It has been said that success in life is productively dealing with disappointment. In that spirit, we ask UNC students the following: If you are going to fail, please do so with dignity. Accept your grade quietly, go off in a corner, think about what you did and what, if anything, you can do to avoid its repetition. The above-mentioned grade grubbing practices embarrass all parties involved, waste valuable institutional and instructor time, show little respect for the institution, degrade the reputation of UNC and rob you of a learning and growth opportunity.
As students are now conflated with consumers, it is easy to feel entitled to the grades we want for the money we pay. The peculiar and noxious American penchant for litigation to get what we want (see Cher’s “achievement” of a higher grade in “Clueless”) also trickles down to the loathsome culture of grade grubbing.
These mentalities blind us to the realities of student responsibility in this institution. Being a student is basically living up to an arranged set of expectations in syllabi and major requirements.
If you cannot and have not lived up to those expectations because for whatever reason you cannot manage your life, you cannot and should not receive a passing grade. All too often the students that grub the most are those that have little legitimate excuse for failure. Radiohead said it best: “You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts.”
Grades and the degree they add up to sanction and signal institutional responsibility on both sides: student and school.
They tell the world that the named student can manage themselves and a robust workload through diligent self-direction. Grade grubbing, and caving into it, degrades the value of that signal. Those students and instructors who honestly perform to the level UNC requires should shame grade grubbers into silence. Which, of course, wouldn’t be necessary if grade grubbers were properly ashamed of themselves.
