Julia Duba/Staff Writer
The other day I was having lunch with my dad and my 10-year-old brother when we began to talk about my brother’s online grade-by-grade parent progress report portal or whatever Dade County schools have subjected guardians to these days.
Soon my brother had that all-too-familiar worrisome look on his face. Dad was about to take away his video games for a week because of those C’s.
As University students we still worry about our grades, but most of us have forgotten that dreadful feeling of revealing a report card to our parents every nine weeks.
But we should forget about our GPA entirely and just learn stuff. Yes, I know we need our Bright Futures Scholarship, and our Pell Grant, and all our financial aid. But if we could just stop browsing ratemyprofessors.com for the “easy” professors and doing homework from one class in our other class, then maybe what we learn can start playing a part in the grade we earn.
Seriously, next time you are about to register for classes and you’re reading reviews on your next possible professor, sign up for the class where people tell you that “if you study, read, and show up to class, you can get a good grade,” and not for the class where “if you read the powerpoints, you’ll pass the exams.”
We need to leave the FCAT behind and stop being hollow test-takers who memorize information and then forget it once we walk out of the room, and go back to being students who are in class to learn and retain information for the rest of our careers.
After all, we’re the ones who will drown in debt because of these courses, why not get what we pay for: an education. We aren’t paying for an easy A, but for the knowledge that the University will impart upon us.
Of course there have been times when I looked at exams and wondered if the professor suffered a blow to the head over the weekend, causing some sort of memory loss of their previous lectures.
But overall, I’ve sat in lectures and listened — sometimes without taking notes — and to my surprise gotten A’s and B’s. I’ve also gotten C’s. In fact, I got a C in a class where I learned more than I ever expected to.
I don’t think you should become so relaxed to the point that you risk being expelled for failing every class, but if you stop worrying about your grades and take the time to listen to lectures and do the readings and write the term paper with more diligence, your GPA will reflect it.