Middle school was the first time I got letter grades. Whenever a teacher handed back a test at the end of class, a whisper of “What did you get?” broke out through the room. Some kids stuffed their graded papers into their folders, while others smiled smugly and showed the number in red pen to whoever would look. I fell into the trap of sharing my grades when anyone asked. I didn’t mind; after all, I always did well.
When I got the occasional grade that I wasn’t proud of, however, I didn’t want to tell anyone. Hearing that someone did better only made me feel worse. In eighth grade, I stopped answering when people asked what I’d gotten on that last science quiz. It was none of their business. Other people’s success had no effect on mine, and vice versa.
Middle school taught me that you can just opt out of a stress culture.
I carried this lesson with me to my high school, which was a lot like Wellesley but smaller and with more rules (and boys). My grades were for me alone. It didn’t matter how anybody else did. People thought of my school as a pressure cooker, but it didn’t have to be.
I hear a lot about Wellesley’s so-called stress culture. Some of us have a tendency to feel guilty when we’re not doing schoolwork, and there’s a phenomenon of seeing someone working and feeling like you should be working. To-do lists are endless. Wellesley is worlds more rigorous than my middle school (go Wildcats), but the lesson I learned there still applies:
You don’t have to engage in the stress culture if you don’t want to!
Last semester, I spent time with people who work hard but understand that grades aren’t everything. Depending on how heavy my workload is, I might crack open my notes on Friday afternoon, but I make sure to do something fun on the weekends. Fun has to be on my schedule or I might pass on it because I think I have too much work. If I do the fun thing first, I will find a way to finish my work.
I think many of us overestimate how much work we have. During orientation, someone warned us not to conflate time spent working with time spent worrying about working. I surprised myself in November when I turned my research notes into a five-page paper over the course of a day. When I sit down and focus, I can get a lot done. Rather than spend time stressing, I spend time doing.
That said, my first semester was shadow-graded, meaning that my transcript will only show pass/fail and my grades did not matter. But I’m not going to get bent out of shape when grades do have consequences. I worked hard this semester because I wanted to do well, not because I wanted a perfect GPA, and that won’t change.
Wellesley will put a lot on your plate. You decide whether to leave it dirty in the sink or just get on with your life and wash the darn thing.
Your weekly dog photo, because I can.
Shafer Hall under December’s full moon