When I first wrote about the “ideal student” in August, I discussed a person who kept working no matter how the circumstances were; a person who would keep working even if they couldn’t figure out a problem quickly, or understand the concept at first. My view on this topic has not changed, but I have a few things to add after my first semester of college. I’ve learned that grades don’t always reflect how good of a student you are, and therefore students shouldn’t be judged based solely on their GPA.
Those of you reading this may think, “Wow, this girl must have done terrible in her first semester, so she’s making excuses.” That is not the case. Actually, I was planning on receiving all A’s this semester until an assignment was returned to me a few days ago in one of my classes. This assignment is a huge part of my grade, and I don’t think I will be able to recover from it. I have worked very hard in this class all semester, but that one grade will ruin my GPA. That doesn’t mean I am a bad student. I worked very hard on the assignment and did everything I could to make a good grade, and I failed. At first I was very upset about this truth. I have not received a B since third grade, that’s with taking 7 AP classes in high school, and now I will most likely get a B in one of my easiest courses of the semester. However, as I started writing this post, I started to think, would an ideal student be upset about a grade? Would an ideal student, one who puts their best effort into everything, whose main goal is to learn, be crushed by a letter grade? I don’t think they would. I think they would be satisfied with their work because of the fact that they did everything they could to learn and everything they could to complete the given assignments to the best of their ability.
Therefore, I have decided to look at that grade in that particular class with a growth mindset, and put it behind me. It will be hard because grades have always been very important to me, but I’ve come to the realization that I can’t do anything to improve my score. I am going to attempt to be my own definition of an ideal student, and appreciate that doing the best I can do and putting in the most effort possible is enough, even if the grade isn’t a reflection.
