I would give college a D- -

While I sit and wait for my final grades to show up for this semester, I wonder why those first few letters of the Alphabet have such an effect on us college kids. I mean, getting an A makes you feel like a genius and you deserve some kind of reward for all the hard work you put in, especially for those cram nights when you put off papers and studying for exams to the last minute. Even if you know all your grades will be higher than C's, you still wait and worry until they are finally posted and do victory dances when you get what you expected as if it was so far fetched anyways. But if you don't get what you wanted, then you feel like the world is against you and no matter how much work you put in over the semester, it was a destined failure to begin with.

Who came up with the idea to grade students with letters anyway? Even worse, who decided to throw in the +'s and -'s? It leaves too much to interpretation. For example, on a reading quiz I took in my Cross-Cultural Memoir's class, my professor gave me a B++. Please, someone tell me the benefit of putting that extra plus there? It is like saying "Maegan, you did an almost A- job, but since it is not quite there I am going to give you that extra plus to rub it in your face!" It would be very rare for a professor to give someone an A--, but an extra plus is okay because it gives you an extra positive, right! Wrong.

Just thinking about this system of grading makes me wonder why I even decided to go to college in the first place. It goes by so fast that it just feels like a bunch of cram nights, stuffing as much information into your brain (which mostly is lost in the end), and then you are handed a little piece of paper that says you are a legit individual to enter the work force. Nowadays, you need at least two of those small paper's to get a good job. Then after spending a minimum of 8 years doing a whole lot of work, you enter the real world and realize wow, getting a job is almost impossible because of the fact that our nation's unemployment rate just keeps getting higher. So now, I just spent almost a decade getting so deep into debt with college loans, to just stay broke.

This isn't true for everyone I am sure, but for the majority of students in college these days, I bet that we could go into the work force with no little paper in our hands and do just as good. What is a bachelor's in fine arts going to do for me, a Creative Writing Major, when I get out here? Yes, I could decide to spend the rest of my life advising other students about their futures in school as a guidance counselor. But then I ask myself, why did I spend all that money and time on college to get out into the real world, just to end up staying in school anyways? No, for me, that little piece of paper just means I got a lot of A's and B's on my creative writing work, and that I have successfully been accepted by some professors to be creative while writing. Well thank you! Now, I will just keep dreaming that I am the future J.K. Rowling whose small idea turned into a lot of small green paper. That way when I do graduate next year, I can say that I did have some sort of plan to make a stable living, even if it was just a dream.

MS