afterword
What do Grades Mean in the End, Anyway?
If you've worked your way through the 300 plus pages of this book -- or even if you've just read a chapter or two on topics of interest to you -- you're probably full of ideas about how the tips, techniques, strategies and methods you've learned about can be applied and customized to the courses you're taking. You know the five 'grade-bearing moments' of the academic semester and, more important, you know exactly what to do to turn each moment into an opportunity for you to get that super-prized A. You're "charged up" -- and well you should be, since you now understand getting good grades from the professors' perspective -- the only ones how really know.
And yet, late at night you might find yourself wondering "what do grades mean in the end, anyway? What's really the point of it all?"
For some, a transcript full of A's means a good shot at a law school, or med school, or business school of their choice. And then a lucrative, fulfilling career to get with it. For others, it's a chance to get a good job after college -- maybe in their home state or home town (they'll ask about grades there, too, so all those A's will really pay off). For some students it's a chance to show their parents that the large investment they made in college was really worth it. And for others it's a chance to show their kids that Daddy or Mommy really could do it -- that all the evenings at school really amounted to something, a set of A's.
But A's mean something more. They mean that when the professor picked your piece of work out of a stack of 70 others at 10 AM in his or her office -- or an a laundromat at 10:30 PM at Pico and 13th Streets -- that it stood out as truly excellent. That for a brief 10 or 15 minutes there was a true meeting of minds between student and teacher. The professor or TA understood -- really understood -- what the student was trying to say or do, and felt a sense of pride -- that he or she would have been happy to have written the piece him or herself. A job well-done. For all to see.
If anything like this has ever happened to you -- or if after reading this book you expect that it will -- go into the next room, get yourself a purple or green felt-tip marker (if you're really stuck, a simple pen or pencil will do). Go ahead, we'll wait. Now fill in the box below (see what it's really like).
Congratulations.
YOU CAN DO IT!
You now know how.