Last week I received a perfectly typed copy of my college transcript. I laughed when I saw the seal on my transcript. It looked so official, so crisp. I was almost afraid to touch it. I decided to skim the transcript checking over my courses and my past grades. Soon I became excited as I looked at my grades, for there were As and A-s and several B+s. I had forgotten that I had done so well my first few terms here.
But suddenly my bliss turned to dismay as I realized that these high grades were not mine, but the course median grades. I was furious. I tried to rationalize my decent and respectable but not so great grades as I looked over the whole list, but my inferiority complex set in rather deeply. At this point what could I do? Suddenly, I had visions of bottles of white-out; I figured that I could most likely get an exact match for the color of the transcript paper; I could just fudge the grades a little. Remove a minus sign here, add a plus sign there--but, rest assured, this idea wasn't going to work. My status as a Religion major with a focus in ethics makes it difficult for me to do such things.
Suddenly my attention was drawn to a notes at the bottom of the page. There was an additional tally that counted the number of courses in which I had achieved, surpassed or came up short of the course median grade. In only two courses have I received above the median grade. In the rest of my courses I was tied for an equal number of median and below the median course grades-ten apiece. If you could translate grades into business you say that I had just about "broken-even" with my calculations.
I sighed and placed my transcript inside my mini plastic file cabinet hoping that the less I looked at my transcript the less I would think about it. I became mildly depressed. It's not that my grades aren't above satisfactory, or even at times very good, but I felt inadequate when I compared my Bs with everyone else's B+s and As. Every time that I looked at the median grades, I was reminded of how the class did as a whole and how I did.
I liked it better when I was on par academically with the rest of the class. But what could I do? I had worked hard for my grades and at times struggled immensely just to pull a B- or two. My mom told me not to worry, that she struggled in college too, especially in art history; my dad told me that a few Bs and Cs never hurt anyone; my brother, the senior in high school, told me to lighten up, as he awaits the arrival of his new SAT scores; and my grandma told me to relax because I was already at Dartmouth and my arrival at Dartmouth was in itself an accomplishment; my other grandma told me that my grades didn't matter as long as my backpack wasn't too heavy. So, you know what? I decided to listen to them all.
I figured that the white-out idea wasn't going anywhere and I didn't have any better solutions, so it might be in my best interest to listen to them and take their advice. I wasn't going to be able to retake my classes now in my senior fall, so why stress? I got so excited about my resolution that I even took a Polaroid picture of my new and improved lighter backpack for my grandma. I get my neurosis from her side of the family.
