Okay kids, let's talk about the bane of my existence at Dartmouth College ... the participation grade. Now before I begin, allow me to give a disclaimer: I am not writing this column simply because I'm a moron who never goes to class. In fact, I am pleased to announce that I have been to at least 70 percent of all my classes this term. Okay, so I'm only taking two courses so that statistic doesn't really count, but I digress ... back to the evil participation grade.
I say if you really enjoy the lectures you go to and read all the stuff they tell you to, professors should just forget this silly notion of making 30 percent of your grade dependant on how many stupid questions you ask in class.
That's right, I said Stupid Questions, and I know you guys know what I'm talking about ... I mean, how many different ways can you get the professor to explain to you how a bill becomes a law or what the steps of the scientific method are? Also, have you ever noticed that the students with an uncanny ability to take the most obvious thing the professor has said and reword it in the form of a question are the same students who have astronomical participation grades?
Coincidence? I think not. Trust me on this, people. I have done some ground-breaking research in this area. Why do you think I had to drop the third course I was taking? Through my studies I have also discovered that the only reason professors don't change "participation grade" to "stupidity index" on their syllabi is because they are just as disorganized as we are.
Although most professors here are brilliant, do you really think they prepare for every class? Come on. These disorderly profs just waltz into class with whatever is on their minds and they perpetuate this system of students asking stupid questions in order to fill in the gap between the material they have and the time they've got to present it. That's why professors love stupid question askers, because they take up time and allow the profs to walk away from class thinking "boy these kids are stupid ... I'm so smart."
For creating this feeling of bliss and euphoria in the minds of professors, stupid question askers are rewarded with a "now that's a good question" and a high grade in the immoral participation category. It's like when elementary school teachers tell a kid who's just given a really stupid response, "that's part of the answer." I wish someone would ask these kids if their part of the answer was ever on the test.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think we should do away with the participation grade in every class; after all, the language departments would be pretty screwed without it, although I did try to make the case to have it ignored by my French professor last term. Needless to say, I was unsuccessful. She told me that actually speaking the language is an integral part of taking a language course at Dartmouth.
Anyway, she presented some pretty valid and fairly obvious points, and she was a nice lady, so I'll limit my complaint to non-language courses. I'm also excluding labs from my argument. It's really not that unfair for a biology professor to grade students on how successfully they spend six hours mating microscopic bugs with a piece of thread.
Despite these exceptions, all I'm saying is that if someone really understands something, he's probably not going to ask a stupid question about it. That is, until now. Now that you guys know the secret to the system (asking stupid questions) you can boost your participation grades by monumental proportions. Wait a minute -- if I'm telling you the secret, that means I already know it. So why is my GPA so low? Maybe that's another column.
