Little_Sticks
New member
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2009
- Messages
- 1,358
I know in engineering you won't ever find that many people As in a lot of classes. Bs are much more common. I think something like a 3.0 is quite common for some engineering disciplines.
Grades serve an abstract purpose of weighing people against each other, but I doubt it's any more accurate than trying to use football statistics to bet on football games; although if someone can be bothered to keep a 4.0, especially in a hard major, I guess that does show some kind of dedication. But school is tedious and boring and a lot of successful people dropped out because of that. I just don't know. I don't think much about it; if I learn something interesting and don't get too many Cs filling up my GPA, it doesn't really bother me. But maybe apathy is my way to justify that I'm not as capable in some ways as I'd like - who knows.
Ideally, there would be no grades, just a requirement that you either pass or fail, but people seem to require it to decide who is better at doing certain things, even if the differences can be really small and change drastically depending on simple motivation or other transient variables. Like for example, if I know the material well in a class, but don't feel that motivated to quickly and meticulously make sure I don't make any calculation errors on a test or write an equation wrong that I understood, then I won't get an A, but I mastered the material.
It's even more annoying when you complete a homework assignment and then get it wrong on the test because you made a simple mistake or had a brain-fart and then it's like...aren't we here to learn? and didn't I already show that I learned this? And yeah, you can rationalize it that it means I'm less capable in some way than someone who didn't make a mistake, but it gets ridiculous when it's more about forcing comparison just for the sake of comparing worth and value. But that's what money does and people don't seem to have a problem with that, so I don't know.
But I don't think there's anything wrong with a lot of people getting As. It's about the requirement and if that's how they are compared, then so be it. Distributing grades is like nitpicking details about people just so we can claim differences in ability, no matter how small or transient that ability might be.
Grades serve an abstract purpose of weighing people against each other, but I doubt it's any more accurate than trying to use football statistics to bet on football games; although if someone can be bothered to keep a 4.0, especially in a hard major, I guess that does show some kind of dedication. But school is tedious and boring and a lot of successful people dropped out because of that. I just don't know. I don't think much about it; if I learn something interesting and don't get too many Cs filling up my GPA, it doesn't really bother me. But maybe apathy is my way to justify that I'm not as capable in some ways as I'd like - who knows.
Ideally, there would be no grades, just a requirement that you either pass or fail, but people seem to require it to decide who is better at doing certain things, even if the differences can be really small and change drastically depending on simple motivation or other transient variables. Like for example, if I know the material well in a class, but don't feel that motivated to quickly and meticulously make sure I don't make any calculation errors on a test or write an equation wrong that I understood, then I won't get an A, but I mastered the material.
It's even more annoying when you complete a homework assignment and then get it wrong on the test because you made a simple mistake or had a brain-fart and then it's like...aren't we here to learn? and didn't I already show that I learned this? And yeah, you can rationalize it that it means I'm less capable in some way than someone who didn't make a mistake, but it gets ridiculous when it's more about forcing comparison just for the sake of comparing worth and value. But that's what money does and people don't seem to have a problem with that, so I don't know.
But I don't think there's anything wrong with a lot of people getting As. It's about the requirement and if that's how they are compared, then so be it. Distributing grades is like nitpicking details about people just so we can claim differences in ability, no matter how small or transient that ability might be.