University of Michigan Drops First-Semester Grades to 'Curb Mental Health Crisis' (axios.com) 242
"In order to salve the mental health of freshman students, the University of Michigan has implemented a Pass/No Credit system for new students to improve their mental health," writes Slashdot reader Ol Olsoc. "The process, called 'Grade Covering,' is aimed at helping with the mental health crisis that students face by lessening grade pressure." Axios reports: U-M's College of Literature, Science and the Arts plans to replace first-semester letter grades on freshmen's transcripts with pass/no-credit marks, tentatively beginning in fall 2027. Professors would still assign grades, but they wouldn't appear on external transcripts or count toward students' GPAs.
U-M says the idea, known as "grade covering," could help students adjust to college, take academic risks and "embrace the joy of learning." University spokesperson Chris Sebastian tells Axios that LSA faculty, staff and students will continue shaping the pilot, with more details to come this fall. "While I am sure that there is some pressure on freshman students, one of the best ways of dealing with pressure is enduring it and overcoming it, not attempting to shield people from it," comments Ol Olsoc.
U-M says the idea, known as "grade covering," could help students adjust to college, take academic risks and "embrace the joy of learning." University spokesperson Chris Sebastian tells Axios that LSA faculty, staff and students will continue shaping the pilot, with more details to come this fall. "While I am sure that there is some pressure on freshman students, one of the best ways of dealing with pressure is enduring it and overcoming it, not attempting to shield people from it," comments Ol Olsoc.
I think it may be a good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this might be a good idea, because getting a 4.0 GPA can be a lot different than actually mastering the material. However, the potential for abuse is present as well.
It would be nice though -- one could focus on material, not just trying to memorize via rote to copy/paste from memory to a test, then after the final is over, everything is forgotten.
It isn't perfect, but it can be tuned. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Re: I think it may be a good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Me, too. I'm going to start masking out my employee's pay stubs so they won't get depressed or angry.
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Ah I remember getting my first paycheck from my first job. What a gut-punch.
That FICA guy makes more than me!
Re:I think it may be a good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
4.0 GPa is actually a lot of pressure!
Perfect as an ideal (Score:2)
Sometimes on my 'Duolingo dailies' it tells me to get 3 Perfect lessons.
Perfect isn't unusual. There are stretches when I'll go for days and all my lessons are perfect. However, perfect is also unforgiving. Just one accidental button click, or a couple words transposed as I drag them in the app, and all of a sudden, there's no more 'Perfect.' It doesn't mean my skill is less or I'm not learning. It just means it wasn't 'Perfect.'
And there's no way to 'regain' perfect. I often just cancel that
Re:I think it may be a good idea... (Score:5, Funny)
It is 12000 days into September, 1993: Usenet is long since an artifact in the memory of greybeards; the internet belongs to the monkey cage. Yet on Slashdot, we still get physics puns. Here, the golden age lives on.
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4.0 GPa is actually a lot of pressure!
I see what you did there... 8^)
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I think this might be a good idea, because getting a 4.0 GPA can be a lot different than actually mastering the material. However, the potential for abuse is present as well.
It would be nice though -- one could focus on material, not just trying to memorize via rote to copy/paste from memory to a test, then after the final is over, everything is forgotten.
It isn't perfect, but it can be tuned. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
What I'm reading is that none of you have been to MIT, Cal tech, Harvard, or such schools.
They have been doing the freshman pass/fail for decades.
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I think this might be a good idea, because getting a 4.0 GPA can be a lot different than actually mastering the material. However, the potential for abuse is present as well.
It would be nice though -- one could focus on material, not just trying to memorize via rote to copy/paste from memory to a test, then after the final is over, everything is forgotten.
It isn't perfect, but it can be tuned. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
What I'm reading is that none of you have been to MIT, Cal tech, Harvard, or such schools. They have been doing the freshman pass/fail for decades.
Laddie, this is not Pass/Fail. It is Pass/No Credit. There is no way to fail because there is no fail.
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Right. So pass/fail works just fine.
I had honours calculus, an algorithms course and formal logic that were the weed out courses. Something like half the students dropped each of them before the no penalty drop date and of the rest about 50% passed. Then they scaled the grades so if you did pass you pretty much got a perfect score.
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Maybe these days, but way back when, many of those freshman classes were to weed people out. I took one easy English class. The others were calc, physics, chem, CS. Many had high drop/flunk rates. I would agree it was a year of challenges for me. And it should be. I knew several who did not see 2nd semester.
Assuming you were a CS major then that's still 1 major course and a bunch of breadth (unless you were going into computational chemistry or something similar). I feel like anyone coming in to a STEM program who can't handle intro physics, chem, and 1st year calc won't fair any better with that 1 semester as pass-fail anyway. I personally didn't find them challenging at all, but I was a chem major and really didn't have any issues until p-chem, which is the great filter for chemistry students who are serious
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JFC...are you fscking KIDDING ME?
Is this just the next natural progression from everyone getting a participationi trophy in grade schools?
Why is it today's kids are so mentally deficient in ways that all other generations till the past decade haven't been troubled with??
Look, not everyone is cut out for college ....and those early classes, are weed out classes like others have said...at least they used to be.
Stress is a real part of REAL LIFE
Re:I think it may be a good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
JFC...are you fscking KIDDING ME?
Is this just the next natural progression from everyone getting a participationi trophy in grade schools?
It kinda seems like that. College grades are already getting inflated. This is not a good thing.
Why is it today's kids are so mentally deficient in ways that all other generations till the past decade haven't been troubled with??
My own thesis is that these children have become adults, while remaining children. Stunted emotional growth.
It is a paradox, where Well meaning parents, teachers and much of society latched onto the idea that shielding children from any and all adversity produces emotionally mature adults. In fact, it produces the exact opposite.
Coupled with the tyranny of the weak engendered on campus, and the odd inclusive crowd that is anything but inclusive, but demanding monolithic thinking. It has produced a train wreck.
People do not become actual emotional and intellectual adults under the conditions we have imposed, unless we keep them away from the toxicity, and allow them to mature.
Look, not everyone is cut out for college ....and those early classes, are weed out classes like others have said...at least they used to be.
Stress is a real part of REAL LIFE and this is a good time to learn these lessons.
Exactly. And what we have produced is ersatz adults who cannot handle any stress at all.
Learn them early if they aren't college material....and let them get out before racking up massive debt in a degree that won't pay shit in the end.
I read the other day where incoming freshman these days, I think in the 5%-8% range had to take remedial math?!?! Our 1-12 schools aren't preparing them.....
If we keep lowering the standards....we're not helping anyone, we're hurting all them in the long run.
Let's re-think educations....some kids SHOULD be left behind for higher education, but that doesnt' mean we don't teach them some real skills where they can earn a living and contribute to society.
We've taught them that a degree, any degree, makes the holder superior to the best paid "trade" person. This allows the Gender studies graduate to feel superior to say, a master machinist, who is making 6 figures, while the GS major is working at the takeout window at McDonalds. I'll bet the GS major doesn't know spherical trig.
Fact is, the degree make superior people is one more canard people have been fed. There is a saying:
Hard times make strong men
Strong men make easy times
Easy times make weak people
Weak people make hard times. Rinse and repeat.
the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:5, Insightful)
...is not found in avoiding the problem.
You are here to educate these kids. This is your role.
Granted, these issues should have been addressed long before COLLEGE but the idea of entering supposed 'adulthood' without the mental armor to deal with things like "being rated for your performance" is...asinine.
STOP WRAPPING PEOPLE IN BUBBLE WRAP. You are not doing them favors, you are just kicking their mental health issues down the road (while exacerbating them, most likely) for someone else to deal with.
Re:the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:5, Insightful)
It crazy, some people will want to protect kids from literally everthing and then expect them to wake up one morning magically equipped to deal with the world.
This helps lead to adults that crave authoritarianism because they think some "parent" needs to solve the crises of living for them. There are those of us who have seen this coming since the "never tell a child no" trend started some thirty plus years ago, and have been wondering if society will wake up to the idea that raising children involves teaching them how to deal with reality, not just softening every blow until they move out, then wondering why they aren't equipped to handle living on their own.
I really don't think preventing people in college from getting a fair assessment is going to help this situation. For some individuals, not getting anything other than pass/no will stress them out because they won't know if they barely passed, or if they passed with flying colors. Maybe someone can twist this into something about equality, but I still think it's the wrong direction at the wrong point of life. These kids are going to graduate and wonder why their boss's in their first jobs are so mean to them for expecting something other than just barely skating by with minimum requirements sorta/kinda met. And everybody's gonna be confused as to why..
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These aren't kids. They are adults.
Sad part is while physically adults, they are emotionally children.
I figure they are around the 9th grade level.
Re: the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:3)
Strangely, not old enough to have a beer.
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Wrong. People know these kids are not going to be equipped to deal with the world. The people who want to protect kids from "literally everything" don't know what else to do. The world keeps going down the same pair of shining steel rails without any signs of changing course, and letting the kids get run over isn't an option.
There are a lot of kids in crisis, and the root cause is not entirely the adults they're growing up with.
grade inflation is / was an issue also tech the te (Score:3)
grade inflation is / was an issue also tech the test as well cram tests where you can get an good grade but have little to no grip on the content.
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I think the answer to grade inflation/grade pressure and first semester culture shock is to grade not just on mastery of the material but also the percentile in case everyone has a bad semester. With that in place, make the tests harder so even the best students know where their knowledge gaps are, because a perfect score won't tell you that.
Re: yeah? (Score:2)
If they get washed out first semester, great.
But if they rack up there and a half years of student loan debt and then wash out, that is a problem society should be addressing.
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About the only thing I can see here as far as this being helpful is the fact that a lot of students depending on what their primary education was actually like are surprised by how much higher the bar at University might be.
So getting a D after being in some HS where they hand out As as participation trophies might be rather shocking. So being able to go ok 'well this one does not really count I still passed' does afford that student who
1) simply cares about getting high marks
2) needs to keep a scholarship
3
Re:the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:5, Interesting)
I would offer a real-life counterpoint to this being helpful.
I was actually one of those kids who breezed through high school with high marks without really having to try and then got a big shock when college actually turned out to require real effort and studying. Dropping the actual grades for pass/fail would have been the WORST thing to do. I was doing C and D work my freshman year and masking that behind nothing more than a P would NOT have been the wakeup call I needed to get my shit together and actually work for my grades. And it worked. Those Cs and Ds motivated me to get my shit together and accept that everything doesn't just come naturally and after that first semester the first year I never got less than a B, and pulled mostly As.
Everyone is unique and YMMV of course. But I really don't see where sugarcoating the truth and not acknowledging sub-par performance would have helped me improve.
Re: the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:2)
Note that the students do see the grade that would have counted, so they still know how marginal their performance would be. They just get a chance to straighten up without the mistake mattering more broadly. Unless they fail, then they fail still.
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Note that the students do see the grade that would have counted, so they still know how marginal their performance would be. They just get a chance to straighten up without the mistake mattering more broadly. Unless they fail, then they fail still.
It is actually Pass/No Credit. There is no fail, only Zuul.
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A counter-counter point I would offer is that getting all Bs during my first semester of college made me evaluate the value of an A over a B versus the effort of an A over a B. It's not always worth the effort for the external validation.
By the time I was in grad school I only got one B. It was the first part of a two course sequence and the professor insisted on objectively incorrect answers, made up a test section out of whole cloth during the time was I was TA for a lab, and didn't come in to his office
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A counter-counter point I would offer is that getting all Bs during my first semester of college made me evaluate the value of an A over a B versus the effort of an A over a B. It's not always worth the effort for the external validation.
By the time I was in grad school I only got one B. It was the first part of a two course sequence and the professor insisted on objectively incorrect answers, made up a test section out of whole cloth during the time was I was TA for a lab, and didn't come in to his office all day when he scheduled me for a make-up exam.
I've had to different classes where I provided a correct answer, yet even when I showed the instructor the proof he was wrong, he still dinged me.
Kinda pissed me off, but it also taught me that people who are supposed to be smarter than the rest of us, like professors and medical doctors, are often not even.
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My understand though is you still get marks, and all the other ordinary feedback the instructor would provide. As far as electives go the other students are not taking it pass fail or might not be so if their is any bell curve grading happening you will be slugging it out with people that have full skin in the game.
I think I would find being told - "You passed, but if you deliver this kind of performance next semester you'll be getting a D." My reaction to that would be "well crap, I just dodged a real bu
Re:the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only one semester, and a semester of the least important material of their university time.
I think this actually sounds decent, giving the students an adjustment window, preserve the ability to completely fail if they really bomb out, and still the majority of their university years count for real and around the material people will actually care about in the real world.
If I am looking at a new college grad and give any weight to GPA, I won't care if that GPA excludes the sorts of classes they would have first semester.
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If students are taking real classes, then no, I'd call that the second most important semester (with only the very last one mattering more). Why? Because that's when half the incoming class realizes they are wildly unprepared for college and either pursues an exciting career in fast food, or for those only slightly overwhelmed, switches to a 2-year structured a lot more like an advanced ver
Re: the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:2)
Least important material? You weren't a STEM major, were you? I wanna see how physics/chemistry/math 101 is going to be the least important material.
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Your grade in whatever-101 is unlikely to be a very important number unless maybe you're going to be teaching those courses. Neither grad school nor an employer is going to care much about your relative performance on answering questions about Newton's laws, balancing redox equations or single variable calculus. Any important problem there would be reflected in future grades.
Realistically all your precise undergrad grades are pretty irrelevant to both grad school and employers. They just use them as a conve
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If it's a 100 level physics class and it matters, then the student will go through at *least* another semester or more of physics. I would care a lot more about their more advanced versions of the classes than the basics that every random university attendant takes.
If it's a 100 level class without a follow up, then no, it does not matter to the core of their curriculum.
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It's only one semester, and a semester of the least important material of their university time.
I think this actually sounds decent, giving the students an adjustment window, preserve the ability to completely fail if they really bomb out, and still the majority of their university years count for real and around the material people will actually care about in the real world.
If I am looking at a new college grad and give any weight to GPA, I won't care if that GPA excludes the sorts of classes they would have first semester.
If it needs done , what is your thesis that they should stop after the first semester. Would you fly on a rocket designed and built by people who could not fail? We can protect the poor dears, but how are we going to make sure they face no adversity or stress after they graduate? I mean Adversity and stress is not going to go away , so perhaps we need them to just stay home and let mommy and daddy keep them safe and protected.
We are talking about actual adults here, that we must shield against the worl
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Since you are so convinced that universities that do not assign GPA on first semester produce bad engineers, does that mean you have distrusted MIT educated engineers for the last 58 years?
Strange no one has been bitching that MIT has been coddling students for 58 years...
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It's only one semester, and a semester of the least important material of their university time.
Multiply the monthly cost of the policy that mandates first year freshman to live ON campus, along with every other related cost with forcing a student to attend college away from home, and "least important material of their university time" quickly turns into "I'm paying how much for this pointless shit?"
College isn't expensive. The marketing pimps abusing girl math to sell the Phi Cool Cats College Experience is what got corruptly expensive.
I think this actually sounds decent, giving the students an adjustment window, preserve the ability to completely fail if they really bomb out, and still the majority of their university years count for real and around the material people will actually care about in the real world.
Employers are going through an adjustment period right now. Th
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Yeah, my question is if we don't assess the students, are they learning? Will there be more students enrolled the second year, paying for an education, when they are actually already lacking the fundamentals to succeed in the second year because they were never evaluated?
Re: the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:2)
The system that prepares students for college is no longer functioning properly. This is about giving unprepared students a soft landing, so hopefully they can adapt and avoid dropping out early.
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A Republican priority. What party do you support again?
Re: the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:2)
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Easy for you to say - pre-information-age-old-man (Score:3)
...is not found in avoiding the problem.
You are here to educate these kids. This is your role. Granted, these issues should have been addressed long before COLLEGE but the idea of entering supposed 'adulthood' without the mental armor to deal with things like "being rated for your performance" is...asinine.
STOP WRAPPING PEOPLE IN BUBBLE WRAP. You are not doing them favors, you are just kicking their mental health issues down the road (while exacerbating them, most likely) for someone else to deal with.
Dude, if you're commenting on this site, you're my age or older. When you were a freshman, the information age was either just starting or not a thing. When I entered college, we were using Netscape still. Websites were nearly useless. Commentators were downplaying the internet saying it's just for Star Trek debates and low-res porn....no one would do real work, like banking, on it. You and I didn't deal with the impact of social media. Life was a lot simpler when we were freshman. Remember boredom?
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One of the things I wish I had learned earlier is your mind is like your muscles. They get strong with resistance. You have to consistently do something arduous to improve both. Once into the process you get stronger, both for muscles and mind.
It's such a difficult dynamic to adhere to, I get it, it takes strength and fortitude, but you get more the more you use them.
So in reality this is a detriment for *long term* mental health. It's a trade of short term comfort for gradual improvement.
In other words
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I think the issue is people arriving at college out of an increasingly terrible school system, barely able to read, and then being subject to standards for which they were not prepared at all. It's a no-win scenario for colleges -- either soften standards, or treat freshman year as a sort of prep school, or have the norm be that everyone arriving in college is immediately failing or getting Cs (for which there are potentially lifelong consequences).
This is what happens from (continuing) decades of disinves
What's actually asinine ... (Score:3)
A pass / fail / no report first semester is very common in the top universities in the country (e.g. - MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, etc.) and has been for decades. My first semester at JHU back in 1995 was all pass / fail, although you could still make honor roll, etc.
These students are just nominally adults, some have never even been away from home without parental supervision, and most have never had to manage their daily schedule entirely by themselves before.
Giving them a bit of grace and all
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You are here to educate these kids. This is your role.
And how does arbitrarily ranking them aid this role? Is education improved by dividing and ranking someone among their peers? We don't do that in the professional world, even in education. People get ranked as competent or not competent for their jobs and certifications. Why should university be any different?
The Dutch have an interesting answer here, zesjescultuur (it literally translates to: sixes culture). It's the idea that if you pass (6/10) you pass anything beyond that is unneeded stress in a world w
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This is a result of COVID stunting kid's growth.
I was in the University environment since the late 1970s, and the issue started in the mid 90's. And it was based on a social experiment that went awry.
Shielding young people from any adversity was creating overly attached parents and children. We had some difficulty getting the parents to allow their children to grow up. The kids were adults now, but acted emotionally like children. It was difficult for the parents who had shielded their children since birth to stop shielding them.
And as it turned out
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More generally there is more pressure on kids these days. They didn't used to have to take on 5 or 6 figures of debt to get an education that is basically mandatory to do even entry level clerical jobs these days.
When I was an undergrad most people I knew at my uni were there to learn stuff about a subject they cared about. You know for it own sake. There were a few proto finance bros doing engineering because it could lead to a good finance job, but other than them no one was thinking about jobs specifica
Re: the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:2)
All of them born after Aug 13.
Re: the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score:2)
Sorry meant to say "before". Point stands. A large portion of 18 year olds - perhaps 30% - were alive in 2008.
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And none of them old enough to form permanent memories.
Arguing for arguments' sake.
Maximize tuition payments. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great way to delay students dropping out and be able to extract more tuition.
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Seriously, though: we should get rid of college loans. The ability to go to college on credit and the fact that that debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy has allowed tuition to go through the stratosphere. If we want to increase access to college, we should just *pay* for college with our tax dollars. We want the next generation to be educated -- they will some day rule us. Our allergy to paying for it is beyond me.
And if the federal government is paying tuition, it can negotiate prices down. A bunch
There are two kinds of students (Score:2)
Those who love to learn and eagerly and diligently study subjects they have talent for. These students mostly don't need grades, as the have an internal assessment of their progress.
Other students see a diploma as a golden ticket to wealth. They don't care about hard work or learning, all they care about is the diploma. They slouch through college, putting in minimum effort, socializing, binge drinking and cheating on exams. They treat grades as just another part of the game and use every trick they can to
*looks at the previous story* (Score:4, Funny)
Have they considered giving the students some magic mushrooms?
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And we thought smoking was a problem, now everyone is hooked on meds.
Re: *looks at the previous story* (Score:2)
At U of M, that's more of a community service.
The fallout of compulsory education (Score:5, Interesting)
What problem does this solve? (Score:2)
So now there will just be a mental health crisis for second-semester students.
Perhaps if folks can't handle the pressure of 101 level college classes, perhaps pursuing a college degree isn't the right decision for them.
Re: What problem does this solve? (Score:2)
The students still get grades the first year, so they can accurately assess where they are at without penalizing them for going to a shit high school that passes everyone.
But... (Score:2)
But those are the easy classes you can use to pad your overall GPA. Would be nice to be able to opt in.
We are raising a society of pussies. (Score:4, Insightful)
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"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress." (From a sermon preached by Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274)
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Mental Health Crisis??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is there a mental health crisis?
Anxiety over the first days of university is real, and common, and nothing new. It's never been a mental health crisis before with everybody getting and owning grades. So why is it a mental health crisis now?
Fix the problem. Don't just cover it up.
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Maybe, maybe not? (Score:2)
This may be okay, depending on the subject. Soft fields like arts and humanities? Okay. Engineering? Not so much.
This bullshit is a modern problem though. The comparatively ruthless past didn't seem to struggle in producing relatively competent graduates in sufficient numbers. Now you can layer many things on why that may be changing. The unbelievable increase in the cost of education is an excellent starting point. That in itself is massively stressful.
But lowering the bar in the name of coping with fragi
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Daycare (Score:3)
University is just becoming another adult daycare. Sad
I feel a disturbance in the force (Score:2)
This is the fallout from not properly supporting students during the pandemic. And from allowing the pandemic to happen in the first place when every single expert was warning politicians it was going to happen.
I wonder who was in charge when all this was going down? And I wonder who was in control of Congress for two years leading up to that and if they were engaging in the same obstructionist policie
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Baby boomers are pretty far removed from education, either as students or as parents. If there's one thing we know, this isn't related to boomers.
What's not clear is exactly what this problem is or what is the root cause. But that doesn't matter, make it a tribalist issue regardless. Once thing's certain, it's the other side's fault.
"Look all I'm saying is elections have consequences"
Is that what you're saying, because it sure seems like you're saying other things.
Damn... (Score:2, Funny)
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Why couldn't I get a participation trophy education? I actually had to buckle down and work hard... which seriously cut into the time I had available for binge drinking!
Meh. Multitask by drinking in class.
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Grades mean almost nothing now (Score:2)
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No assumptions being made there!
Masking the issue (Score:3)
When I graduated high school in the late 1980s and college in the early 1990s, letter grade definitions used to be a C is average, B is above above average, and A is exceptional, with D being below average, and F fails to meet minimum requirements, and many students were happy ending up with a C. A statistician will tell you there should be an equal number of Bs and Ds, and the most prominent grade should be a C, but I am fine with any student giving their best effort and meeting minimum requirements getting a C. When I was in high school, the "A" honor roll only had like 10% or less of the class in it, and 4.0 honor roll was like 1%...Now it seems we live in a culture of grade inflation where "everyone gets an A", and with my kids' high school classes, like a quarter of them have 4.0s and like half are on the "A" honor roll, so the achievements of the truly exceptional students are very diluted. Kids getting anything other than a "A" (i.e. perfection) are seen as failures, that mentality carries over to College. The grades you get is college should help you grow as an individual as an indication of where you need to make improvements, or if your course of study is appropriate (or even if College is appropriate).
We need to stop the grade inflation and the expectation that every student gets an A in every class, and that perception anything less than perfection will ruin their future opportunities. Focus should be on students giving their best effort and growth, and let the grades fairly evaluate the student in that subject.
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You got letter grades in high school? So you could get something like 1 in 10 answers wrong and still get a perfect grade? Lol, what a joke.
Pass/fail, letter grades, four point scales, even percentages, all of these do the same thing. They group actual scores into categories. You can choose those categories based on what you think the uncertainty in the evaluation scheme is, or meaningful performance bands, or just chopping an unknown distribution into arbitrary equal-sized chunks ("any statistician would t
Crisis builds Strength (Score:2)
Too often we focus on those who had wild success and see the success as the goal. Success is the symptom; it's a byproduct of numerous scars and failures, it's learning how to take a loss, pick yourself back up and do better the next time.
I can't imagine what Teddy Roosevelt would be thinking today's generation of kids; his famous "man [worldfuturefund.org]
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Every person I've ever met that I respected went through some sort of major crisis or failure in life. I'm sure that's also true of every person reading this comment.
You. I called them dates.
Not a big deal to me (Score:3)
Freshman year is an acclimation and get you non-core stuff out of the way. Taking them out means the easy A's don't inflate your grade point so your reported GPA is mr indicative of your actual major performance. Personally, when I interview I really didn't care about GPA. You got in to a school where we hire, you made it through and graduated; I always thought using them was just a way for a company to say "We hired the brightest." I was more interested in what you did during school, what you were interested in; a few tech questions sorted out what you know.
Years ago, when I got my grad degree, one company wanted to know your undergrad GPA as well. For fuck sake, I got into a school you obviously hire a lot of people from, I graduated , and my undergrad was over a decade ago. Needless to say, I didn't accept their offer to interview; I suspect with my initial reaction to their request it would not have gone well.
The real problem is grade inflation, which makes GA even less important.
But my first semester... (Score:2)
Treating a symptom (Score:2)
Full disclosure, I only read the article's title, and I'm fast becoming a grumpy old man. I have to wonder if great anxiety is a symptom of a generalized anxiety disorder. In my own life I've made more personal growth when I tried to learn techniques and attitudes to deal with stress, as opposed to times when I tried to avoid it.
Grades don't say what people want them to (Score:2)
Grades don't tell you how well someone is going to work in the real world, only how they worked in an educational environment, and even then they only tell you how they did in that snapshot of time. Someone might do better or worse in that environment or at that moment. Someone might be good at memorizing and taking tests, and the course might be poorly designed so that is sufficient. And it can happen at famous schools just as easily as anywhere else.
UC Santa Cruz didn't have grades until 2000 and was desp
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I went there before Sammy, and we had grades.
Before Y2K they were optional.
Pathetic (Score:2, Troll)
Wait, yeah we do. Okay, add that college to our ban list.
A weird generation... (Score:5, Interesting)
I love my nephew, he is smart, funny and has zero drive. His helicopter mother rarely lets him make any decisions. When he stays with me he expects me to have a detailed plan of what he should do in 15 min intervals. Luckily for me his mother provides just such a plan. When faced with any deviation from the plan he goes into panic mode. I think back to my childhood...tossed from the house and told to be back when the streetlights came on. We biked miles to BART and were in SF China Town getting fireworks. This kid sees no benefit in getting his drivers license. That was the high point of high school...FREEDOM. I no longer have any real idea what motivates kids today.
I guess I can start working on the lawn now...sigh
Re: Moral Hazard of encouraging degeneracy and slo (Score:3)
I basically did nothing in high school because good grades didn't matter. As far as I was concerned, it was pass/fail.
If it were me entering college where first year grades don't count, I would just extend that strategy another year.
Honestly, unless you are worried about falling behind and not understanding the material (never a problem I had), it is the rational decision to make.
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I would be supremely pissed to fork over $40k just to get a "pass" in Freshman-101.
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Well, you fail the pass/fail graded course in knowing what a participation trophy is for.
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Who you know is as important as what you know, in most parts of life.
Did you want actually useful advice that might lead to the outcome your daughter hopes for or were you wanting some bromide about hard work leading to great things or at least being its own reward?
Ultimately grades are somewhat subjective. If you know your professor enough that they are able to determine you actually do know your stuff but were just very sick the day of the quiz, is it really cheating for them to say give you some extra cr