Grades that you lose sleep over

Grades are an interesting part of coursework. They're used to "evaluate" how effectively a student demonstrates learning, and each professor develops their own verbage to talk about what "counts" as an A or what "counts" as a B. Example:

• "A work is excellent and goes beyond what is required in terms of thinking and insight into the material."
• "B is an honor grade, awarded for work that is thoughtful and well-written, and demonstrates a good understanding of the material."

So what's the point of this? I got a B on my first writing assignment this semester. Graduate students are particularly funny about receiving grades. Somehow a B, that is supposedly an honor grade, makes my heart sink (and I know it has done the same to other grad students, too). What did I do wrong and how can I do better next time? Well, the written comments say I didn't "engage" with the reading enough. While completing this assignment, I was concerned that I wasn't including enough content from the readings, but this particular prompt asked us to really consider our audience (which was assigned to us as incoming graduate students) and I justified the amount of the course readings I included in those terms. Apparently my professor thinks I "dumbed the subject down" too much. That's my interpretation of his comments, by the way.

All in all, I'm discovering that the hardest graders are the ones not in the graduate program I'm enrolled in. In order to teach next semester, I've been required to take two courses outside of the regular coursework I'm doing. Although I'm familiar with the discipline these two other courses are in, the fact that I struggle the most in pleasing these professors is disconcerting to me. Ultimately, I'd like to earn a position at a university to work in this discipline, and here I am earning a B.

Luckily, I have a whole semester ahead of me to try to figure this professor out, but it's become evident that it won't be easy going. Maybe this will be the class I take the most out of simply because of how much it will evidently challenge me. (Although, I have earned any grades in one of my other courses yet. Maybe that one will end up being the toughest of them all).

Boring Orientation and Horrifying Tales

There's not much in terms of the latest developments in my experience as a doctoral student, but here's the latest: general graduate student orientation and program specific orientation. Sounds like fun, right? Let's just say the graduate student orientation was less than captivating. Since I'm new to the school and to the area in general, I thought it would be good for me to attend. I still think it was worthwhile, even though I'm not sure I really learned much of anything while there, because it will probably save me some time down the road when I'm wondering about services offered through the university. Lunch would've been nice (I spent $9 on a drink and a burrito I couldn't finish because I was short on time and had no idea what my other food options were), but there were about 500 people in attendance. I can understand why they wouldn't feed us anything substantial. Although, the program specific orientation didn't feed us anything substantial either and it was a much smaller group (granted, we didn't meet until after lunch had come and gone).

Even though food at the program orientation consisted of cookies, chips, and fruit, it was still better than what we were given earlier in the day. The orientation itself was also better, but in a sort of horrifying way. There was a lot of general information about the program requirements and whatnot, but the program director also read to us an essay he wrote on the fly that described what he recalls from his doctoral program (which is actually the program I'm enrolled in, although I'm sure it's changed since he earned his degree). In case anyone had been wearing rose-tinted glasses, he pretty clearly laid out what our lives will be like for the next 3-5 years. When I decided I wanted to pursue a doctorate, I had an idea of what I would go through. The doubts, misgivings, stress, anxiety and how those manifest themselves in a person's daily life. Having gone through a master's program and choosing the thesis option, I got a pretty hefty dose of those negative feelings already. However, listening to the program director describe it was still eye opening. I think what struck me most about what he had to say was that they (faculty) expect us (students) to fail frequently and spectacularly.

Failure is something people are conditioned to fear, as the program director pointed out in his essay, and so hearing him say that is terrifying to say the least. At the same time though, I think it's difficult to learn and grow if we are always the best at everything we do. This was something that he also made mention of. In particular he said that we should seek out the very things that we are unfamiliar, and perhaps uncomfortable, with so that we can be challenged and grow from the experience. The unfamiliar is something else that we have been conditioned to fear. Both of these are going to be challenges for me not only for the duration of my graduate studies, but I suspect far beyond that as well.

Hearing all of this can make a person question the path they've chosen, but do not despair. Over the course of the day there's been some talk about how to succeed in a graduate program, and I'll repeat the ones that stuck out to me here, but I wonder if perhaps they are applicable to being successful in life altogether.

--The faculty of the program want you to succeed. Your failure doesn't just look bad for you.
--Establish close bonds with your cohort. They're going through the same challenges and hurdles as you.
--Be adaptable.