Part 1: An Unexpected Poor Grade

This week is a four-part discussion on the pain of receiving an unexpected poor grade:

Part 1: An Unexpected Poor Grade

Part 2: Gathering Data

Part 3: Planning for Future Success

Part 4: The Professor’s Viewpoint

You studied so hard, you memorized all there was to memorize, your professor hands you back your quiz and, like a slap in the face, you see the score you never expected. How did this happen? Why you? You glance around and everyone else has better grades. You suddenly feel isolated, ostracized, and…shocked.

The pain of getting back a paper with a poor score, especially one you weren’t expecting, is very real. The good news is that you’re not alone; this happens to everyone at some point in their lives. The bad news is that you now have to sit through a class, take notes, and participate while simultaneously recovering from the blow. To handle this well, you’ll have to take a breath, gather yourself, and face a few facts:

·         It’s only one grade. There are plenty more points to be earned in the class.

·         This is nothing but a data point. You now know there’s a chink in the armor somewhere and you can take time later to figure out what it is, but for now just think of it as data that has been gathered.

·         This happens to everyone. I rarely have a class where an “A” student doesn’t get at least one poor grade. People have lives, forget to study, study the wrong things, and so on. Life happens and sometimes it’s not all rainbows and roses.

You take a deep breath, but if the upset is overwhelming there’s no reason you can’t excuse yourself to the restroom or just take a quick stroll down the halls to recover. Being overwhelmed with emotion about a poor grade is also something that happens to most students, whether they let you see it or not (it also happens in life – I’ve only cried in my boss’s office once but I’ll probably never forget it). So if you shed a tear or two in front of the class, you’re fine. You’re well within your rights as a human being to have and express emotion.

Emotion is normal and perfectly fine, but it’s what you do with that emotion that is key. What are you going to make this grade mean? You have a lot of choices about how you might think about this:

·         The teacher is terrible and clearly can’t teach if you, a good student, can’t pass her test.

·         The test was way too hard.

·         I was a great student in high school, but I’m just not cut out for college.

·         I knew I’d never be good at (insert subject here) and this is proof.

·         I’m going to fail this class.

·         I need to review the questions and correct answers to find out what’s going on.

I hope it’s obvious that the final response is the only thought you want in your brain. While the others may rudely pop up, your logical brain needs to come back to just the facts. If you need to change your thinking: write down the illogical, destructive thoughts you have and then write down the thoughts you want to replace them with. Often just getting things out on paper relieves much of the tension and stress associated with receiving bad news.

In my next blog post, we’ll talk about how to gather information from here and what you can do with it. Until then, keep being your amazing self!

Kelley