What I Talk About When I Talk About Grading
“I’m supposed to graduate summa cum laude so I need an A in this class.”
That sentence, repeated to me at the end of most sessions of a 2-credit elective, was one of the strangest student interactions I ever had, made stranger by the use of “supposed to.” I took it as the obsessive noting of an expected outcome, if only I wouldn’t get in the way and screw it up.
My usual responses to the student, such as: ‘So, that means you’ll work really hard in this class, right?” only received a blank stare. My prodding of what interested her in the subject matter were similarly blank.
And yet, at the end of almost every class, that “supposed to” returned.
The last several generations saw tremendous changes in the expectations of university education.
We went from academic admissions exams to an appeal for well-rounded students, from the introduction of aptitude tests to the test prep industry and the normalization of test retakes, from the blanket availability of student loans to dramatic tuition increases, from college attendance being the exception to the expectation, from mostly men to mostly women attending college.