For the Grader Good
I will never forget receiving my first B in a class. It happened in my freshman year of high school, a few months after I realized—and promptly began suppressing—the fact I wanted to live my life as a woman. So it’s hopefully not too difficult to imagine that my mental state at the time was a bit like an expensive glass vase teetering on the very edge of a mantle. Averting one’s eyes is nearly impossible, but despite this, you’re never fast enough when it finally falls and shatters into a thousand pieces. I can be playfully dramatic now, now that it’s a past so distant. I’ve long since transitioned and have been working slowly but surely towards regaining my sense of stability in the world.
But at the time, I earnestly believed I had ruined everything.
Grades are just letters and numbers. But to not acknowledge everything they are beyond this is irresponsible.
My mom spent most of my earlier school years checking online grades like they were the newspaper. She reported (as if I didn’t know already) every aced test as a triumph and any mysteriously missing points as a tragedy—one that I’d best have a damn good answer for. I rarely did. I’d either stammer out an apology or craft an excuse.
I didn’t know it was due. I tried my best. I’ll try harder next time.
After Mom was done with any given scolding session, I’d retreat to my room as her words lingered in my mind. On good days, they’d flicker a few times then peter out. On bad days, they’d bounce off the inside of my skull like balls in a pinball machine. I’d lie under my raised bed and stare at the slats of wood that held up my mattress, memorizing its swirling patterns, feeling unworthy of anything more entertaining.
That’s the very place I was when the first semester came to a close, when the letter I’d spent years dreading appeared on my mom’s laptop. How could this happen? How could I let things slip like that? How could I ruin the record I’d kept up for so long? Disregard the straight A’s elsewhere, of course. Disregard everything.
I sobbed. God, did I sob. I’d ruined everything. My mom never said any of this explicitly of course, but her tone, her furrowed brows, and the aura of disappointment surrounding her were all I needed to know the truth. That’s why it was strange to watch her shift as she saw me beneath my bed curled up in a ball, my face stained and the carpet beneath my face soaked.
She walked away, leaving me to spiral for the night. The next day, she wanted to talk, and the conversation was perhaps even more genuine and heartfelt than my first attempt at coming out as transgender. She was done keeping up with my grades, she said. Aside from final reports, she wouldn’t hover over anything anymore. Our family wasn’t going to crumble because of a bunch of letters.
I can’t say that my mental health automatically improved, but that’s usually how change happens. It’s only by looking back that I’ve been able to appreciate how much more difficult and contentious the past few years of my life would have been had my mom kept bringing up grades at every opportunity. It feels obvious now, but I can understand why it didn’t feel obvious back then.
School is complex: the bullying on social media; the arbitrary divides based on popularity, niche groups, and honors classes; the fetishistic enforcement of dress codes on underage women; the echo chambers reinforcing sexist and xenophobic views. With all those issues swirling in an ever-present vortex, it’s no wonder a couple letters on a screen can be swept under the rug. How bad could they possibly be?
It didn’t help that up to that point I had consistently received straight A’s. Because of this, there was no longer any celebration beyond a quiet word of praise or brief acknowledgment. That’s what comes when the highest level of achievement becomes the minimum.
When I realized just how unnecessary and self-imposed this standard was, I started worrying less about the end product of a class, and instead focused on giving my best based on current energy levels and ability.
This method worked well enough until I reached my senior year. A few years of art classes landed me in AP Art where the final product was a 15-piece art portfolio. Instead of a high grade, the goal was a high score on a scale of 1 to 5. My goal was to get a 4, and I put my whole self into a 15-piece story about my life thus far as a transgender woman. I felt confident in my ability to create art. I spent all of my free time working on these pieces, on improving, on doing anything I could to reach the four I knew I deserved.
And then I got a 3. I never even found out how to access feedback, so the 3 existed purely as itself. My work was a 3. After that, I stopped doing art for fun. I cold-turkey quit. I was a level-3 artist, and a level-3 artist had no business continuing to make art when there are real artists out there doing the level-5 work I would never do. Why waste the time, the materials? I wasn’t worthy to create the art that had been bringing me joy for years.
I know now that this was a ridiculous way of thinking, but this is precisely the effect that grades and scores can have on people. Far too often in society, we allow these metrics to define a person’s value. People who don’t finish high school are dropouts; people who don’t have college on their résumé belong in jobs society deems worthless—janitors, fast food workers, and clerks. Don’t have good grades? Give up—or push yourself harder, regardless of limits, whether physical or mental.
Whether intentional or not, grades also claim to measure a student’s personal responsibility. My mom recalled needing to have a poor report card signed by her parents. All through school I grew numb to hearing: “If your grades slip too low, we’ll have to set up a meeting with your parents.” Thus, a student’s freedom and privacy within school depends upon academic performance—extended only to those who fit the mold of a “good student.” It may even be worse in the current era.
My high school also had a system called PLTs, or Personalized Learning Times, where students choose three 30-minute time slots in their day, one of which being their lunch period. Yes, they can be used to make up tests or do some extra studying before an upcoming class, but they are also a time to socialize and unwind, to be trusted to at least partially create your own schedule on a day-to-day basis.
Yet a bad grade gives teachers the right to pull you in for their PLT, not only taking away your time to focus on other classes or interests, but potentially taking away the lunch period where your friends will be. Once, I was pulled at the last minute for a math class I had a C in, which prevented me from working on my art portfolio or socializing with friends. I broke down crying in the hallway. When I finally calmed myself down enough to go to the classroom, my math teacher didn’t even acknowledge my clearly distressed state.
I was told to sit down and get to it.
The problem is only made worse by how easily grades can be checked online. My mom would pull up my grades every day and scold me for something I’d already spent the entire bus ride home feeling bad about. This instantaneous connection removes the barrier between school and home—ironically creating a growing rift between my mother and me. Doing badly meant that the stress of any given school day would follow me home, the very place where I could relax and savor time reserved for me. A bad grade meant losing all that: my parents wouldn’t like me anymore and I’d never be allowed to leave the house. Grades took over everything—my emotions, my social time, my life.
If this feels like an extreme take on the situation, that’s the anxiety grades can cause even in an admittedly privileged home-life like the one I’m describing. Even when grades were a point of contention between us, my mom has been incredibly supportive throughout my life. Imagine the turmoil grades cause for someone with parents who are authoritarian, abusive, or emotionally distant.
Grades are just letters and numbers. But to not acknowledge everything they are beyond this is irresponsible. They enforce societal expectations about what intelligence means; they’re never just one small measure but a reflection of who a person is. They create a culture where even someone like me—a girl at a good school, with loving parents and a 3.75 GPA—can still cry herself to sleep at night thinking she’s no good at math, which must mean she isn’t smart, which must mean she’ll never make it anywhere in life.
On a more positive note, my favorite class (and the reason I wrote this essay) was my Creative Writing course, which utilized ungrading. A finished assignment receives a checkmark, an unfinished assignment doesn’t, and the one graded thing in the class is a journal which requires a bare minimum of effort to pass.
Despite this, the journal was perhaps the most effort I’ve ever put into any assignment—for one simple reason: I wasn’t doing it for a number. I was doing it for me. I wanted to prove something—above all, to myself—and to feel proud of what I created. Escaping the rigid boundaries of traditional grades is exactly what inspired that feeling.
I wanted to prove something—above all, to myself—and to feel proud of what I created. Escaping the rigid boundaries of traditional grades is exactly what inspired that feeling.
Learning should be done for the sake of self-improvement, but grades reduce that process to a transaction. This can leave students feeling like a “middleman” in their own life: the teacher transfers information to me, I transfer it to paper, and then I transfer it back to the teacher. Done. Consequently, any self-improvement becomes incidental at best. Academic successes start to lose their meaning, shifting from something worth doing for its own sake into a reward for doing what you’ve been told.
On top of this, I didn’t care about topics that would have otherwise fascinated me because I wasn’t engaging in them for fun; I was engaging in them because the grade necessitated it. Also, the school view of any topic is different from any other, more exacting and demanding. I found myself cramming information without paying attention to the parts that truly intrigued me, not wanting to “waste time” on things that wouldn’t be on the exam.
When I stopped doing art after my 3, it’s because I thought what I made didn’t qualify as art, and others were better at it on a technical level.
But that was never my reason for doing art. I like sketching. I use mechanical pencils because it’s easier. I’ve never shaded well because I can’t be bothered and it’s close enough anyway. I do art because it’s fun and personally fulfilling, but grades made me forget all that.
Grades figure most prominently during the years when people are experiencing the most personal growth—whether it’s high schoolers discovering their personal writing style or college students seeking their path in life. So why is this also the time when the grading system actively suppresses this emerging sense of self? Why should students learn to fear mistakes instead of seeing them as opportunities to learn? After all, if every student is graded in the same way, where’s the opportunity to explore, the impetus to be unique?
I can’t definitively say I’d be less anxious or more fulfilled if I’d grown up in a gradeless system. I do know I would have had a less strained relationship with my mom, more chances to socialize, and a lot more incentive to learn for myself.
I’d trade that for all those letters on a screen any day.
Brooklyn (she/her) is a 20-year-old writer and creative currently studying at CCAC, with plans to transfer after earning her associate’s degree. Writing has long been a source of freedom and self-discovery for her, especially in exploring life as a queer woman. When not writing, Brooklyn enjoys drawing, reading, and playing video games—all ways of expressing the creativity she believes life is meant for. Her dream is to become an author and see her own books on the shelf someday.