What Earning Bs Teaches College Freshmen
As a parent, you probably do not like hearing your college freshman is average. You want your child to be considered exceptional and exemplary, but the reality is you can’t motivate your freshman to do well in school. Your freshman has to be self-motivated to excel.
Some students, however, are extremely self-motivated. They learned to discipline themselves in high school and received As in almost every subject. Now that they are in college, they are struggling. They aren’t getting all As anymore, and they may have no idea why.
This obsession with getting all As can be your freshman’s greatest obstacle. How do you know if this is true of your child? Do you ever hear your freshman saying or asking any of these things?
“This teacher is the only one to ever give me a B.”
“I don’t get Bs.”
“What do I have to do to get an A?”
“Why does this teacher hate me? He won’t give me an A.”
Let me start by saying that I was one of these college students. I was obsessed with perfection, aiming at all As. (Even the idea of getting a B+ got under my skin.)
What I came to realize is that earning an occasional B was one of the most important parts of my college experience. It taught me 4 lessons I wouldn’t have learned any other way.
1. Your freshman earns their grades.
From the student’s perspective, grading may seem entirely arbitrary. Your freshman may have prepared for hours but still have received a B on a presentation, while a poorly prepared peer received an A. How unfair?
From the teacher’s perspective, much more is going on. Each freshman has different capabilities and skills, but that doesn’t give any student the “right” to an A. Unfortunately working hard does not entitle your freshman to good grades.
The thinking of some students needs to be corrected by realizing the difference between “giving” and “earning.”
As Dr. Ryan Meers explained in his post “To Contest or Not Contest: 5 Tips for Contesting Grades,” “never ask an instructor why they “gave” you the grade they did. Instructors do not ‘give’ grades, students ‘earn’ grades.”
Your child is fully responsible for their grades. No teacher is going to make college easy for them or hand them an A. Your freshman has to own their college grades, even if a teacher is particularly difficult or demanding. Instead of jumping to blaming the teacher, your freshman needs to take personal responsibility for the grades they earn.
I remember one semester I had a teacher pull me aside and talk to me about my obsessive desire to earn all As. She kindly pointed out that this desire was not healthy for me. I will never forget that conversation, and how I so appreciate her caring enough about me to confront my misplaced priorities.
I remember another semester when I had a particularly demanding teacher. While most of the students in the class decided to throw in the towel and stop caring, I continued to strive for an A.
At the end of the semester, I realized that, although I didn’t agree with or approve of the teacher’s style, I needed to care less about earning an A and more about learning from that experience. In the end, if earning a B due to unfairness is the worst injustice I’ve ever faced, I’ve lived a pretty cushy life.
2. Your freshman needs to keep learning.
Grades should always be secondary to learning. In his article “What Straight-A Students Get Wrong,” Adam Grant points out that doing well academically does not necessarily lead to an excellent career. Earning good grades merely means that your child is good at meeting and conforming to requirements as well as solving problems.
Grant says, “career success is rarely about finding the right solution to a problem — it’s more about finding the right problem to solve.”
No student is flawless. In fact, every student has room room to improve, regardless of IQ. Earning an occasional B reminds your freshman that they need to keep learning, but earning an A doesn’t mean they need to stop trying or looking for ways to grow.
If your freshman is a perfectionist, earning a B will challenge them. In the post “Perfectionists Not-So-Anonymous: 4 Ways Perfectionism Hurts College Freshmen,” I point out the merit of your freshman performing less than perfectly.
Mistakes don’t make you a failure or a loser. They merely make you human (which you are). In her book Better by Mistake, Alina Tugend points to the merits of making mistakes. She believes that failing to admit that you make mistakes can be a means to protect yourself. Ultimately it’s easier to blame to someone or something else than to show weaknesses or flaws.
Perfection is an unrealistic standard for your freshman. At some point, they will earn a B.
While they may feel crushed, they will come to learn that earning less than perfect grades helped them build resilience to seeming “failure.”
3. Your freshman creates realistic goals.
Perfection is obviously a completely impossible goal. Aiming for all As in college is a worthy endeavor; however, becoming obsessed with this desire can be a sign that your freshman has formed unrealistic goals.
Unrealistic goals are a recipe for disappointment and failure. Especially if your student is an overachiever, achieving anything less than their goal may make them feel like an utter failure. They’re not. They just formed unrealistically high goals.
Even if your freshman is exceptionally gifted intellectually, earning a 4.0 may not be a possibility for them. Why? Your freshman is balancing so much more than coursework at college. Doing all things well is the dream but not often reality.
Your child may need to adjust their priorities to be more realistic.
They should not study 5 hours in a row without any breaks.
They should not stay up all night repeatedly to finish homework. Their physical and mental health are far more important than earning an A.
You may need to guide your ambitious freshman as they reassess their priorities, but do so with care. Asking questions instead of giving directions will go over better.
In this process, they may have to fall down a few times before they get it, but try not to step in and take over unless absolutely necessary.
4. Your freshman realizes the true value of a college education.
Earning good grades is not the most important outcome of a college education. One of the most valuable outcomes is a love of learning. While you certainly hope they can find a well-paying job, you know that a college education provides far more than professional skills.
Very few (if any) employers truly care about the few Bs your freshman earned during college. Skills like leadership, initiative, creativity, collaboration pay off much more professionally. These soft skills should be learned and developed in college.
Encourage your freshman not to lose sight of the big picture in college: personal and professional development. They will never be assessed by a letter-grade system in their future career, so their entire focus should not be focused on this one aspect of college.
Another valuable outcome of a college education is learning to work hard.
Your freshman needs to understand the true reward for hard work: a job well done.
Your child should no longer be motivated to earn grades by external rewards like money. Instead, your child should earn grades good grades, because they want to do so.
Your freshman should not be motivated by earning approval.
This was a big one for me. I loved getting approval or recognition from people that I respected, especially professors. While pleasing authorities is not a bad thing, it can become unhealthy.
Your freshman should want to do well, because they want to, not primarily because others want them to do well.
Earning a B in college may be the best thing that could happen to your college freshman. Through doing less than perfectly, your child will learn that they are responsible for their grades, they needs to keep learning, their goals may require some adjustments, and a college education has value beyond a perfect GPA.
Help your freshman accept earning Bs and keep striving for improvement during their college years.
