My struggles with getting A's

baktrax
Thu, 02 Apr 2015 04:37:25 +0000

Welcome to college.

One of the biggest differences between college and high school is that college grades are heavily dependent on tests (or perhaps papers, in writing based classes), and you don’t get brownie points (or at least, this is much less heavily weighted) for doing homework or doing busy work, like you would in high school. If you performed at a B level on exams, then you get a B in the class. It seems kind of silly to give you an A, if you got a B average on your exams. How would that differentiate between students who had a B average from students who had an A average?

Test taking is a skill, just like anything else. Some students are naturally better at it than others, but just because you aren’t naturally adept at test taking doesn’t mean you can’t become better. It also doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have to take tests or that tests shouldn’t be as heavily weighted because you’re not good at them. I’m not good at writing, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t having any writing assignments in classes. It means that I should improve my writing. It’s an important skill to be able to learn material and to be able to apply your knowledge to new problems or to be able to answer questions on an exam or explain your thoughts in written language. How else would you propose teachers assess what you know?

If you have documented anxiety, then you may qualify for testing accommodations through your university, but not being good at taking tests likely isn’t going to be enough.