Serious question: Why are kids freaking out over grades?

Neither of my kids were interested in going to grad school at least not right away. So there undergrad institutions were important for their first jobs. I had an undergrad degree from Harvard and a grad degree from Columbia. When I was job-hunting in Munich, Germany guess which one they were impressed by? (They didn’t know there was no undergrad architecture school at Harvard.)

I think moderate freakouts about grades are understandable, but the truth is if the rest of the application is there, there are lots of schools that will over look some Bs - especially if they are in what they perceive as hard subjects. My younger son had straight B’s in Latin, a B in Honors Chem freshman year, a B+ in pre-calc and I’m pretty sure a bunch of English B+s and still got into top ranked in the top 30 of USNWR.