Edited by: Yashasvi Arunkumar (UG 2020)
So your first semester at Ashoka has ended, and you’re (probably) starting the second with a lot of enthusiasm. But there might be one shadow that’s haunting you at this time:
Your GPA.
You’ve probably received all your grades long before returning to campus, and your GPA for the semester has been calculated. Perhaps you did great! Perhaps you sucked. Perhaps (and this is the most likely scenario) you did decently enough, but nothing too great. Whatever your grades are, it’s okay.
For those who were toppers in school and have been staring at the LMS in horror all break, don’t worry. You have just entered a new environment, where maybe you’re not the only super-smart person in the classroom, or not the only person who can ace quizzes. Or maybe the study methods you used in school don’t yield the same results. That’s fine! As I said before, this is a new environment, and you are here to learn and grow. Yes, people will look at your transcript in the years to come, but this is only your first semester, and you’ve only taken Foundation Courses so far. Maybe you’re not so great at Great Books, or maybe PoS means something completely different to you. But who knows? It’s possible that you’ll ace your major and minor courses in the coming months, and bring that CGPA right back up.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
For those who did okay, but don’t have anything great to talk about, welcome to the fam! It seems like you and I have more in common that you thought. I was a pretty average student in school, and in my first semester, my grades were pretty decent, but nothing spectacular. I did okay in my courses (including math, with a little help from a friend). But as the semesters passed, I worked harder and found myself enjoying my major, eventually resulting in grades that went up every single semester. By the time I graduated, I was doing pretty well – all because I plodded along.
The good thing about your GPA now is that you have room to improve, if you want. Getting a 4.0 in the first semester itself is all well and good, and I’m honestly very proud of those who did, but the advantage of lower GPAs like mine is that there is the possibility of moving up. The highest GPA you can get is a 4.0, so when you’ve already reached the summit, where else are you supposed to go? You either stay there, or you come down. But with a lower GPA, you have enough space to do better, and learn from the past semester. Sure, you can go down from a 3.0 as well, but you can also go up and up.
One word of advice, no matter what your grades are: do NOT discuss said grades with ANYONE, unless they are your closest friends (and maybe not even them). It’s a bad habit we all picked up in school. We discussed our marks with the entire world, and those of us who didn’t do very well became extremely uncomfortable during the conversation. It’s the same story in college: I once had to endure an elevator ride with a guy who would not shut up about his fabulous 3.6 GPA (after the first semester), and it drove me mad. Now, I just talk to my two best friends about my grades, and even then only sparingly. If anyone asks me about what grades I got, I tell them to their face that I don’t talk about my grades. If there’s a discussion on GPA, I walk away (following my mother’s advice from when I was in high school). Trust me, if you listen to my mother, you’ll be happier and your mental health will thank you later on.
Here’s some final advice from an old woman of twenty-something: your grades do not define who you are. Just because you got a B+ in something, doesn’t mean you’re a failure as a person, and the same holds true even if you got an F. You can still be a decent person, maybe the course just didn’t work out for you the way you wanted. And that’s totally alright! On the flip side, if you get A’s in everything, it doesn’t define you as a person either. Take it from me, a veteran of Ashokan grades – it’ll all work out in the end, even if not in the way you expected.