I have a love-hate relationship with the grading system used throughout school, though I’m not exactly sure what I would propose to take its place. My hatred truly grew during the first semester of my sophomore year of college, ascribable to the fact that I was harboring growing feelings of frustration due to an internal major-related identity crisis. I had gotten A’s in all my English classes during my freshman year, something I was proud of, but as I sat in my classes last semester, surrounded by English majors, I couldn’t help but become overwhelmed with one thought: I’m not good enough to belong here. I wrestled with why I felt that way for many weeks, telling myself that I shouldn’t because, objectively, I was excelling in all my classes and getting the grades I needed to in order to continue. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter what it looked like on paper, or no matter how hard I tried, I just simply wasn’t doing enough as my classmates.
Let me explain this a bit clearer for those who might not understand the nature of my insecurities. English as a major is more subjective rather than objective, more qualitative rather than quantitative.You can’t gauge your understanding based on whether you got the question “right” or “wrong” such as a math or science-based major. While some might argue that English is easier because of this reason, the ambiguity of the “right” way to answer a prompt has been the foundation of my insecurities in many ways. For example, while I might have had good insight about a book or reading, there is always the thought in the back of my mind that it could have been better, that I could have gone deeper. Thus, even though I was receiving good grades in my classes, I felt as though I had no place among my peers and considered switching out of my major on a multitude of occasions.
However, when I opened up to some of my best friends in the major about my feelings, I came to find out that this odd English major-related insecurity was not something unique to me, which oddly gave me a sense of relief. They too felt as though no matter how much they analyzed the reading before participating in class or how hard they tried on papers, there was some sort of unreachable bar they weren’t touching, some invisible standard they hadn’t met. While I did find the fact that I wasn’t alone in this emotion to be definitely relieving in some ways. In others, I still wasn’t satisfied because regardless of if I was alone in this feeling or not, I was continually experiencing it.
I continued on this mental battle for almost all of my first semester of sophomore year, especially due to one specific major-required class. This class contained seven students, myself included, and only one of them was a non-English major, so already the stakes were much higher. Comparisons to others in class aside, this class made me doubt myself in a much more significant way; challenging even the academic meter by which I based my worth. My professor was not one for sugar coating and certainly didn’t just give me a good grade on a paper because I had a strong thesis. Looking back, I can confidently say that this class was pivotal in my journey as a writer and was absolutely necessary for my growth, but even though I can see that now, at the time all I could think was that this really proved that I wasn’t supposed to be here. After a couple talks with the aforementioned best friends, and my mom of course, I was encouraged to continue through the class and see how I still felt at the end of the semester. Thank God I did, because in doing so I came to a realization of something that I had been missing for so long. There shouldn’t be any comparison, sans that of me comparing myself today to where I was a year ago. If I read a paper I wrote last year at this time back to back with the most recent one I turned in, I would have thought they were written by two completely different people. Due to my growth in this area as an English major, I have found a new found appreciation for the subjectivity of the subject. Rather than viewing the fact that there are no “right” answers as an impossible challenge, I started to see it as encouragement to stretch my current mind as far as I can and bring to the table all of the unique experiences and insights only I have on this topic. Therein lies the beauty of subjective majors such as English: no one will read a text or glean from it the same reaction you did, so embrace that individuality and make your own answer the right answer!