I remember, clear as day, the first time I got a B+ in my first year. I closed Canvas, and I was a sulking mess who felt like I had almost failed the course. One of the seniors saw me and asked what was wrong. Upon telling her, she laughed heartily and asked me to “get used to it,” and in fact, consider it my good luck to get that grade. I was absolutely dumbfounded. How can anything that is not a straight ‘A’ even remotely warrant celebration?
However, years later, as I deal with the burnout of my penultimate year, I realize the true weight of her words. You lowkey are very lucky if you can manage to conjure up a B+ in this economy, given how taxing university life can get. I mean, getting through the absolute pressure cooker that is the trimester system, while juggling clubs, keeping up with coursework, all while maintaining some semblance of a social life, deserves a pat on the back itself. This goes out to everyone who has been sold a concept by the matcha-sipping, lo-fi-listening, pastel-blue-highlighter-using faction of influencers. We are often made to feel like anything below an ‘A’ is something that is never going to be adequate and always needs some kind of “fixing.” Instead of an enriched engagement with the discipline you are pursuing, what becomes more important is the methods, the hoards of stationery, and whatnot. The modern spin on this can often be equated with the rising reliance on AI for “optimization” of time, and covering as much matter as possible in as little time as possible.
Learning has always been based on trial-and-error, in my opinion, and this shift has taken away from the grit of that entire process for everyone involved. I have witnessed the palpable replacement firsthand—from seeing sticky notes and handwritten flashcards being laid out messily on tables for every open-book exam to neatly stapled bundles of notes summarized and compiled by AI. I mean, in the end, I do see a general sense of satisfaction with the ultimate grades and class averages. However, this marked turn in how the journeys to a said grade are being mapped does speak volumes about how little actual engagement has begun with the material at large. All that remains in class is a herd of people who have all submitted a PDF through summarizers and are taking guesses at answering the precarious questions raised in class.
The point I am trying to make here is that a B+ earned out of genuine interest and a messy series of trying to wrack one’s brain might ultimately be more fulfilling than an ‘A’ where the recall remains only limited till the end of the trimester. Grades don’t linger, but concepts do. And I think that is the beauty of priding oneself on an achievement of the aforementioned grade. The B+ then no longer remains an empty metric or a grade, but the result of multiple staggered attempts to show up and continuing to try again and again for a feigned friendship with the material assigned. So now, anytime I get a B+, I do try to cheer perhaps a little louder than my first-year self, for my lens has changed now, where I look at it as a testament to the fact that I can juggle multiple responsibilities while still managing to keep my academics more than afloat on a decently good front.