December 21, 2012

Got My Grades

I was able to look up my grades today and I'm a little disappointed.

Up until last week I was getting A's in every course.  In one of my classes I had a final project due that was worth 1/3 of my grade and I pretty much bombed a portion of the assignment.

On the plus side I managed to figure out the thing I didn't realize I was screwing up and fixed it for the final "exam", but the damage was done.  I ended up getting 89% in the course which was a B.

In looking up my grades I see that I ended up with a 3.769 as my grade point average.  I hate the 4.0 grade point.  Class grades are tracked as raw points and obviously the grades are figured out using a percentage, but those percentages get shoved over to a simple 4 point scale.  The difference between me just barely not getting an A and just barely getting a B just doesn't exist.


Now I'm a bit rubbed the wrong way for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost is I didn't get my A.  Second is really the fact that it is only my fault.  Somehow I had missed the second part of an assignment which would have shown me that I was getting that one essential "thing" wrong.  Third is just the setup to begin with.

You know that 89% I said I had in the course?  It was actually an 84%.  When I finished my test I looked through the grading sheet on Blackboard and looked at items that were not graded yet.  One assignment couldn't have been graded because I hadn't done it weeks prior.  Looking at the grading page it shows the points available and the points I'd earned so far.  This is easy math.....divide one number by the other and you have a percentage.

The thing is that the grading page doesn't actually show you the points available.  I had to go through and actually add up all the numbers on the grading page to see that they were off by 5% of the grade for the course.

OK, now I know for certain I completely deserve that B.  I did go back and complete those missing assignment parts.  If I had turned them in 10 days prior...still late, but acceptable within the parameters of the course, then maybe I could have finished with a 89.7%.

Anyway, now I have a 3.769 GPA....what the heck does that mean?  I'm assuming an A, even if the cutoff is a 3.75.  I do know that I'll be on the Dean's List.  I wish I'd made it to the President's List for a 4.0

Oh well....I'm certain that the real reason I'm disappointed is that I thought of this semester of school as being my "job" and I feel like I fell short at work. The discussion of the 4 point grading scale I think is still important, but really irrelevant this time around.

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