Читать книгу How to Succeed At University--Canadian Edition - Danton O'Day - Страница 11

There is an age-old argument about the meaning of grades. Does the grade a student gets in a course really reflect what he or she has learned?

At least in the minds of others, your achievement at university will be demonstrated by your grades. I believe that in the majority of courses grades do truly reflect the student’s performance as perceived by the professor. The professor is an expert in his or her field and, by this token (a standard academic phrase, by the way), the professor’s assessment of you indicates how well you have lived up to what he or she expects of students. However, there is some underlying learning that no professor can ever hope to judge. You will gain something from each course that no other individual will. Your uniqueness will allow you to glean information that others will miss. Possibly you will not realize it until years later, but you will. If you learn as much as you can in each course, the grades will come by themselves.

Now that’s my philosophy. But this is not a book on the philosophy of education. It is about survival and succeeding at university. Grades are important. That’s the truth. It’s a fact. If you get lousy grades, a professional school will not accept you. On today’s grade market you need, generally, an average above 80% to be even considered for medical school and usually a much higher grade to be accepted. You need excellent grades for any professional school, for teachers college and for other postgraduate training. To my knowledge, there are no lawyers, doctors or teachers who had a 60% average at university.

Now the problem at hand is to deal with that fact. How can you get above-average grades? I argue that if a student is intelligent enough to be admitted to university then he or she has the potential to get above-average grades. It will take more work for some than for others, but knowing the rules will help.

The only way for a student to get good grades in a course is for him or her to do all required assignments and to learn as much of the course material as well as he or she can. Good grades are an offshoot of knowledge. There’s no way you can fail if you do your work and study.

However, as I’ve mentioned, students typically don’t do very well in their first year at university. For many the freshman experience is a wake-up call that spurs them on to greater success. For others, it’s an academic death knell, causing them to give up and drop out. Others just keep hanging around passing some courses and failing or dropping others. More and more students are falling into that last category. For that reason, as mentioned earlier, the average time it takes for a university student to graduate with a “four-year” Bachelor’s degree is now over five years. In fact, on average, less than 80% of students complete their degrees in five years! But all is not lost. Why? Because simply having the Bachelor’s degree is sufficient for many jobs. Having a degree it shows that you can stick with and complete something. While your marks may not be excellent, you have proven that you are mature enough to face the challenges and finish what you started.

Having said that, it’s important to note that some jobs and, of course, getting into postgraduate programs require reasonable marks as well as the degree. So, if you’ve been doing poorly in your first couple of years, does that mean these opportunities are lost? Not at all! While you may not be eligible to get into medical school or get accepted to a prestigious school for further studies you have other options. The same goes for getting into that highly regarded company or landing that well-paying job. While your early marks may not be impressive, many companies and post-graduate institutions look at your success in the last ten or so courses that you have taken. Many realize that the first years are the most difficult. If you can improve over time, this demonstrates your growth as an individual. So rather than thinking all is lost, you can refocus your efforts to increase your grades in whatever courses or time you have left. That effort will be repaid with more opportunities for your future.