Many students believe the reason we come to college is to get good grades so we can finish our time here with a diploma in-hand and a silly-looking hat.
However, a complete and full college education isn't contingent on maintaining a certain GPA or even finishing with a degree.
Too often we find ourselves worried about our grades in our classes, and many people lose sleep or even have anxiety attacks over them.
We fail to realize that our grades aren't an accurate indication of how well we are learning, and they are required by the University as a way to monitor the progress of teachers and students, as well as provide structure in the classroom.
I'm sure there are many teachers who would do away with grading if it wasn't required, and there are others who downplay the significance by scaling grades in the hope that their students will focus more on the content being taught.
As students, we often will scan for a letter at the top of our papers and ignore the commentary our professors spend a great deal of time writing about our work.
Their commentary is the only kind of grading that adequately describes how well we are doing in a class and explains what we can improve on.
We retain less of what is important to learn during our time here and hinder our own learning experience when we tailor our learning to try to adhere to a grading system by cramming and other poor study habits.
What is important is that we learn the necessary technical and social skills for our future endeavors, we learn how to collaborate with people of different nationalities and ideologies, and we, most importantly, find what we are passionate about.
Every assignment a that professor gives us is designed to emphasize something we will be doing in the future, or that the professor thinks is an important skill for us to know for the future.
They aren't making us work together to check the "I promote teamwork" box and add another line to their resume.
If we genuinely want to learn everything we can here, we have to stop worrying about our grades and realize what a small part of our learning experience they are.
Not only will this lower the extremely high stress level on campus, but it will allow more students to see that our learning isn't confined to a classroom and isn't represented by a number, a letter or a diploma.
Our time here is called the "Auburn Experience" for a reason.
The clubs, speeches, concerts and events outside of the classroom, as well as the variety of interesting electives on campus are sponsored so that our learning can be an encapsulating experience.
If our students leave the Plains having learned only what we need to obtain the almighty "A," then we have missed out on receiving the education we all pay an arm and a leg for.
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