Grades and Self-handicapping

I'm gonna admit that I'm pretty much going through this right now:

"Self-handicapping - the process by which people avoid effort in the

hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem." -Wikipedia

I'm not doing as well as I'd hoped with my schoolwork; I put in a lot more time and effort into my work and receive disappointed feedback and lower grades. They (the professors and graduates) always tell us that grades aren't important; the important thing is that you learned something from the whole ordeal. As much as I agree with that statement when I'm on holiday, I can't help but focus and obsess about the grades when I'm in school.

If the grades don't actually matter, then why do we receive grades at all?

Well, it's a great way to tell you where you are and how much more you need to improve. It's a guideline that can show you where you need focus and point out the things you're really good at. The grades are there to retain order and standards.

Apparently, the key is the ability to separate the professor's likes and the grade you actually receive. A professor can rave about your work and how much they love it and how it resonates with their souls and so on, but it can fail to meet part of the criteria of the project and you can get a lower grade than you expected.

So that's pretty confusing to grasp. But basically, according to one of my professors and others have agreed with him: "grades are not meant to be subjective, and are based on how original and perfect your execution is."

Which leads me back to why I'm beginning to self-handicap; I've been working really hard, racking my brains to be 'original', sometimes not even thinking and jumping to the execution, using all kinds of methods to take as many risks and experiment as much as possible, all the while trying to control the outcomes, and in the end, I'm told that I'm being conventional and not putting as much effort in as my fellow classmates.
Now I'm beginning to self-handicap. I feel like, what's the point? I'm just going to get bad feedback anyways, because I'm not receiving any constructive criticism. I'm just going to get bad grades anyways, so why bother?
And with that attitude, I probably will continue to get bad grades.
And you know what? The professor probably won't even care that I don't care, 'cause in the end, they're not the one with the bad grades, 'cause it's really nothing to them to hand them out.
Beyond school, they don't really matter. Outside of school, your CV is looked at, your portfolio is looked at, how well you present yourself is looked at. Focus on doing well in school, but don't let grades get you so down that you wanna drop out or feel like crap, just do well enough to get by if that's the best you can do - just get through it.

This kind of feedback doesn't push me to work harder.

This kind of feedback doesn't make me feel good about my work or myself.

It makes me feel like crap that I: spent money to buy equipment for the project, asked people to spare some of their time to help me, spent hours composing my work, spent even more time selecting and cropping and photoshopping and editing the best ones and then reprinting them several times to get the right amount of levels and detail on good quality paper.

Maybe you googled "dropping out of school" or "bad grades" or something else negative like that, and that's how you found this page. Maybe you didn't, but I have, and reading some stuff has either gotten me even more down, or actually helped me a lot.

You have to think about grades in this way:

Beyond school, they don't really matter. Outside of school, your CV is looked at, your portfolio is looked at, how well you present yourself is looked at. Focus on doing well in school, but don't let grades get you so down that you wanna drop out or feel like crap, just do well enough to get by if that's the best you can do - just get through it.

The Cameraman - Buster Keaton

Remember your other priorities in life: family, friends, pets, plants, I don't know, having fun, getting out, networking, doing things that make you happy.

Grades are only a temporary feeling, a temporary 
thing. Don't let them discourage you.

I feel like I'm repeating all of this to myself over and over again, trying to get myself to believe it. And I think I do now, for the time-being at least, which is probably why I wrote this in the first place to maybe help someone else with their day.

Stay strong and keep working hard,

-Deena

Being the Person You Want to Be

Yesterday was our school's awards day. I got a certificate for being on the Dean's list in Spring semester last year. That was the start of me being the person that I want to be.

One of my favorite profs and I (he wears a bow tie!)

I'll admit though, I wasn't into academics before. In my last years of high school, I'd procrastinate a lot. I'd never do homework, I'd always skip school, and I'd never pay attention in class. And I played a crap ton of computer games at home. In my senior year I did manage to attend school more, but that was only for the social part of it because I finally had a large group of friends, and we were all very close. They were very driven, and would study a lot and talk about classes. I never really had friends like this, so seeing other people work so hard made me feel like the odd one out. Exams rolled around and I hadn't even studied for them.

When results came out after the summer, it turned out I had failed English lit and gotten more C's than I should have. I could no longer qualify to go to the school that I wanted to attend for university. I messed up my own chances due to my lack of motivation and self-respect. I spent the next three months bumming around at home, doing nothing expect for wallowing in self-hate and playing computer games.

And then one day, my mom came home and announced that she had enrolled me in studying Advertising at her university. I hated the idea. I hated it so much. I desperately wanted to get out once I started school. My peers in Advertising were awful, all they ever did was make fun of me and say things like "You need friends", "you need to wear more makeup", "you need to get a tan." None of them really cared about Advertising and were there because they "couldn't think of another major". I felt myself slipping back to my high school ways because I started to stop caring, and that horrified me.

I began to really work my ass off. I cut down the amount of parties I threw, I held back on some weekends with friends, and I stopped using MSN. I could concentrate a lot more, and I started seeing my professors in their office hours frequently. I got over my self-consciousness and began answering and asking questions in class. I'd take any chance for extra-credit and I'd throw in extra work even if it wasn't required. This got me on really great standing with my professors, and with myself.

When grades came out at the end of the semester, I was incredibly happy because I did better than I thought I would, and I was the first kid in my family to get on the Dean's list.
This is when I realized that you don't actually have to be smart, you don't need to have always done well in academics. Hell, I even repeated fifth grade. You just have to genuinely care and try really hard, put tons and tons of effort in, and I guarantee you, you WILL see results. Good ones hopefully at least, hahah.

Anyways, thought I'd make a post on that. This post is quite student-orientated to me, but I think that it applies to anything you want to aim for, not only grades and school.
I was talking to one of my professors the other day, and I said something that he told me to write down immediately. This is also what kinda got me to thinking about making the blog in the first place.

"If I never push myself or never stop procrastinating, I'll never be the person that I want to be."

-Deena