I just checked my midterm grades. Five or six little letters: Ss and Ps, As and Cs. All sorts of weird little symbols on WebAdvisor to take your academic pulse. Let’s be real, do these letters tell us anything? How many times has a prof said, “Oh, you’re all getting As for your midterm grades because there hasn’t been enough material to truly reflect your work…” That little grade often means nothing in terms of how much work you have put into the class. Still, I think there is something to these yard markers to our college career.

I think these little letters can tell us a lot more about ourselves than we give ourselves credit for. The As, the B-s, and the C+s. Even the Fs. Each letter on our transcript has a story to tell, and the story means a heck of a lot more than just the ink on the paper.

I always think about beauty being “in the eye of the beholder” when one classmate celebrates their B on the exam while another feels deep shame for the same grade. The word “student” has diverse meanings. Some slave away in the library while others slave away in their dorms or in academic buildings, while others prefer not to slave at all or put their energy into student orgs. Because there is such a large spectrum of what being a student means around here, it seems silly to judge all students on the same scale.

But our grades do not measure our character. In many ways they measure something completely different. I want to call it our Not-Character. Take for instance my friend Nick Prince. He is Co-President of Student Senate, an active member of the SAE fraternity, an Opinion columnist for the Weekly and he is really bad at dancing (he said so himself). Our campus would really miss out if he was a dance major struggling endlessly to perfect his grand jeté. Instead he has decided to spend his energy on his strengths. He’s really good at being a Not-Dancer. His mid-term letter grade in dance this semester, were he in a class, would most likely reflect the time he spent working on his dancing skills.

The ways in which we embrace our inefficiencies is what makes us brilliant. We are all mediocre at something. It is the ways in which we understand our limitations, as well as our strengths, that give us tremendous power. We need a humble acknowledgement of who we are to fully bring our best to Gustavus and the world.

Now, if someone could help me convince my mom that I am a really good Not-Calendar-User, that would be great.