Beyond the Bubble
Across the River: Tough Love
By Rae Maddox
Summer 2009
All right, Harvard girls, let's think of your daily workload. Two, three, four, maybe five hours? If it's more, I apologize, but don't curse the Academic Powers That Be just yet. Remember that you're not alone.
First week of our freshman year at BU, one of my friends sat angrily at the dinner table and frowned at me. "My econ teacher said he'd only give out two As in the entire class. Two As. I've basically failed already." That same semester, my roommate came home dancing about how well she did on an exam. Two classes later, she was ranting that the teacher was considering deflating the grades because the class average was too high.
In reality, when there are five letter grades given out, the C should be average. Normal. So if this is true, why do we feel bad, inadequate, even ashamed for being average? True, in college we're supposed to strive to be better, exceed expectations, and prove that we're more. Boston University is no exception.
BU not only believes that a C should be average, they scale everything to make this possible, causing our averages to be around a C+ or B-. As students, if we want that 3.3 GPA for grad school, it's not a matter of doing our best—we have to do better. It's gotten to the point where our transcripts include a notation explaining that our grades can't be regarded the same way that job interviewers and grad schools view the grades from students in other schools. The New York Times wrote an article on June 7, 2006, about a student who, over the course of a few summer sessions, received a 3.5 GPA from Boston's own Northeastern, a 3.2 at Columbia University, and a shiny 2.4 at Boston University after repeating business classes that he'd already taken at Northeastern.
Don't think too harshly of our great university, though. Our teachers do all they can to help us keep our grades up with review sessions, great TFs with open doors, and quick responses by e-mail. Those Academic Powers, while intimidating and seemingly sadistic, really just want us to do our best, and in the end, we're better off for it. And as students at the legendary Harvard University, you all can understand the rewards that come with hard work.
So next time you're sitting in the library for four consecutive hours, staring at your notebook and craving more caffeine, don't rant that everything is working against you. Remember that what feels like torture is just "tough love," and you're not alone in sometimes wishing our schools didn't love us quite so much.
