Grades and other school-related musings
First of all, happy birthday to tehtarakins! Hope you have a fantastic day filled with pogo sticks and roller skates.
Well, my last grade did finally eventually come in. Contrary to my theorizings, the professor was not dead. She was just having "technical difficulties," apparently.
So I've now completed one full year at OSU (summer quarter doesn't count :p ), and I've managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA during that whole year. But during the four semesters I spent at Cedarville, I couldn't get a 4.0 to save my life. (I think the closest I got was a 3.7 something.) And I got to wondering why exactly that is.
I suppose one conclusion it would be easy to jump to would be that OSU's classes are just easier than Cedarville's. After all, Cedarville is a tiny little omg!leet private school, and OSU is a big massive public school. But having taken classes at both schools, I wouldn't say that one is significantly harder or easier than the other. At both schools, I've taken ridiculously easy classes, sort-of difficult classes, and classes that were pretty darn hard. I guess it's kind of hard to really compare the two, since Cedarville is on semesters and OSU is on quarters, but overall I'd say there's no big distinction in class or workload difficulty.
One thing that is different, though, is the grading scale. I'm actually not completely sure what the grading scale is at either school, but I know it's harder at Cedarville than it is at OSU. I think at Cedarville, you have to get at least a 94% to get an A, whereas at OSU, it's like a 92%. Or something like that. So that probably had an effect on why I've gotten 4-points at OSU but not Cedarville.
Overall, though, I think the biggest factor is that at OSU, I've finally found a major that I like and that I feel comfortable in--which, really, was the main reason I transferred in the first place. Because at Cedarville, I did fine in all the gen ed courses--it was the major classes that dragged my GPA down. For example, when I was a biology major, I got B's in Intro to Bio and the general chemistry classes, and a C in general zoology. (I'm still amazed that I didn't fail Gen Zo.) In graphic design, I got quite a few A's, but I also got a couple of A minuses and B pluses, and that one icky C+ in Drawing I.
But now that I'm at OSU, I'm taking major courses on classics, ancient history, ancient art, mythology, and that type of thing. And so far, they've been far more suited to me than biology or graphic design. Plus, I'm just happier at OSU in general, and I think that helps matters.
Anyway, it would be really awesome if I could keep it up. My parents (who, between the two of them, have five degrees from OSU) are already making noises about me graduating summa cum laude. I've still got a lot of quarters and a lot of hard classes left, so I'm not holding my breath, but it would certainly be cool.
Speaking of my major...I never know what to call it. Which sounds odd, but it's not really as straightforward as something like English or biology or psychology. Technically, I'm a classics major. But I've found that when I tell people that, they seem to think that either a) I'm talking about classic literature--British novels and the like (HORRORS), or b) they do understand that "classics" refers to "ancient Greek and Roman history," but they think that I'm one of those super smart people who's taking massive amounts of ancient Greek and Latin. Which is so not the case. Even if I was smart enough to major in ancient Greek and/or Latin, I started on this major at the beginning of my junior year--way too late to get in all the required language classes. I'm going to graduate late enough as it is.
My concentration within the classics major is classical humanities, which is essentially ancient Greek and Roman history and culture rather than language. But I don't like telling people I'm a "classical humanities major," because that just sounds really vague, and I usually get a blank stare. So...I usually just settle for saying that I'm majoring in ancient history. It's not strictly true, but it's close enough. There actually is an ancient history major at OSU, kind of--it's called "ancient history and classics." I thought about doing that, but it's an interdisciplinary major, so it has to be developed in conjunction with an advisor. Classical humanities sounded more appealing to me, because it's more structured, but at the same time it does allow for some freedom within the major electives.
I envy people who are actually interested in straightforward things like English or Spanish or nursing.
And now for a little pimpage completely unrelated to the rest of the post: any Heroes/Sylar fans on my flist who haven't seen info-cassie's "Darth Vader and Sylar are BFFs" comics yet, you should go and check them out. Because they're made of win.
Well, my last grade did finally eventually come in. Contrary to my theorizings, the professor was not dead. She was just having "technical difficulties," apparently.
So I've now completed one full year at OSU (summer quarter doesn't count :p ), and I've managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA during that whole year. But during the four semesters I spent at Cedarville, I couldn't get a 4.0 to save my life. (I think the closest I got was a 3.7 something.) And I got to wondering why exactly that is.
I suppose one conclusion it would be easy to jump to would be that OSU's classes are just easier than Cedarville's. After all, Cedarville is a tiny little omg!leet private school, and OSU is a big massive public school. But having taken classes at both schools, I wouldn't say that one is significantly harder or easier than the other. At both schools, I've taken ridiculously easy classes, sort-of difficult classes, and classes that were pretty darn hard. I guess it's kind of hard to really compare the two, since Cedarville is on semesters and OSU is on quarters, but overall I'd say there's no big distinction in class or workload difficulty.
One thing that is different, though, is the grading scale. I'm actually not completely sure what the grading scale is at either school, but I know it's harder at Cedarville than it is at OSU. I think at Cedarville, you have to get at least a 94% to get an A, whereas at OSU, it's like a 92%. Or something like that. So that probably had an effect on why I've gotten 4-points at OSU but not Cedarville.
Overall, though, I think the biggest factor is that at OSU, I've finally found a major that I like and that I feel comfortable in--which, really, was the main reason I transferred in the first place. Because at Cedarville, I did fine in all the gen ed courses--it was the major classes that dragged my GPA down. For example, when I was a biology major, I got B's in Intro to Bio and the general chemistry classes, and a C in general zoology. (I'm still amazed that I didn't fail Gen Zo.) In graphic design, I got quite a few A's, but I also got a couple of A minuses and B pluses, and that one icky C+ in Drawing I.
But now that I'm at OSU, I'm taking major courses on classics, ancient history, ancient art, mythology, and that type of thing. And so far, they've been far more suited to me than biology or graphic design. Plus, I'm just happier at OSU in general, and I think that helps matters.
Anyway, it would be really awesome if I could keep it up. My parents (who, between the two of them, have five degrees from OSU) are already making noises about me graduating summa cum laude. I've still got a lot of quarters and a lot of hard classes left, so I'm not holding my breath, but it would certainly be cool.
Speaking of my major...I never know what to call it. Which sounds odd, but it's not really as straightforward as something like English or biology or psychology. Technically, I'm a classics major. But I've found that when I tell people that, they seem to think that either a) I'm talking about classic literature--British novels and the like (HORRORS), or b) they do understand that "classics" refers to "ancient Greek and Roman history," but they think that I'm one of those super smart people who's taking massive amounts of ancient Greek and Latin. Which is so not the case. Even if I was smart enough to major in ancient Greek and/or Latin, I started on this major at the beginning of my junior year--way too late to get in all the required language classes. I'm going to graduate late enough as it is.
My concentration within the classics major is classical humanities, which is essentially ancient Greek and Roman history and culture rather than language. But I don't like telling people I'm a "classical humanities major," because that just sounds really vague, and I usually get a blank stare. So...I usually just settle for saying that I'm majoring in ancient history. It's not strictly true, but it's close enough. There actually is an ancient history major at OSU, kind of--it's called "ancient history and classics." I thought about doing that, but it's an interdisciplinary major, so it has to be developed in conjunction with an advisor. Classical humanities sounded more appealing to me, because it's more structured, but at the same time it does allow for some freedom within the major electives.
I envy people who are actually interested in straightforward things like English or Spanish or nursing.
And now for a little pimpage completely unrelated to the rest of the post: any Heroes/Sylar fans on my flist who haven't seen info-cassie's "Darth Vader and Sylar are BFFs" comics yet, you should go and check them out. Because they're made of win.