Grades, Graded
Q: What do you grade when there’s nothing left in the world to grade?
A: You grade the grades.
GRADES, GRADED
Yes, it’s come to this.
A+
Something fishy’s going on if you receive an A+ for any reason. Either it’s a gesture of sarcasm (“You get an AYYY PLUS, shithead”) or you somehow wound up back in Kindergarten. These grades are so rare and far too high to be taken seriously-so high, in fact, that they’re actually really low and you just haven’t caught on yet. If that doesn’t make any sense, cogitate about it for a bit. If you figure it out, I’ll give you an A+!
Grade: C-
A
A’s are overrated. Why? They'll make you the object of scorn so quickly, you won't know which letter of the alphabet comes first. A-students are so much easier to hate than B-students, especially if the recipients of said A’s go around gloating about them. Being an A-student in a class of B-students is probable cause for the B-students to come after you with torches and spears, and why shouldn’t they? Never mind that the A-student may have worked harder; somewhere, in the back of their minds, you stole that A from them, even if it isn’t exactly true.
Grade: B
A-
So if the solid A makes everyone want to steal your bookbag and the A+ doesn’t exist, the A- is a sort of just-right combination of modesty and high achievement. It places you in the A-range but not terribly high up within it, as though you successfully picked your way up from a B+ or toned down your smarty-pantsness to avoid retaliation from the “normal” students. Either way, it’s a nice, unassuming grade; there’s something about a pillow-soft 91% that you can just live in.
Grade: A
B+
By the same token, B+ sends the message that you could’ve done a weensy bit better to get the A-. Either that or the teacher was a shmuck. And then there’s something about that plus sitting in front of the B that mocks you in a way, as if to say, “Well, here I am; I’m great! I signify positivity! I’m here to let you know that you’re doing positively well WITHIN THE DAMN B-RANGE!!” Watch as the plus turns into a set of crosshairs that aim between your eyes and slap you across the face.
Grade: B-
B
Hello, B. It’s nice to see you again after…well, not so long really. You see, we’ve shared so many moments together-maybe a few more than I’d like-and we’ve become quite close. I don’t think you’re so bad, B-just misunderstood. People aren’t too keen on your signifying second-best, or your inability to get aspiring students into too many Ivy League schools, or the fact that you begin words like “banal,” “boring,” and “bowel movement.” They forget that you’re all too common, and that getting B’s is just a part of life, whether they like it or not. Who loves you, B? Who wuvs you?? Coochie coochie coo!
Grade: A-
B-
Nothing says “mediocre” like a damn B-. The reaction one gets from seeing it on a paper is usually one of deflation, like a raft that’s been pricked and slowly becomes a lump of lifeless mass. It’s almost as though the teacher wanted to give you the lowest grade possible without making you freak out and call your parents shaking. Since C’s are fairly difficult to swing if you’re giving it a modicum of effort, B- really represents the lowest reasonable point that most people can sink. Whenever I’ve gotten a B-, I’ve usually thought beforehand that I’ve gotten something at least a full grade higher than that, and, well, that just fucking blows.
Grade: F
C+
As I mentioned earlier, C+ is the point at which you start to sort of freak out, just by virtue of that C being there. But if you ask me, I’ve kind of taken a liking to C+, if only for its shape. It’s like a little plus creature being eaten by that monstrous C, like a saga in grade form. I suppose that a plus (positivity) being eaten by a C (crappiness) isn’t such a hopeful story for the grade recipient, but still, aesthetically, it’s sort of neat.
Grade: B+
C
The Vassar College handbook still notes that C means “average.” Ha! Try telling that to any moderately selective school you’re trying to get admitted to. As test scores get higher and acceptance rates get lower, C is to average as sandwich baloney is to the Federalist papers. You get it. We all know that C isn’t good…and yet, it just sort of swims in the crappy-grade range without a plus or a minus to anchor it in definite space, making it a more of an ambiguous grade than an unequivocally bad one.
Grade: B
C-
Yuck.
Grade: D
D+
When someone enters the near-unthinkable D-range and manages a D+ on anything, I’m almost inclined to give them a round of applause and say, “Bravo!” I mean, man! It’s hard to get a D+ in this day and age; you really have to do all the right things wrong, as strategically as you know how, in order to go this low while averting the much-easier-to-acquire zero (or F). The person doling out the D+ had to have thought, while grading the D+ paper, ‘This is absolute garbage and offends my very soul, but it’s not nearly a solid D.’ So the D+ is something of a rarity, the one that may actually require more work to swing than an A, and if you get one and show it to me there’s some serious adulation in it for you.
Grade: A-
D
At least at my school, D = F. Same goes for restaurants: Anything lower than a C and you’re history, at least until you clean up that dirty, dirty kitchen. They’ll still appear on your report card or transcript as D’s, but you’ll have to do time in summer school as though you outright failed the class, which is a total drag. On the upside, D’s are just ½ B’s, so if you’re really dexterous with a pen and/or printer, you might be able to change all your D’s to B’s and get into Harvard like you really wanted.
Grade: C+
D-
More than anything else, D-’s seem like a teacher’s way of sparing some poor deviant student the rod of an F, which is more likely to make a parent faint. Mr. Van Dreesen gave Beavis and Butt-Head D-’s on their oral reports just to keep them from repeating the 9th grade and passing through his class again (excuse the obviously dated reference to a juvenile television show). Something about D- says “last resort,” as though, by awarding a D- (and I say the word “award” loosely), the teacher is allowing the kid half a grade’s worth of a chance to redeem himself. In that way, though, D-’s are patronizing, the tool of a teacher who pities you instead of outright despises you, which is a lot more fun. So the next time a sympathetic teacher awards you a D-, tell him to shove it and give you an F like a man.
Grade: C-
F
Well, here we are. It doesn’t get any lower than this. F’s are mythical things, the kinds of grades you tell your children about when they get their first B, the ones you recount to your girlfriend when you’re trying to look more human, the ones you might actually post on your corkboard as some sort of perverted shrine to academic meltdown. I remember my F’s more than I remember my A’s, and not always in a bad way; get me liquored up enough and I’ll gladly recall the time I scored a 32% (without a curve) on one of Helen Telanoff’s Algebra I finals. F’s are actually sort of sexy; failure obviously isn’t as satisfying as success, but it makes you look so cool-that you can fail and still be king, or something like that. I’m heading off to graduate school in the fall for my doctoral degree in psychology. I’ll be there for five lonnng years, and maybe in that time I’ll grab myself an F or two, just, you know, for fun. And if I do, I’ll let you know all about it; it’ll make a great story.
Grade: B+
A: You grade the grades.
GRADES, GRADED
Yes, it’s come to this.
A+
Something fishy’s going on if you receive an A+ for any reason. Either it’s a gesture of sarcasm (“You get an AYYY PLUS, shithead”) or you somehow wound up back in Kindergarten. These grades are so rare and far too high to be taken seriously-so high, in fact, that they’re actually really low and you just haven’t caught on yet. If that doesn’t make any sense, cogitate about it for a bit. If you figure it out, I’ll give you an A+!
Grade: C-
A
A’s are overrated. Why? They'll make you the object of scorn so quickly, you won't know which letter of the alphabet comes first. A-students are so much easier to hate than B-students, especially if the recipients of said A’s go around gloating about them. Being an A-student in a class of B-students is probable cause for the B-students to come after you with torches and spears, and why shouldn’t they? Never mind that the A-student may have worked harder; somewhere, in the back of their minds, you stole that A from them, even if it isn’t exactly true.
Grade: B
A-
So if the solid A makes everyone want to steal your bookbag and the A+ doesn’t exist, the A- is a sort of just-right combination of modesty and high achievement. It places you in the A-range but not terribly high up within it, as though you successfully picked your way up from a B+ or toned down your smarty-pantsness to avoid retaliation from the “normal” students. Either way, it’s a nice, unassuming grade; there’s something about a pillow-soft 91% that you can just live in.
Grade: A
B+
By the same token, B+ sends the message that you could’ve done a weensy bit better to get the A-. Either that or the teacher was a shmuck. And then there’s something about that plus sitting in front of the B that mocks you in a way, as if to say, “Well, here I am; I’m great! I signify positivity! I’m here to let you know that you’re doing positively well WITHIN THE DAMN B-RANGE!!” Watch as the plus turns into a set of crosshairs that aim between your eyes and slap you across the face.
Grade: B-
B
Hello, B. It’s nice to see you again after…well, not so long really. You see, we’ve shared so many moments together-maybe a few more than I’d like-and we’ve become quite close. I don’t think you’re so bad, B-just misunderstood. People aren’t too keen on your signifying second-best, or your inability to get aspiring students into too many Ivy League schools, or the fact that you begin words like “banal,” “boring,” and “bowel movement.” They forget that you’re all too common, and that getting B’s is just a part of life, whether they like it or not. Who loves you, B? Who wuvs you?? Coochie coochie coo!
Grade: A-
B-
Nothing says “mediocre” like a damn B-. The reaction one gets from seeing it on a paper is usually one of deflation, like a raft that’s been pricked and slowly becomes a lump of lifeless mass. It’s almost as though the teacher wanted to give you the lowest grade possible without making you freak out and call your parents shaking. Since C’s are fairly difficult to swing if you’re giving it a modicum of effort, B- really represents the lowest reasonable point that most people can sink. Whenever I’ve gotten a B-, I’ve usually thought beforehand that I’ve gotten something at least a full grade higher than that, and, well, that just fucking blows.
Grade: F
C+
As I mentioned earlier, C+ is the point at which you start to sort of freak out, just by virtue of that C being there. But if you ask me, I’ve kind of taken a liking to C+, if only for its shape. It’s like a little plus creature being eaten by that monstrous C, like a saga in grade form. I suppose that a plus (positivity) being eaten by a C (crappiness) isn’t such a hopeful story for the grade recipient, but still, aesthetically, it’s sort of neat.
Grade: B+
C
The Vassar College handbook still notes that C means “average.” Ha! Try telling that to any moderately selective school you’re trying to get admitted to. As test scores get higher and acceptance rates get lower, C is to average as sandwich baloney is to the Federalist papers. You get it. We all know that C isn’t good…and yet, it just sort of swims in the crappy-grade range without a plus or a minus to anchor it in definite space, making it a more of an ambiguous grade than an unequivocally bad one.
Grade: B
C-
Yuck.
Grade: D
D+
When someone enters the near-unthinkable D-range and manages a D+ on anything, I’m almost inclined to give them a round of applause and say, “Bravo!” I mean, man! It’s hard to get a D+ in this day and age; you really have to do all the right things wrong, as strategically as you know how, in order to go this low while averting the much-easier-to-acquire zero (or F). The person doling out the D+ had to have thought, while grading the D+ paper, ‘This is absolute garbage and offends my very soul, but it’s not nearly a solid D.’ So the D+ is something of a rarity, the one that may actually require more work to swing than an A, and if you get one and show it to me there’s some serious adulation in it for you.
Grade: A-
D
At least at my school, D = F. Same goes for restaurants: Anything lower than a C and you’re history, at least until you clean up that dirty, dirty kitchen. They’ll still appear on your report card or transcript as D’s, but you’ll have to do time in summer school as though you outright failed the class, which is a total drag. On the upside, D’s are just ½ B’s, so if you’re really dexterous with a pen and/or printer, you might be able to change all your D’s to B’s and get into Harvard like you really wanted.
Grade: C+
D-
More than anything else, D-’s seem like a teacher’s way of sparing some poor deviant student the rod of an F, which is more likely to make a parent faint. Mr. Van Dreesen gave Beavis and Butt-Head D-’s on their oral reports just to keep them from repeating the 9th grade and passing through his class again (excuse the obviously dated reference to a juvenile television show). Something about D- says “last resort,” as though, by awarding a D- (and I say the word “award” loosely), the teacher is allowing the kid half a grade’s worth of a chance to redeem himself. In that way, though, D-’s are patronizing, the tool of a teacher who pities you instead of outright despises you, which is a lot more fun. So the next time a sympathetic teacher awards you a D-, tell him to shove it and give you an F like a man.
Grade: C-
F
Well, here we are. It doesn’t get any lower than this. F’s are mythical things, the kinds of grades you tell your children about when they get their first B, the ones you recount to your girlfriend when you’re trying to look more human, the ones you might actually post on your corkboard as some sort of perverted shrine to academic meltdown. I remember my F’s more than I remember my A’s, and not always in a bad way; get me liquored up enough and I’ll gladly recall the time I scored a 32% (without a curve) on one of Helen Telanoff’s Algebra I finals. F’s are actually sort of sexy; failure obviously isn’t as satisfying as success, but it makes you look so cool-that you can fail and still be king, or something like that. I’m heading off to graduate school in the fall for my doctoral degree in psychology. I’ll be there for five lonnng years, and maybe in that time I’ll grab myself an F or two, just, you know, for fun. And if I do, I’ll let you know all about it; it’ll make a great story.
Grade: B+