I recently had a meeting with a distraught student named Alison, who attends classes here at Granite State College in Conway, NH. She received her first C in a course and was feeling like a failure. As we spoke she began to reveal that her child had been very ill, necessitating many trips to a specialist on the other side of the state, her husband had lost his job and she had increased her hours at work in an attempt to make ends meet. Under these challenging circumstances she still managed to keep doing her school work, and successfully complete the class. It saddened me that she saw her C as a failure.
After this meeting and a number of similar ones, I have been thinking about the role perfectionism plays in achieving an adult education diploma. As a somewhat reformed perfectionist, I remember the fervor with which I pursued the holy grail of the perfect 4.0. While this is clearly a laudable goal, life seems to delight in throwing unexpected curve balls at adult learners, making perfection nearly impossible.
When life turns up the heat, adding new responsibilities to the daily load - a sick parent or child, an extra shift at work, etc. - students have a choice to make. Some students are able to adjust their expectations of themselves, admit that they have less time and energy to devote to a particular course, and keep plugging away at it. Others, in pursuit of the 4.0, would rather withdraw than risk a bad grade.
Let's think about this for a moment. A C is a perfectly acceptable grade. It satisfies core requirements, as well as courses in the major. Classes with a C or better are fully transferable. The occasional C does not drastically harm your GPA, or scream to the world that you are a bad student. Withdrawing, however, can have many adverse ramifications. Depending on when the course is dropped, you could lose registration fees, tuition, get a W on your transcript, or even worse - an AF if withdrawal is not done properly. It can impact your financial aid. Even if a courses is dropped by the deadline, a semester's worth of progress is lost, making the path to completion longer.
Sometimes it is better to be able to accept life on life's terms and learn to embrace the concept of "good enough." I am not advocating the pursuit of mediocrity here. I believe in giving your best and in giving 100%. I am suggesting that we need to recognize that our "best" varies from semester to semester and sometimes giving your best means staying the course even though there are many obstacles to doing so. In Alison's case, I would consider her C a victory.
After this meeting and a number of similar ones, I have been thinking about the role perfectionism plays in achieving an adult education diploma. As a somewhat reformed perfectionist, I remember the fervor with which I pursued the holy grail of the perfect 4.0. While this is clearly a laudable goal, life seems to delight in throwing unexpected curve balls at adult learners, making perfection nearly impossible.
When life turns up the heat, adding new responsibilities to the daily load - a sick parent or child, an extra shift at work, etc. - students have a choice to make. Some students are able to adjust their expectations of themselves, admit that they have less time and energy to devote to a particular course, and keep plugging away at it. Others, in pursuit of the 4.0, would rather withdraw than risk a bad grade.
Let's think about this for a moment. A C is a perfectly acceptable grade. It satisfies core requirements, as well as courses in the major. Classes with a C or better are fully transferable. The occasional C does not drastically harm your GPA, or scream to the world that you are a bad student. Withdrawing, however, can have many adverse ramifications. Depending on when the course is dropped, you could lose registration fees, tuition, get a W on your transcript, or even worse - an AF if withdrawal is not done properly. It can impact your financial aid. Even if a courses is dropped by the deadline, a semester's worth of progress is lost, making the path to completion longer.
Sometimes it is better to be able to accept life on life's terms and learn to embrace the concept of "good enough." I am not advocating the pursuit of mediocrity here. I believe in giving your best and in giving 100%. I am suggesting that we need to recognize that our "best" varies from semester to semester and sometimes giving your best means staying the course even though there are many obstacles to doing so. In Alison's case, I would consider her C a victory.
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