A.R.A.

Joshua Eyler, in an article for Inside higher Ed, writes about how grades are a challenging topic for college and high school students. Let’s take a look at the ways many college and high school students’ lives are affected by grades.

What’s a GPA?

According to the University of Hertfordshire, a grade point average (GPA) is a measure of student achievement and a way to show progress in the students’ studies. A GPA adjusts itself based on numbered and lettered grades.

Why is it important?

In college, grades can be life or death. In Inside Higher Ed, Eyler mentions that “Academic pressure, of courses, can come from a number of different sources.” This article references a high workload in any STEM program and sometimes even smaller programs like a humanities degree. This workload eventually leads to the student feeling like a bad grade will ruin them, especially if they want a specific major.

According to Madeline Lee, of The Coral newspaper, Highschoolers have immense stress over GPAs as well. In her article, it is mentioned that grades “cause students to stay up until the early hours of the morning, to get up early to talk to teachers, to make sacrifices, and to feel a wide range of emotions from stress to apathy.” This is a problem because it is the gateway to stressing over grades for a lifetime and finding self-achievement.

Lee also mentions how it depends on a student’s plains for their career for a GPA to matter–for example, if the student plans on going to college a GPA is more stressful compared to a student plaining to go for a blue-collar job such as welding, carpentry, and so on. This shows that those who are affected by the stress of a GPA revolve around Highschoolers who plan to go to college, and college students themselves.

Dr. Angela Duckworth, a researcher of education at Science Connected Magazine, discovered that personality traits are of greater importance than one might realize for both college and highschoolers. Duckworth believes that guts, resilience, initiative, and tenacity, aka GRIT, are needed to help college students succeed, but only some have these traits. Having G.R.I.T. helps the students have self-confidence, durability, self-motivation, and determination with all of their assignments and even in their future careers.

Now, why does this matter? Pernille Bulow, the researcher who wrote about Duckworth, mentions how Duckworth’s study of SAT/ACT scores of high school students are significantly better for the students who demonstrate the traits of GRIT. Those high school students who have GRIT go to college and do better than students who don’t have GRIT. Those students who have GRIT and do well on the SAT/ACT scores often tend to manage their stress with grades better.

Needless to say, whether you have GRIT or not, understanding the impact of academia on mental health is important regardless of the level of education. This is according to  Independent School Management, a school health and wellness article, which issued a survey taken by students that showed results saying 50% of Highschool students struggle with mental health issues and grades. This matters because high school habits carry into college. Independent School Management’s article mentions the side effects of mental strain of academics for both college and high school students that involves consequences of poor grades, trouble making friends, absences, suspensions, and expulsion.

According to Katie Schultz, a writer for Sage Journals, student athletes may experience greater difficulties in managing their mental health. Schulz mentions that students with a standard class workload, and students who have that same workload but play a sport on-top of it both can struggle. The difference, though, in an athlete compared to a regular student is that they tend to have the extra stress when games are in season.

I had the opportunity to interview a Penn State Abington student on how GPAs and grades stress them out and what they do to help alleviate the issue. Allana Vanin, a Penn State Junior, said, “What stresses me out the most about grades is how professors end up leaving the assignments that are worth the most amount of points to the last two weeks of class, and I end up having to multitask a lot more than what I would like or am used to.”

In Inside Higher ed, Eyler mentions how grades and GPAs sometimes get the best of students, and in extreme cases how some may experience suicidal thoughts. Students who don’t receive the help they may need could end up committing suicide. Jackie Burrell, a writer for Very well Mind, mentions how it’s the second most common cause of death for college students specifically. The incidents range from students of the age 15-24 and has tripled since the 1950s. Luckily, on our campus we have counseling and psychological services (CAPS) that can help students better manage their mental health, and ultimately work to prevent suicide. But not every college campus has CAPS or their own version of CAPS.

Vanin also mentions a way to help cope with the load of work and the stress of grades. In our discussion she told me, “Some things I do to manage stress is to remind myself that I have done this before and am more than capable of doing it again. I also like to incorporate breaks in between the assignments I am working on that have nothing to do them like working out or reading to relieve the stress”.

One way to start fixing the stress of grades and GPAs is mentioned by Asao B. Inoue, a professor at Arizona State University. Prof. Inoue describes a way of labor-based grading that helps the student feel self-achievement and a sense of relief when mentioning grades. This system works by creating a labor log which a student can use to track how much time they put into an assignment. Depending on how much they get done, they are graded on how well they did on the assignment in their own time. Inoue’s way helps relieve pressure from due dates and the imaginary thought of thinking bad grades are the end of the world.  However, the drawback of Inoue’s way is that the student needs to find their GRIT or else they will never get anything done which would leave to an F.