{"id":34239,"date":"2018-03-28T14:29:20","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T18:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=34239"},"modified":"2018-03-27T14:30:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T18:30:50","slug":"overcoming-a-bad-grade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2018\/03\/28\/overcoming-a-bad-grade\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcoming a bad grade"},"content":{"rendered":"As post-secondary students, our perfectionism can get the best of us. We spend so much of our time and effort on school work that when it doesn\u2019t pay off, the world seems to momentarily end. While poor results on tests and assignments are nothing to feel good about, bombing a single assignment is no reason to throw in the towel.\r\n\r\nThis semester I received my first failing grade on an assignment since high school math, and the existential dread was almost unbearable. For about an hour, I was sure my academic career was over. I was tempted to straight up drop the class, shave my hair off my head and change my legal name to Brenda.\r\n\r\n
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me, when i opened blackboard and saw my mark<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nAfter I went through the five stages of grief, I managed to calm myself down with a cup of hot chocolate and ask \u201cwhat do I do now?\u201d\r\n\r\nTo rid myself of the bubble of panic that had lodged in my throat the minute I saw that 46\/100, I tried the following tactics.\r\n\r\nFirst, I calculated exactly how many grades I would be losing from my final mark, based on the percentile worth of the assignment, to find out if I would still be passing the class. I did some more calculating after that\u2014with upbeat music on in the background to fend off the growing dread\u2014to find out how well I would have to do on future assignments or my exam in order to recover my GPA as much as possible.\r\n\r\nNext I did some meditative breathing, reflected on all my academic successes rather than wallowing in my failures, and told myself the following:\r\n\r\n\u201cI am here to learn. Education is meant to prepare me for future obstacles, and people learn by trial and error. It\u2019s fine that I didn\u2019t do as well as I\u2019d hoped, as long as I grow from the experience.\u201d\r\n\r\nWith that little pep talk in mind, I moved on to examine where exactly I went wrong with the poor grade. In this instance, it was an issue of time management. I kept pushing it off to the last minute so I could focus on other assignments, and procrastinating was my undoing. Lesson learned: don\u2019t underestimate how long it takes me to create something I\u2019m proud of. Always leave space for revision.\r\n\r\n
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A visual representation of the amount of detail I put into the first half of my assignment when I thought I had time vs the second half, when I realized I didn't.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nFinally, I used this realization to better plan for how I would tackle my future assignments in that class. For me, this meant starting the next project way further in advance, breaking off each section into chunks and assigning these to specific time slots in the week. It also means I need to work on my self discipline when it comes to procrastinating, and pay more attention to how long it takes me to finish tasks.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nAs post-secondary students, our perfectionism can get the best of us. We spend so much of our time and effort on school work that when it doesn\u2019t pay off, the world seems to momentarily end. While poor results on tests…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Overcoming a bad grade”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Overcoming a bad grade”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":34242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34243,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34239\/revisions\/34243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}