Real Life Report Cards
Report cards. It is one of the few pieces of paper that evoke such hostile reactions in people, no matter what age they are. Children cry. Teenagers complain. Adults remember with bitterness. We always feel a twinge of pain when we think about report cards. After a quarter, a semester, or a year of studying, all our hard work will be quantified into a single number or letter. When that number comes, everything else about your efforts evaporates. No one considers your late nights spent memorizing formulas and editing your papers. Who cares that you were never good in math? Who cares that you had just broken up with your boyfriend the night before the finals? No one sees the story behind that grade. We may rationalize all we want, but once the grade is printed on the report card, that is the story.
The beauty with report cards, however, is that there is some consistency. We all know what an A is, and we all know what an F is.
Life after graduation is not as easy to read. Whether we like it or not, we are still being weighed and judged long after we’ve left school. No matter how nerve-wracking and pressuring it is to get report cards are, it’s much more intimidating not to get them. Why? There are no report cards. There are no criteria that your teachers establish at the start of the semester. There are no scheduled exams that you can study for. You don’t even know who’s doing the grading or what you will be graded on. How are we graded in real life?
Grades are significant to us for two things. First — and this is probably the Disney Channel definition — it is an indication of how much you’ve learned and applied. Second, grades eventually become our badges, the numerical, alpha-numeric, or graphic representation of our character or at least our study habits. They tell us and other people if we’re better in math or English, if we’re naturally smart or excessively diligent, if we’re consistent or consistent crammers. At the end of the day, they tell us whether we’ve accomplished a good job.
Without the As and the Fs, how do we know what a good job done is? Is it when you deliver the expected output on time, in full? Or is it when you exceed expectations? Is it when you show your capability? Or is it when you show that you’ve overcome obstacles to succeed? Do you have to openly show your enthusiasm for working? Or is it okay to quietly achieve all your work, even if you feel the same passion as the others?
When I first started working, I just wanted to focus on actually working. This was a world without objective exams or report cards. I was here to absorb, learn, and apply myself without having to worry about getting a gold star at the end of the day.
Eventually, I learned that the corporate world is not a gradeless, classless utopia. Talking to my colleagues (sudden realization: I’m old enough to actually have colleagues), I realized that everything we did was taken note of by the bosses. Our clothes. Our presentation skills. Our skills in strategy and operation. Even our choice of words! We are all being observed and evaluated, and you don’t always know where and when the critiquing starts. You don’t know to whom you are compared to, and if the comparison is actually valid! It can make an employed person somewhat paranoid. I’ve always been annoyed at people who constantly ask, “Ma’am, is this being graded?” for every bit of seatwork, but I’ve actually found myself thinking it already. I tell myself to always be careful because I don’t know — if I make a mistake, will my boss really forgive me or keep score? If I’m creative, will it be enough to compensate for the fact that I’m not a numbers person?
What I realized is that whether you’re in school or not, there will always be some sort of grading system around. And after 17 years of report cards, we eventually have to look beyond the grades and focus on learning. Take note — I said learning, not things I’ve learned. I’m sure we eventually forget everything we learned (I honestly can’t remember the different regions of the Philippines or anything about covalent bonding), but we’ll never forget working to learn — taking down notes, memorizing, highlighting, studying in groups, even shoving books under our pillows at night. We learn how to manage our teachers, work with difficult classmates, do errands for extra credit, and go through all-nighters. Moving forward in your career can take more work than actually doing work, but if you think about it, it’s nothing new. Grades have never been purely about tests.
It’s even more important to set the grades for yourself. There will always be someone else “grading” you, but we have to learn how to transcend others’ grades of you. I’ve never been a grade-conscious person, but I’ve always given myself standards to keep. For example, I hate numbers, and I never aspired to get perfect scores on any of my math exams. I gave myself target scores, which I felt was definitely achievable, but only if I continued to work on it. I know a lot of people who became frustrated with work because they felt that their efforts weren’t appreciated, or felt that they had done nothing but prove themselves time and time again. In life, you won’t always know who’s grading you or what the score is, but as long as you’re making the grade for yourself, it’s a job well done.
