Clari Stewart
Triangle Reporter
Life at college holds so many opportunities for learning, both in the classroom and outside of it. The lesson I would like to share is one that I am learning in both.
Since my first college-level class as a high school junior in a dual-enrollment program, I developed a fear of making anything less than an A in a class. I am sure this sounds abnormal to a lot of you, but maybe this fear resonates with some reading this.
As students at Bryan College, we are blessed with rigorous courses as well as abounding opportunities for extracurricular activities. However, this means we are also given the responsibility to learn to balance the two, and this is something I have struggled with since coming to Bryan.
I have always held that if I can make an A on a given assignment or test, then I have a responsibility to do so, even if it means settling for a lower quality of rest, health or relationships. Because of this, my GPA is still intact. But I have begun to wonder if my obsession with As has blinded me to what true learning is. As I have begun to rethink my standpoint, I have come to the conclusion that I should strive for the golden mean.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines golden mean as “the medium between extremes.” It is this principle that I believe we must keep in mind when evaluating our GPAs. If on one end we have academic obsession and on the other academic indifference, then I hope to carve out a living somewhere in the middle. There are only 24 hours in a day and that requires that we find ways to divide our time between the social, physical, spiritual and academic parts of being at college.
I do believe that God has given us the capacity to learn and explore the world he has made, and that gift should never be neglected. However, the system we have for measuring this learning (grades) is human. I am not advocating we reject this system, admittedly I cannot think of a better one, but I am advocating that we approach this system with the correct perspective.
Ultimately, the point we must keep in mind is that we are not here to make a grade. The purpose of college is to be educated – and though this is easier to measure in a quantitative way (i.e. grades) we must also consider it from a qualitative point of view. I would hope that my time at Bryan will be marked by the people I knew and the experiences I had more than the letters on my transcript.
But finding the golden mean in this situation is not something that can be accomplished once and applied easily every time after that. It is a balance, and every day I have to reevaluate how well I am upholding that balance. Sometimes that means saying no to hanging out with friends in order to adequately prepare for an assignment or test. But I am learning that it can also mean saying no to spending hours studying in my room and choosing instead to spend time with the people who bless my life.
The various parts of my life do not often, if ever, feel like they are in equilibrium. But, as with a tightrope walker, if there was no fear of falling there would be no incentive to try to maintain a balance.