Everyone was acting like he was some big idiot for failing his test so absurdly, but did they even consider that maybe Statics is a harder class than Statistics? Do they even know what a statics test entails?

Your college GPA doesn’t paint a totally accurate picture of how smart you are. Somebody who gets a 4.0 in a Communications degree might’ve gotten a 2.0 if they had chosen a more difficult major. I did pretty well grades-wise in college, but that’s probably because I majored in English instead of Computer Science. I am not saying this to put myself or other English majors down! I loved my major, my professors, and my classes, and I am proud to be working in the field I studied. That being said, there is a lot more wiggle room, grading-wise, when it comes to an English class. In a typical English class, you don’t have exams. Instead, you write three essays per semester, and they make up the bulk of your final grade. There were times when I wrote essays I considered absolutely horrible, and I still earned an A on them. Again, I’m not saying this to put myself down, but it’s just a fact. Liberal arts professors don’t grade their students as harshly as they could, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. One of my favorite professors, Dr. Sarah Neville, was a Shakespeare scholar who gave me Bs on essays I totally deserved As on. I wasn’t turning in “A” work, and I was glad someone was actually holding me accountable. 

My sister had a very different college-grade experience. I got a liberal arts degree at a state school, and she got an engineering degree at an Ivy League school. Saying her classes were more difficult than mine would be a gross understatement. She worked so hard every semester to pass and meet the expectations placed on her. It was hard for her to explain to others outside of her academic circle that getting a “C” in certain classes was an incredible achievement, not a mediocre grade. If you’ve never gotten such a difficult degree at such an intense, competitive institution, you can’t understand what she went through. I didn’t understand, but I always wanted to be there to listen when she was struggling. 

Luckily for her, and most students in incredibly difficult STEM courses, the grades were curved. That meant that the highest score determined how many extra points everyone else got. If the highest score in the class was an 88%, then everyone else got 12 points added to their grade. That helps students whose grades go from a 58 to a 70, but if your score is so low that even a generous curve (I mean, like 30 or 40 points) doesn’t do much. If you’ve ever been in a class that was so difficult that you didn’t know any of the answers, I would understand if you were to become mildly infuriated, like the guy in this story.