{"id":28644,"date":"2016-03-28T14:39:34","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T19:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/?p=28644"},"modified":"2016-05-14T10:10:57","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T15:10:57","slug":"graduate-school-grades-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2016\/03\/28\/graduate-school-grades-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate School: Where Grades Don’t Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Guest post by Tai-Danae Bradley<\/p>\n

Yesterday I received a disheartening 44\/50 on a homework assignment. Okay okay<\/em>,\u00a0I know.\u00a088% isn’t bad<\/em>, but I had turned in my solutions with so much confidence that admittedly,\u00a0my heart dropped a little (okay, a lot!)\u00a0when I received the grade. But I quickly had to remind myself, Hey!<\/em>\u00a0Grades don’t matter.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"PhD

“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham www.PhDComics.com, used with permission. \u00a0Annotations by Tai-Danae Bradley.<\/p><\/div>\n

The six points were deducted from two problems. (Okay, fine.\u00a0It was three. But in the third I simply made an air-brained mistake.)\u00a0In the first, apparently my answer wasn’t explicit enough.\u00a0How stingy!\u00a0<\/em>I thought.\u00a0D<\/em>oesn’t our professor know that this is a standard example from the book? I could solve it in my sleep<\/em>! But after the prof went over his solution in class, I realized that in all my smugness I never actually understood the nuances of the problem.\u00a0Oops<\/em>.\u00a0You bet I’ll be reviewing his solution again.\u00a0Lesson learned.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the second,\u00a0I had written down my solution in the days before and had checked with a classmate and (yes)\u00a0the internet to see if I was correct. Unfortunately, the odds were against me two-to-one as both sources agreed with each other but not with me. But I just couldn’t see how I could possibly<\/em> be wrong! Confident that my errors were truths, I submitted my solution anyway, hoping there would be no consequences.\u00a0But alas,\u00a0points were taken off.<\/p>\n

\"Tai

Don’t worry if a homework score is lower than you were expecting; grades don’t carry a deep significance in grad school, and mistakes are a great way to learn! Photo by Tai-Danae Bradley, used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

Honestly though, is a lower grade such a bad thing? I think not.\u00a0In both cases, I learned exactly where my understanding of the material went awry. And that’s great! It means that my comprehension of the math is clearer now than it was before (and<\/em>\u00a0that the chances of passing my third qualifying exam have just increased. Woo!) And\u00a0that’s<\/em>\u00a0precisely why I’m (still, heh…) in school.<\/p>\n

So yes,\u00a0contrary to what the comic\u00a0above says, grades do<\/em> exist in grad school, but –\u00a0and this is what I think the comic is hinting at – they don’t matter. Your thesis committee members aren’t going to say, “Look, your defense was great, but we can’t grant you your PhD. Remember that one homework\/midterm\/final grade from three years ago?” (They may not use the word “great” either, but that’s another matter.)\u00a0Of course, we students should still work hard and put in maximum effort! But the emphasis should not be on how well we perform<\/em>,\u00a0but rather how much we learn<\/em>. <\/strong>Focus on the latter and the former will take care of itself.<\/strong>\u00a0This is true in both graduate school and college, but the lack of emphasis on grades in grad school really brings it home. And personally,\u00a0I’m very grateful for it because my brain is freed up to focus on other things like, I don’t know, learning<\/em>\u00a0math!<\/em><\/p>\n

So to all my future imperfect homework scores out there:\u00a0bring it on.<\/em><\/p>\n

This post originally appeared on the\u00a0Math3ma.com<\/a> blog on March 9th, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\u00a0Guest post by Tai-Danae Bradley Yesterday I received a disheartening 44\/50 on a homework assignment. Okay okay,\u00a0I know.\u00a088% isn’t bad, but I had turned in my solutions with so much confidence that admittedly,\u00a0my heart dropped a little (okay, a lot!)\u00a0when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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