#checking grades

[notpupinia-blog]

Checking my grades like

[allaboutthatmensrea]

Checking your grades

[reclussive]

i wonder if teachers know which students smoke

[gotadateinlatejuly]

*me checking my grades*

"I'm a wishful thinking if the worst intentions."

[somewhat-glowing-head-blog]

Blog 8: The Third Rule

The third rule to getting straight A's is as follows (though keep in mind the rules do not necessarily have an order, except for the first one of course):

Check your grades OFTEN and know WHY your grades are what they are.

I know people who never check their grades, and maybe you are one of those people.  If you are one of those people, start checking them!  Seriously, I kid you not when I say I check my grades every day, including weekends, sometimes multiple times a day.  If you are trying to get straight A's, it matters!  I would lay down and die if I couldn't check my grades at least once a week.  Why is this important?  I'll try to explain.

You have to always always ALWAYS know where you stand in your classes.  Are you doing well?  Are you doing bad?  If you are doing well, then you just keep doing what you are doing.  If you are doing bad, figure out WHY you are doing bad (second part of the rule).  Sometimes it's simply because it's the beginning of the term (when not much is put into the computer yet, small things can kill your grade).  Things tend to even out as the semester goes on, and I get that, but you still need to be on top of your game, even in the beginning.  Other times your grade is bad because the teacher made a mistake.  THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE!  MULTIPLE TIMES!  Just two semesters ago I got a B+ in my Film class, which didn't make sense because my grade had been a high A and NOTHING could've caused it to drop a whole ten percent.  I emailed the teacher, after the semester had ended, and she discovered that she accidentally typed 88 instead of 98.  Teachers are human so they can make mistakes at times.  Also, it's ok to point out the mistakes (after all, it's your grade), and they are usually more than happy to fix them.  Be nice about it though.  Teachers will tell you that they can't fix grades after they are submitted, but really they can (only take advantage of this if the teacher was the one who made a mistake).  My Film grade was later changed to the correct grade.

This next thing is going to sound difficult, but over time it gets easier.  It involves math.  Please don’t moan and groan, it’s for the sake of your future, alright?  Yes, you use math in life, or at least I do.  I don’t exactly use trigonometry or anything like that, but math is indeed necessary.  When it comes to my grades, I usually try and map out the possibilities and likely-hoods of receiving A’s in classes near the end of terms/semesters.  To do this, you must know how grades are calculated, and every teacher does it differently.  Some of my classes are easy, because they will say in the syllabus “384-400 is an A, 375-383 is an A-“ and so on.  For these, all you do is add up your points.  Simple.  Then I ask myself questions like, “Ok, what is the minimum score I could get on the final and still get an A in the class?” and base it off of what my grade already is.  It gets more complicated though.  Some teachers break up their grades into parts.  For example, they may have assignments worth 20%, quizzes 15%, tests 50% of your grade and so on.  You cannot just add up all your points for these ones.  It doesn’t work that way.  Here’s an example:

Let’s say assignments are 20% of your grade.  There are a total of 100 points possible (10 assignments each worth 10 points?) and you received 70 of those points.  70 divided by 100 equals 0.7, then you times that by 20 (because of the 20% mentioned previously) and you get 14, or 14%.  6% of your final grade was lost.  Now let’s say that tests are worth 50% of your final grade.  The test (let’s say there is only one test) is worth 100 points.  You got 70/100 on that test.  0.7 x 50 = 35.  50 – 35 = 15%.  15% of your final grade was lost.  How your grade is weighed in terms of assignments, projects, quizzes, tests, participation, and whatever else needs to be calculated carefully.  It is not always a matter of adding up points.

I know that there are people who think that checking grades isn’t important, and that calculating possible outcomes isn’t important, but believe me it is very important.  How can you know how you are doing if you never check?  Sure, you might get things handed back, but how are you to know if there are mistakes in the computer?  How are you to know the final outcome of those hand backs combined if you never check?  I can’t stress this enough.  Checking grades is so important.

[magnetkidproblems]

[forever-faithfully]