4.0

I think I can honestly say that my whole winter break was spent anxiously waiting for the last two of my grades to be posted on myslice. I religiously spammed myslice and even made it my front page of chrome. After all that waiting and anticipation, finally all my grades came out like 30 minutes ago. Its then I realized my anticipation and anxiousness was for nought.

Its always those last few classes that either make it or break it. This semester the last two grades I was waiting just happened to be the ones that I've been most anxious for. The first class I felt like I bombed. I thought I did mediocre at best on the final and apparently I missed one report that needed to be handed in. The other class was my most anticipated "gpa booster" class. I was pretty certain I got no worse than an A just because I feel I spent most of my time into this class and produced stellar work. 30 minutes ago my world flipped upside down. I checked myslice and there they were, the last two grades. Oddly though they seemed to have swapped places with each other because there was no way I did this good in Geography and this bad in Studio. Go figure, art classes never grade fairly.

In my whole life I've never gotten a 4.0 or straight A's. The closest I've come is probably around 3.8 back in high school. I guess I'm not cut out to be a scholar. It never bothered me though. What bothered me about college is the way I anticipate a certain grade in a class and never seem to get it, be it good or bad. Thats why I absolutely (can't believe I'm saying this) love academic classes. No I'm not a teacher's pet nor am I a super student, I merely just love academic classes because their syllabi (syllabuses?) are always straight forward. 10% attendance, 30% exam, 40% final, 10% participation, etc. In the end, you can always calculate to a certain extent your final grade give or take a few percent. Art classes make no sense whatsoever. They're syllabi always states "do your best" or "we expect this level of work" nonsense. It's frustrating that "your best" gets you a B- (or some other lower than expected grade). It should just say "grades will be given according to professor's own opinion" and none of this "10% participation, 50% portfolio, 40% final" blah blah blahness. While other schools around the University have a 3.4 honors gpa, VPA has a 3.2 while architecture goes down even to a 3.0. The sad part is not many make these thresholds. Those that do are either 1) teachers pet 2) prodigy or 3) have legendary bs-ing skills. I really thought that this semester would be "the" semester for me where I could finally break the 3.6ish area. I felt like I've been doing excellent in all my classes (except Geo at the very end). The reality of studio classes came back to kick my ass again, hard. I didn't fail the studio class, just under-achieved.

I've been really wishing to achieve a 4.0 at some point but to do that I've only got one chance, one semester left. How much harder do I have to work in order to achieve this feat in an opinion-based learning environment? I'm fine pushing myself beyond my limits. Even then that'll probably net me a B+. Or maybe I should just take the easy way and level up my bs-ing skills to post legendary.