Andrea Gets Schooled

I have a conflicting relationship with grades.

On one hand, my awareness is growing about the vast spectrum of learning styles, settings, and content, and the shortcomings of traditional didactic teaching. One person’s (often subjective) assessment of another person’s work isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of that person’s learning.

On the other hand, I’ve always been good at school, I get good grades, and admittedly, I like that 🤷🏻‍♀️.

I believe traditional classroom lectures and assignments are a great way to access foundational content – math, writing, science, historical facts that you wouldn’t otherwise seek out – but this only represent a small subset of what and how people learn (hello school of life). In the one month of the EMBA program through SFU, I’ve loved the content presented to us, the experience of each lecture, and have even appreciated the posted assignments.

Mostly, I love the fact that after 10 years of crafting my own learning experiences and using journalling/coaching/conversations to draw out the lessons from those life experiences, that someone else has been tasked with designing my learning experience for me. Sure, it may be more passive learning, but I’m LOVING it at this stage in my life. There’s a place for everything, I suppose.

“You’ll be graded”… dun, dun, DUN.

During our Whistler retreat weekend, our Academic Director explained the necessity of grading in a program at an academic institution, the application of bell curves (I still don’t fully understand why these are used), and the requirements for us to maintain a cumulative 3.0 GPA throughout the program.

The classroom got LIT – and it was the first glimpse of how different people respond different to challenge.

Some people had the happy-go-lucky attitude, “well, we’re paying a lot of money for this program, they want us to succeed for the sake of SFU’s reputation, so I’m sure we’ll figure it out as we go”.

Some people muttered cynical comments. Shifty eyes were exchanged. Some people were unfazed. Questioners (Rubin, 2017) came through for us all, as hands shot up around the room.

I once heard anxiety described as ‘worrying about the future’ (compared to depression being described as worrying about the past), and it became clear how many people in the room had anxious tendencies (don’t we all).

“Is the 3.0 calculated per semester or cumulative?”

“Will someone tell me if I’m nearing the threshold?”

“What happens if I drop below 3.0 one semester? In 2 semesters back-to-back, in 2 semesters not back-to-back?”

“What if I have legit reasons for a poor assignment, like work, family, or health?”

“What if the whole class does well on an assignment, but I’m slightly below average compared to others, the bell curve will assign me a C-, that doesn’t feel fair, exactly how will that affect my transcript, and will my employer will see, I might lose my tuition support, and will I have to drop out and then everyone will think I’m a failure?!” (ok, exaggerating on this one, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that at least one person went through this doom spiral in silence).

The conversation continued over lunch, and into the following days of the retreat. We still talk about it as we’ve begun graded assignments.

My thoughts on school grades:

Due to my slightly-dysfunctional seeking-worthiness-through-productivity high-achiever coping strategies learned in childhood, I’ve learned to ‘play the game’. I listen closely for what the instructor wants, I observe examples or others submissions (where possible), and then I attempt to craft a matching or slightly better-than-average submission. I’m working through that perfectionism, but this IS a scenario when those tendencies come in handy. My ability to swim in the typical school stream has afforded me privileges that contribute to my upward mobility, such as scholarships and access to higher education.

I’m also quite competitive with myself, so the drive to ‘beat my previous score’ helps me here. It may sound like I’m manipulating the system, but truthfully I view it as a way to budget my energy – if the collective bar is low, I’m not going to bend over backwards.

However, if the bar is high (as is the case in my cohort – brilliant, insightful, well-spoken humans these people are!), I work hard to match the caliber of work and see where I can invest just a little extra energy that may go a long way. For example, some low-hanging fruit that actually makes a huge difference in final submission quality:

• fixing typos, capitalization, punctuation
• ensuring grammatical correctness
• clarity of explanation addressing the exact question that’s being asked

So, I do what needs to be done to get a reasonable grade.
I’ve gamified school.

What this framework has taught me:

Identifying when games exist, which ones to play, and how to play them has truthfully been a very applicable life skill. In my experience, there are very real ‘games‘ put in play by large institutions like government funding agencies or banks. I’ve had to apply for school programs, write employment grant applications, compile spreadsheets telling our business story for bank loans, and write grants for research funding.

Do I always agree with the process and questioning that we have to go through? No. For example, I believe in other business success metrics, but banks want to see my monetary forecasting to determine if I’m worthy of a loan. As another example, I don’t think the GMAT is effective assessment tool for business school, hence why I chose a program that didn’t require it.

Do I want to spend energy contesting every convoluted process in a large system that I disagree with, trying to convince them to update their processes? No. (Actually it depends, I do believe in systems change but I’m careful about which battles I want to engage in).

But we live in this current world and I don’t want to miss out on valuable opportunities, so I play the game. Playing the game of school has taught me how to play other games in life.

I will say that I’ve noticed a shift towards more intentional processes across institutions, which is refreshing. For example, our EMBA application and interview was relevant, and seemed to be effective at screening for appropriate students, as shown in our incredible class roster.

But Grades Aren’t Everything

I also value deep, meaningful learning. As I mentioned in my previous posts, I’m not doing this program just to get the letters – I want to broaden and deepen my understanding of all things business.

So, parallel to playing the game of school, I’m also spending time to get clear on what I want to get out of the program and capture the various lessons (direct and meta levels… hence this blog!). Speaking with other classmates about this, it was apparent that the majority also had a broader set of outcomes that they’re hoping to take away from the program:

• meet new people
• challenge existing thoughts and beliefs
• fill gaps in knowledge
• improve communication skills
• explore other career opportunities

This reminds me concepts from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why (2009): when you have a clear why, then you can much more clearly define your path and your success indicators.

In Collins & Lazier’s Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 (2020), they discuss how crucial it is to start with a vision, then work on the strategy, then formulate tactics. Their discussion happens in the context of corporate vision, however those principles also apply to any personal endeavour or project that one intentionally engages in.

Referring back to desired outcomes above, I interpreted Collin’s advice in the form of (bullet) desired outcome, (sub-bullet) strategy, (sub-sub-bullet) tactics, (sub-sub-sub-bullet) success metrics:

• desired outcome: meet new friends
  • strategy: choose an in-person program vs online
    • tactic 1: sit beside different people each class
    • tactic 2: initiate 1:1 social meet-ups with classmates
      • success metric: number and quality of new friendships
• challenge existing thoughts and beliefs
  • engage in challenging conversations
    • read and thoughtfully reply to discussion forums
    • ask for insight on specific topics
    • commit to accepting discomfort of differing opinions
      • being able to name which beliefs I unlearned, and how perspectives changed
• fill gaps in knowledge
  • reflect to identify gaps
    • pay extra attention in those classes
    • seek learning resources beyond suggested reading
    • consider how to apply theoretical info to your life
      • noticing when I’m applying new knowledge or skills to my work (‘Oh I learned this in school!’)
• improve communication skills
  • practice reading comprehension, writing, and speaking
    • spend an extra 15 minutes on writing assignments to edit for philosophical flow
    • use thesaurus.com (my fave!) to learn and incorporate synonyms outside my regular vocab
    • make the most of feedback, even when you disagree with it (there’s usually a gem in there somewhere!)
      • ask work colleagues if they notice a change in effectiveness of your written and spoken communication
• explore other career opportunities
  • learn about different fields and roles
    • intentionally converse with classmates in different fields
    • ask them clear questions about their jobs and related jobs
    • research industries and position specifics
      • did you identify new jobs you may consider trying, that fit your skillset and personality?

I certainly don’t believe grades are a full representation of learning; we all know people who are school-smart but not street-smart and vice versa. But the process of grading and other scoring assessments seems to be a necessary evil in our society (until someone else comes up with a better structure!) so, play the game to get their grades, and design your own.

References (check out my APA! I’m learning something!):

Collins, J., & Lazier, W. (2020). BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company. Portfolio.

Sinek, S. (2009). Start with why: how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. New York, Portfolio.

Rubin, G. (2017). The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People’s Lives Better, Too). Harmony.

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