Going into graduate school everyone said not to care about course grades because it doesn't matter for the academic job market and that, given a choice between putting more work into coursework or into research, research should come first. Intellectually, this makes perfect sense. Realistically, I can't seem to reconcile the disconnect between effort and reward.
Basically, I busted my a$$ on a short survey paper and on a statistics homework set--B on both. An office-mate friend assembled something the night before (in both cases) and got Bs as well. My work, and it's impossible to separate out the obvious bias here, was better on both assignments. Now I'm starting to question the benefit of putting in the gruntwork if the same results can be achieved by slapdash.
Is there really a difference between an A & B in grad school? Does everyone just get Bs no matter what? Is this effort simply wasted in the long run?