pombemaniac89

Being new here, I feel kinda relieved that there's actually a grade ranting thread around Hi everyone, so I'm currently a first year Phd student ( so yeah I'm relatively new to the whole wacky feeling of being in a Phd program as described in Phd comics) and so forgive me if I'm still obsessed with grades. Actually, a lot of senior graduate students in my program kept reassuring me that grades doesn't really matter in gradschool, especially in the life sciences. For first year students in my school's umbrella phd program, there's a total of 7 main core classes that we have to fulfil before taking the qualifying exams this coming june(2 biochemistry requirements, molecular genetics, advance cell biology, problem solving in math,2 first year cell biology seminars) And so my year long frustration/fear with Phd grades began when the professor teaching my first year required core Biochemistry class walked into the auditorium the first day of class and declared that only 2 students in the whole class will be getting an A, followed by a few B+, a majority of Bs and eventually disheartened Cs that would flunk people out of the program. It was almost the same case in the other classes that I was taking also. It would have seemed that everyone's " cut throat b*tch" mode was turned on immediately when the first exam finally arrived where you have grades as high as 95/100 to as low as 10/100 ( the 10/100 guy was never heard from ever again).Most students would ask for at least a week off for the exam, but I chose not to since i feel that my rotations are equally important as well. I was generally a B+ student and was kinda ok with the fact there's always gonna be people smarter than I am and the whole thing about exam luck/preparations definitely plays a huge part in the whole journey of maintaining your spot in the program. And so one day I was studying for one of my exams and an international student(who's also in my program. First of all, I'm also an international student who did my undergrad in the states before going full speed into a graduate program) from my class sat right next to me and started asking me about how have I been doing in classes. Without much thought, I replied honestly that I've been maintainig a B+average even though i think i can do better since i was a few points away from the A range and I shared with him the projected grade range that the professors have posted for students just to give a rough idea on how much was it necessary to maintain our B average. To my utter horror, I could sense the smirk on his face when he realized that he's in the A range and even to my digust he continued : " I'm in the A range and I should be getting the A. But still, Pombemaniac, why are you so obessed about grades,especially the A?" Deep down, I was like " game on b*tch, game on" . I eventually did ended up getting As in my first year Fall classes while maintaining a firm grasp on my rotation researches as well.However, this past spring semester was different as I became too ambitious and started taking electives that were meant for second/Third years ( took a microbial genetics course and a biochem seminar). As the semeter gradually came to an end, I began to notice how overwhelming it was for me to take extra classes when other friends and students from my program only focused on the core spring courses and nothing more. I eventually got a mix of As and B+s in my core and electives to still have a gpa ~3.7( A professor in the elective course i took commented that in Grad School an A is good, B+ is expected and B is no good). And as I was looking at the spread for classes that I had B+s (I had 2 B+s out of 5 courses that I'm taking this semester), to my frustration I was always 1-2 points from the A (where As are mostly given to <4 students for each course). It's really frustrating to know that i'm really that close to an A and yet I'm so far away from it. I've also been hearing from some senior Phd students that it's a good thing that I'm not perfect in grades since getting a 4.0 or a majority A would mean that I'm not taking my research seriously.But seriously how true is that though? But the part that irritates me the most was that most of the people who've been getting the As are people who took a whole week off just to study for exams while I was still laboring in lab the night before my finals( and I took more courses than they do!) It astonishes me how competitive Phd program can be even after I've survived the whole ordeal of applying into one. I admit that I asked for help from friends who would be pulling all nighter next to me for exams and I've never declined to offer any help to people who asked me questions about any class materials.My written qualifying exam is in mid-june and my program has the old tradition of ranking students based on how well we do in our qualifying exams. I think one of the reason why I'm obsessed with grades originated from the scarcity of competitive grants/fellowships for international students and the way in which my program basically tries to kinda assess everyone's first year performance up until the point of our written qualifying exams. I'm the type who likes to challenge myself by taking hard courses whenever i can as long as I can gain something out of them and I have to admit that I'd really want to apply for those super competitive fellowships/grants for internationals I like my program and I like some of the nice people in my problem( the smart ones, the wacky ones, the shy ones) but at the same time you still have other grade-obessed freaks (myself included) who rubs me in the wrong way (i guess similar poles repels).I dont like to be ranked and at the same time I refused to be compared to as being inferior to people like that bastard who insulted me. ~geez, this is a long one. But it feels good to make a clean breast of things.