Help me not let an A- ruin my day...

May 6, 2010 3:32 PM

Help me not let an A- ruin my day...

I know that I'm a perfectionist, and I'm currently in therapy as part of my training. I'm in a clinical psychology PhD program and in many ways my obsessively high standards has helped to get me here. But now that I'm in, my grades really do not matter as long as I'm passing. Still I went through five semesters of graduate school with a 4.0, and this latest A- feels like a real blow emotionally. I guess I need some word of wisdom about how to get past these feelings of failure etc. I wrote a paper that was very helpful for me to understand myself, but one I knew my professor probably would not resonate as strongly with. I was right clearly, and I know intellectually that personal growth is more important than outside affirmation, but it still sucks. How can I make this not suck? What has helped you curb perfectionism in yourself?

posted by amileighs to Human Relations (25 answers total)

you need to realize that an A- is really a high achievement.

you need to understand that others would love to get A-s.

you need to tell yourself that you did the best you could do and stayed true to yourself as well.

nice work!
posted by wocka wocka wocka at 3:37 PM on May 6, 2010

Take the weekend off, go do something you enjoy, remember life outside of school, etc.
posted by lockestockbarrel at 3:38 PM on May 6, 2010

I was in the same position as you. Had I received an A in every class in my final semester, I would've graduated with honors. My grades? A, A, A, and A-. The A- was arbitrary and, I convinced myself, just because the prof fancied himself too challenging to give unsullied letter grades even when the students earned them.

Anyway, I didn't graduate with honors and I was bitter for a while.

Then I moved on with my life, got a good job, met a nice girl and proposed to her, and forgot all about that stupid A-. Nobody knows I didn't graduate with honors and nobody cares. (Actually, nobody ever bothered to check that I even have a degree at all, which is another issue, but it's just a B.A. so it's less important.) The point is, with hindsight comes the realization that that which seems direly important today is really laughably small in the grand scheme of things.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:40 PM on May 6, 2010 [7 favorites]

Worrying about the A- makes you less perfect (because it's irrational) than just taking it in stride. So, use that appeal to your perfectionist side.
posted by tastybrains at 3:44 PM on May 6, 2010 [5 favorites]

I was once like you. You need a life outside of school.

Also, since when do you deserve to do well every time? Why should you have to do well every time? I really feel bad for you.
posted by candasartan at 3:45 PM on May 6, 2010

Best answer: In high school, there was this test. It doesn't matter what the details are, but this is was a test I couldn't pass. Just couldn't. I knew this ahead of time, and it was hurting me. Hurting.

I went to my friend's house and begged her to help me study. I may have started crying. I studied, and I studied, and I studied, and my stomach hurt, and I was so anxious and upset. After not too long, however, my friend just gave up and went to the other side of the room. She got out an index card and, using fingerpaint, she drew a smiley face on it and wrote the words, "MS. SAINT CAN FAIL THIS TEST AND STILL HAVE A HAPPY LIFE!"

Turns out, she was right. I failed the test. I went on. Heck, now I've got a Ph.D. and a budding career and a wonderful boyfriend and the best cats in the world: I have a happy life.

I still have the index card, and it hangs on the wall of my office. Whenever I start to feel too much like I'm failing at something, or that I haven't succeeded as much as I should, or that something isn't right about me, I look at it. I consider: can I still have a happy life? Every single time, no matter what's making me feel so bad, the answer's been the same: yes indeed.

Make a sign for yourself: "AMILEIGHS CAN GET AN A- AND STILL HAVE A HAPPY LIFE!" Put it on your wall, and then look at it often.
posted by Ms. Saint at 3:47 PM on May 6, 2010 [38 favorites]

Best answer: Grades less than A are more valuable, in my opinion, because you can actually learn something if you try to understand the gap between your work and the professor's expectations. Ask the professor about this, if you want; though it seems from your post that you are already aware of that gap. It may be that your intellectual values, interests, etc., are diverging (if only slightly) from those of this particular professor. This is not a strike against you, but an important step in your own process of professionalization. At this point in your academic career, A- is a sign of success, not failure. (To signal failure to grad students one gives a B-!)
posted by philokalia at 3:48 PM on May 6, 2010 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I suffer from perfectionism as well, and one of the most useful things my therapist has said is:
'Many perfectionists think that their obsession with success has made them a success. In reality, most of them have succeeded in spite of it.'
posted by brambory at 3:51 PM on May 6, 2010 [11 favorites]

When I find myself getting overly concerned about grades, it's usually a combination of letting my grades define me and allowing school, and thoughts of school, to take over my life. To interrupt the spiral of "I got a bad grade and I'm a bad person and I'll always be a failure" and other unhealthy thoughts, I find it helpful to force myself to really notice and engage with my environment. It's cheesy, I know, but staring up at the stars or smelling a flower or really feeling the sun or just being extra friendly to the dining hall lady gets me outside of my own head and reminds me that despite everything (especially when "everything" is really nothing at
all) life can be so beautiful it hurts.
posted by MadamM at 3:55 PM on May 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm sure that if you've gone through 5 semesters with straight A's and have now gotten your first (and only) A-, you are still at the absolute top of your class.

Oh, and is there any way you can talk to your prof about turning that A- into an A?
posted by jabberjaw at 3:57 PM on May 6, 2010

Best answer: From a practical perspective (at least in my grad program), having an A- and being okay with it is a lot better than having a reputation in the department as the student who whines to their professor over an A-. At this point in your career, reference letters are way more important than grades.
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 4:00 PM on May 6, 2010 [9 favorites]

I learned about the book Feeling Good here on AskMe. When I got it I saw that line at the bottom "The clinically proven drug-free treatment for depression" and I thought, huh, I'm not depressed! Still I already had the book and started reading it....

I'm a perfectionist too and my master's thesis was killing me, I felt terrible for about a year, thinking everything had to be perfect and being really nervous about my work not being good enough. Reading Feeling Good's chapter called "Dare to be Average! Ways to overcome perfectionism" a few times really changed my mind about a lot of things and so I feel much better now about not having to give 145% of my effort and not getting 100% perfect grades or results.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 4:25 PM on May 6, 2010

Clinical psych, eh?

What would you tell a client in a similar position?

Tell yourself that.
posted by availablelight at 4:29 PM on May 6, 2010

I know graduate school grading is different than undergrad. You are not expected to make C's or D's, but I am still having a hard time understanding your perspective. Not only is an A- a good grade, but your own justification as to why it isn't an A is based on having a viewpoint different than the professor and not merit. So by you logic, there was no way to get an A, yet you still feel you failed.

I was right clearly
Do you really believe that? Because if you did, I don't think you'd be asking for support over this (very trivial matter).
posted by whiskeyspider at 4:55 PM on May 6, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks for the helpful advice. I especially appreciate the comments about valuing the courage to take risks and think differently. I have been mulling this in the back of my mind, but it was helpful to hear other people echoing the same sentiment.

A few thoughts on the responses:
- By "I was right clearly" I just meant that I did correctly predict that paper I wrote wasn't exactly what my professor wanted. Not that I was "right" and she was "wrong" or anything.
- I do know this whole matter is trivial, but it helps me to hear the perspective of others. I see this as one of the most valuable parts of therapy, the space to let someone into your own head and get their take on your internal thoughts. Metafilter just happens to be another way to do that, and involves instant gratification instead of waiting until my appointment next week. ;)

Thanks guys, and sorry if this came across as whiny or self-involved.
posted by amileighs at 5:21 PM on May 6, 2010

It had to happen sometime, and now it has, and you are still here. It is likely that the only suffering this grade will cause between the time you got it and they day you die will be entirely self-inflicted.

The way I came to look at grades, (as someone who last was within spitting distance of straight A's in elementary school), was that if I was getting consistently good grades, I wasn't pushing hard enough. I was sacrificing getting as much as I could out of something I loved for something I didn't love, or I was avoiding things that really interested me because I wasn't sure I could do well at them before I started.
posted by Good Brain at 5:53 PM on May 6, 2010

All those As are hurting you. An A is a perfect score, so if all your grades are As, then that means, supposedly, your work is perfect. There is nothing you could do to get a better grade. So why bother? How are you learning or growing. Sure, you are working hard, but what, according to your grades, do you need to do to improve. Nothing.

I always get nervous when someone says, "I had a 4.0 average." It makes me think, "So, what did your professors say you needed to do to improve? Anything?"

When I was in school, one of my goals was to become a great writer. I was horribly frustrated, because I every paper I turned in got an A. And the teachers all either praised my prose or didn't point out any errors in it. Yet I knew I was no Hemingway. Had Hemingway and I both turned in papers, we would both have been told "Excellent writing" and have gotten As. That doesn't help me.

I know why I got all those As. It's because the overwhelming majority of my peers had trouble putting two words together. In comparison, I was Shakespeare. But only in comparison.

I finally had to hire someone -- a professional editor -- to get REAL feedback on how my writing was deficient and how I could improve it.

An A is a pat on the back, and, of course, that feels really good, but it doesn't teach you anything. Be thankful for the A-. Talk to the professor and get really clear as to what needs work. This is a great opportunity for you.
posted by grumblebee at 6:06 PM on May 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

One thing that has helped me to deal with non-perfect grades in grad school is the knowledge that I am both challenging myself and using my time appropriately. Grades no longer have any future benefit, so constant As potentially means that I am either 1) taking classes that aren't hard enough/useful for me or 2) spending too much time perfecting class work when I should be working on research*, catching up on journals, or going for a run, hanging out with friends, otherwise keeping myself sane.

*True story: My first semester of the program, I happened to score very highly on the first problem set in a class TA'd by my office mate. He told me to cut it out :)
posted by heyforfour at 6:07 PM on May 6, 2010

3 things:

1) The clinical psychologist I've worked with said to me 'Bs are for balance' and while an A- isn't a B, there is some truth to that. You wrote the paper YOU needed to write to learn. That's balance.

2) This is grad school. This is a Ph.D. Nothing comes after. Most Ph.D. programs don't have honors. You still have an excellent GPA. 5 years from now this won't matter. Heck, 1 year from now, this won't matter.

3) Grad school is about learning, not grades. Let me repeat that: Grad school is about what you learn, not the grade you get. I know in my own grad school experience, I learned more from the class I got my one B in than many of the ones where I got As. You get out of it what you put into it.

It sounds like you're putting the right stuff into it. You are going to have to teach others about balance later...listen to the lesson for your life about balance now.

And congrats! That's a great GPA.
posted by eleanna at 6:35 PM on May 6, 2010

Things could be much, much worse--it could have been a B+.
posted by box at 7:13 PM on May 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I have heard that military officers who were straight A students at academy are not as good commanders than the B or even C students. Why? Because the straight A students are used to relatively smooth sailing, and making the right choices almost all the time. When things go off script, when a situation falls apart, they have a hard time dealing with it and slogging through it. A student with B's or C's, however, is used to dealing with imperfections as a matter of daily life, and if a situation goes to hell, they're more adept at finding a way out.

An A- minus put you off-script. How will you deal with it? Handled right, this can be far more of a positive to you than an unblemished GPA.
posted by azpenguin at 7:18 PM on May 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I feel your pain. A- is the bitterest grade. Although I can't see myself ever choosing this option, in a lot of ways I'd almost rather have a B+.

That said, when I get a dreaded A-, I try to remember how difficult if not impossible it is to ever grade any set of papers in a truly objective way myself, and that past a certain level, the people evaluating you are your peers anyway. At the doctoral level, your grade is about a lot more than just an explicit, rigid evaluation (at least in psych, at least as far as I understand). Who knows what caused this foul -? It could be anything.

Just keep bustin' ass and it'll work out ok, because at the end of the day no one is ever even going to know except for you and the prof who will have forgotten about it in a day or two (well, and the internet). The hardest grade I ever worked for in my life was a B-, and I was furious about it for a year or two. Later, I realized that the way I approached the class, with a mastery orientation rather than a performance one, led me to demonstrate incomplete mastery rather than competent performance. Now, though, if I had just shot for making the grade instead of really understanding the material, I wouldn't be able to deal with any of the stuff I'm studying currently.

A- is a stone cold bitch, but there are far worse things that can happen. Have a drink, rail about injustice, (fix what was wrong if there even was something) and get back on the horse.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 8:04 PM on May 6, 2010

This isn't exactly the same situation, but I went to a very small, very (in hindsight) easy high school from which I graduated valedictorian with a 4.4 GPA or something. And Lord knows, coming out of high school, I thought I could do anything if I just worked my ass off at it. And if I failed, I just had to work my ass off harder. Note: "fail" in this instance means "come out with anything less than perfect marks and happiness and rainbows."

Well, my beautiful 4.4 GPA landed me in a top US university, and my ambitions at the time landed me in the general chemistry class at this top US university. And of course, this was a weed-out class, and I was the weed. Maybe not a horrible, plant choking weed that needs to be eradicated immediately, but one of those weeds that ends up blooming pretty-purple but that you wouldn't want to let, say, become a doctor one day.

I worked my ass off. And I cried all the time about how stupid I was. And I thought about dropping out of the class. And I thought about dropping out of school (yes, I was a stupid freshman). And at the end of the semester, I came out with a B, and I jumped for joy and almost killed myself running down the stairs to let everyone in the house know.

The point is, as soon as I accepted the fact that what was important wasn't the B, but the work I'd put into the B and how much I'd learned while (or in spite of) getting the B, I felt SO MUCH BETTER about my whole life. I'm not saying this crisis hasn't happened over again in different classes, and I'm not saying I made straight A's except for that one class. But every time I work at something and I'm satisfied with myself, I let that be enough. And I'm much happier not feeling like I'm going to have a heart attack every second of every day.
posted by hoperaiseshell at 11:28 PM on May 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Any grade higher than a C means you worked too hard. Consider yourself closer to doing the optimal amount of work.
posted by jrockway at 11:45 PM on May 6, 2010

At some point in your life you will have to face up to the fact that you are inadequate to the task ahead of you. You will fail. You have failed (if you consider an A- a failure, which you clearly do). Your reaction to failure (or perhaps near-success) is more important than the failure itself. Your failure has not led to your death, the death of another, or somehow clouded a bright future. Your bright future persists. Unless, somehow, you let a failure become what you are.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 1:16 PM on May 7, 2010 [3 favorites]