why grades pushed me to be who i am today

By EMMA BRADLEY ‘20

I am sure that many people at Milton, or any school for that matter, can relate to the following statement: if something isn’t graded, it simply “does not matter as much.” Our school system functions in a way that prioritizes grades. We work and prepare for the next assessment; we study hard for tests; everything builds up to some greater exam that is then graded and calculated into averages that we believe to be so important in our lives. We need good grades to send to colleges, so that we can get into a good school and have a successful life. Grades and the need to succeed are so ingrained into everything we do at Milton. And while I wish the point of this article was to tell you that grades aren’t everything in life, it isn’t.

This year for the first time, Milton decided to eliminate grades from the high school transcripts of the current freshman class. It would be unfair to not recognize some of the apparent positives of this new rule. For one, this rule certainly strives to improve mental health on campus. This rule also considers that many people at Milton come from different learning backgrounds and school systems. Not displaying freshman grades accounts for some of the different levels of preparation freshman students may have coming into Milton.

Though there are some positives, eliminating grades from freshman transcripts is, in my opinion, a horrible idea. Take it from a student herself. If I knew that what I was working towards was not going to be displayed later on in my life, I wouldn’t have the drive to work that as hard. I fear that eliminating these grades will not provide an environment in which incoming students push themselves as much as they possibly can.

Stress at Milton is inevitable. If freshman don’t endure the same stress of transcript grades that sophomores, juniors, and seniors must endure, they will have no practice in how to manage this stress. While I believe that freshman year stress will be limited, it will ultimately just reappear even worse in later years.

Freshman year grades are also an amazing benchmark for success and growth. My successes and shortcomings freshman year entirely decided how I was going to approach my sophomore year at Milton. Even if a student’s freshman year grades may not be amazing, the growth of sophomore, junior, and senior year is important to assess.

While I have doubts about this rule, I hope that we are able to learn from the progress or lack thereof from this change. It would be an injustice to the freshmen to not analyze the effects of this decision on their future progress. I hope that even without official grades, freshman can find the inner drive to work hard their first year at Milton. •