Thanks for sharing your academic journey at LeTourneau. I couldn't agree more about how you felt in EPM and at the start of each semester. I was so thankful when I got a B+ in Physics 1 because it not only humbled me at the very beginning of EE and solidified my pursuit of non-physical design, but it also freed me from trying to maintain a 4.0 ... despite it still being my only B haha. This freed me up to prioritize learning. I was very thankful that my professors in junior and senior year as well as in grad school used more fluid grading techniques and let me learn more of what I needed to know through projects and research. It helped make me a much more effective engineer.
Back in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, there was a wildly popular humanities prof by the name of Richard Olson (Literature?). I never had him, but I remember him coming into one of my humanities classes one day and remarking that his FAVORITE STUDENT at Mudd was the C student, because that student was really not all that worried about grades anyways and could be free to put it all on the line in his class, exploring and sharing freely any ideas without fear of reprisal or losing his precious grade point average. I don't remember many specific things that professors said at Mudd, but this one from Professor Olson I have never forgotten. And, I have sought throughout my life to become free from my own obsession with grade-point-itis.
Josh- Thanks for this breakdown. I enjoyed the thinking and the chance to review the position on perfection. To me, the pursuit of perfection has an odd exponential quality. Especially if we're talking how much more difficult it is to achieve perfection once you're beyond 'good enough.' The difficulty of going from A to A+, for me anyway, has always been much more confronting than going from, say, B to A--even though the increment jump is about the same. And that jump in difficulty doesn't always translate into the type of satisfaction and meaning it promises. Maybe this is an analogy for certain things in life? Your writing is a great reminder of this.
Thanks for sharing your academic journey at LeTourneau. I couldn't agree more about how you felt in EPM and at the start of each semester. I was so thankful when I got a B+ in Physics 1 because it not only humbled me at the very beginning of EE and solidified my pursuit of non-physical design, but it also freed me from trying to maintain a 4.0 ... despite it still being my only B haha. This freed me up to prioritize learning. I was very thankful that my professors in junior and senior year as well as in grad school used more fluid grading techniques and let me learn more of what I needed to know through projects and research. It helped make me a much more effective engineer.
Back in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, there was a wildly popular humanities prof by the name of Richard Olson (Literature?). I never had him, but I remember him coming into one of my humanities classes one day and remarking that his FAVORITE STUDENT at Mudd was the C student, because that student was really not all that worried about grades anyways and could be free to put it all on the line in his class, exploring and sharing freely any ideas without fear of reprisal or losing his precious grade point average. I don't remember many specific things that professors said at Mudd, but this one from Professor Olson I have never forgotten. And, I have sought throughout my life to become free from my own obsession with grade-point-itis.
I liked this article, but I must be missing something here--how did you get an A if you didn't deserve it?
Josh- Thanks for this breakdown. I enjoyed the thinking and the chance to review the position on perfection. To me, the pursuit of perfection has an odd exponential quality. Especially if we're talking how much more difficult it is to achieve perfection once you're beyond 'good enough.' The difficulty of going from A to A+, for me anyway, has always been much more confronting than going from, say, B to A--even though the increment jump is about the same. And that jump in difficulty doesn't always translate into the type of satisfaction and meaning it promises. Maybe this is an analogy for certain things in life? Your writing is a great reminder of this.