The Unforgiving GPA System

In a GPA system as unforgiving as ours, it is a widely held notion that there is little shame in MC-ing a paper you know you stand very little chance of getting the better of. (Either that, or I have been hanging out with the wrong crowd.) Especially when the best you'll ever be able to make of the S/U option is mostly grounded on guesswork.

Imagine a soldier being shoved onto a minefield with only a shield to ward of the hardest hits, and being told he can use it only four times and even then, only if he declared in advance which stretch of land he plans on running down with it. No wonder said soldier turns to the MC at some point, for a makeshift shield.

Try to wrap your head around this. Every single thing, and I mean, every single thing, that you do in every single semester of every single year of all your three or four years here counts.

Every class you miss (if attendance is taken into consideration), every line you speak or don't speak (if participation is taken into consideration), every presentation, you give,major or minor, every tutorial, every essay, every quiz, every test and every other possible single thing. Of course, it only makes sense that it does. No one ever said earning your degree was going to be easy.

But the system that coldly calculates the sum of your efforts is unforgiving, uncompromising and unrelenting.

The mathematics behind it simply does not make sense. Pray do tell me, how is it fair that a single B- holds so much weight as to be able to undo an A+? If a grade C roughly corresponds to a 2.5 grade and a grade D to a 1.0, a single one of these would be all it takes to bring damage enough to your GPA that it would take you a few semesters of straight As to fully recover.

I am told a grade D is a pass. I fail to see how its numerical equivalent of 1.0 out of a total of 5.0 possible points is anywhere near half a pass.

It exhausts you, that's what this system does. It wears you down and plays you out like a ball of string, a perfect breeding ground for mistakes too easily made and too coolly sealed.

- Rohana on NTU, The Tribune (A NTU Student's Union Publication), August 2008