My friends who are parents of college-age children have a new favorite thing to complain about, and it isn’t tuition, although it’s close. It’s grades, or more precisely how easy it is, even at the most expensive institutions, to get an A. That’s the grade you get for showing up to class reasonably often, turning in work reasonably OK, and being reasonably awake and hygienic while doing so.
When I was last in school, an A meant excellent, a B meant good, and a C meant average. An average essay, with average insights and an average amount of effort behind it, got a C. Maybe on a good day, from a professor who liked you, you could weasel into a C-plus.
If you’re somewhere in your 30s or early 40s, you might recall that an average essay got a B. Probably even a B-plus. The entire scale slid up a notch and a half, and suddenly everyone was a B-plus student. If you’re younger than that, the bottom of the scale, the absolute worst you can do is to seemingly get a B. With every generation, it seems, the letters of the alphabet scale get fewer and fewer. It’s still possible to get a D or an F, of course — you have to really try, but it’s possible — but a C is nearly unthinkable. Young people will allow themselves to be judged as excellent, very good, or failures, but they will not accept being called average, even though average is what most of us are a lot of the time. That’s why the word was invented in the first place: to describe the usual usual.
Everyone gets an A, and this is an outrage, of course, especially if you’re the one writing the tuition checks. Whenever the subject comes up, I nod along with my friends as they agree that everything is worse now, everything is easy, we’re living in a coddling, soft culture that hands out gold stars for attendance, and isn’t this the worst thing ever? I agree with all of it. I agree loudly. I’ve been known to snort “participation trophies!” with real venom.
Which is why I should probably mention this: I’m back in school, working toward a Master of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary. This semester, I’m taking a class in Christian ethics, and it’s terrific. The professor is smart and engaging and asks provocative questions, the reading is wide and ideologically diverse (I know, I know, but I promise, it is), and my classmates are whip-smart.
This week, I turned in a paper for that class, and it’s… average. It’s well-written because I’m a professional writer, and if I can’t manage that, I’m sunk. But it isn’t deep, and it isn’t especially thoughtful. The past two weeks were busy and complicated, and somewhere in the middle of writing it, I thought, “Well, this one isn’t going to be very good.” Then I wrapped it up and turned it in.
By any un-inflated measure, it’s a C paper. On a good day, because the professor likes me, maybe a C-plus.
And yet, I will almost certainly get a B-plus.
WHEN HOBBIES, OBSESSIONS, AND ECCENTRICITIES TAKE OVER LATE MIDDLE AGE
Let me be clear: I’m fine with that. Look, I do all the assigned reading, I’m lively and attentive in class, and in those ways I’m an A student. But every so often something has to give, and at this point in life, I can look at my calendar, punt, and feel no guilt about it. So, to my friends fuming about grade inflation, nearly all of them younger than I am, allow me to say: Get off my back, old man!
Anyway, I’m in the right place for this. At seminary, when you receive something good you didn’t earn and don’t deserve, we have a word for it. We call it grace. It’s a whole big thing in my Episcopalian corner of Christianity, as a matter of fact. We are saved by grace, not by works. Which is lucky, because my works this week were strictly average.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.