Tuesday, August 08, 2006

What I Dream About

Wouldn’t it be nice if I topped the Interior Design board exams?

Yes, it’s a dream of mine. And yes, this just goes to show how grade-conscious I am,. As much as I hate to admit it, grades matter to me. Never mind that the number three house commandment for Mechanical Drawing class states that THOU SHALT NOT BE GRADE-CONSCIOUS. Never mind that, because I am guilty!

Each time my Elements professor checks my plate, I would anxiously anticipate a perfect score of 100, but would end up disappointedly wondering why he gave me a 96, 97, 98, or 99! Each time my Mech. Draw. professor gives back a checked plate, I look for the plus 5 or plus 10 beside the scored 100. Sigh, this is really bad.

Is being grade-conscious innate or learned? Can someone please do a documentary and research on this? (A little interesting bit of information I gathered from watching too much Deutschewelle-TV: As a determinant of intelligence, the environment factor plays a larger part than the genes factor in the younger years. As a person grows older, however, the importance of environment diminishes, while the importance of genes increases. For an adult, the role of the environment is practically negligible when it comes to intelligence. Intelligence is in the genes!) Anyway, back to what I was saying…I think I learned to be grade-conscious during my stay at that school on Katipunan. Is it just me or are many, if not most, Ateneans grade-conscious? A friend of our family, veterinarian-slash-illustrator extraordinaire Wilford Almoro, came by a few weeks ago and he was telling me how excited he was to be teaching Basic Illustration as Visual Narrative next semester at Ateneo. I took this course under a different professor during my last semester, so he was asking me things like how he should handle the class, what topics to focus on, and what the students were like. I immediately told him that since the course he is going to teach is an elective, students would expect it to be “A-able” or an “easy A” in Atenista lingo. Ford was recounting to me that when he was studying in UP, professors would give the required grade for the student to pass the subject. But I said that in Ateneo, professors would give out the required grade for students to get an A. Apparently, his standards are very high, just as they should be for an extremely talented illustrator. I think he had it in his mind that the average grade that he would be giving his students would be in the C to D range. To a student, especially to an Atenista, that would be a horror! Good luck nalang to those who will be taking Ford’s class next semester. But not minding the Cs or Ds, I’m sure it would be a great learning experience for them. Hehehe!

So yeah, I dream about topping the boards. But if I don’t, I’ll probably just blog about it and arrive at the realization that grades aren’t everything. Haha!