Ever since the first day of high school, we have been taught the significance of getting ‘A’s by our teachers and parents. The ‘A’ is seen as the ultimate reward, showing superb mastery of the material and supposedly predicting future successes. Somewhere in the middle of my journey through high school I started to question whether an ‘A’ actually meant anything.

It seemed that people worked so hard to get ‘A’s to impress their parents or fellow classmates, but the cost of the grade seems much more than what it’s worth. The endless hours dedicated to studying, sleep deprivation and constant pressure to succeed drives many to the brink of insanity.

Once you actually get the grade you want, does it really mean anything? The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment quickly fades away and is replaced by the question: What next?

Letter grades are put in place to provide a simple, standardized system for evaluating students’ performances. It makes sense to give younger kids the external incentive to work hard in school, but I believe that by the time we get to college we need the inner drive to absorb knowledge in order to really get anything out of school.

Coming into college, I thought everything was going to be different from high school, and that people were going to actually care about the material instead of the grades. I have been quite surprised to find that the high school paradigm of approaching school is very much alive in college.

I, along with all of the other incoming students at the UO, received a book called “The ‘A’ Game” over the summer, giving helpful tips and hints on how to grasp the celebrated letter grade. Before I even set foot in a classroom, the UO made sure to place the emphasis on striving for a letter, rather than getting an education.

A lot of courses are geared towards online assignments and quizzes, further taking the emphasis out of learning in the classroom and making courses more grade oriented.

I’m sure some employers do factor grades into their applicant examination, but there are so many other aspects they consider as well, including internships, jobs, extracurriculars and volunteer experience. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, college GPA was rated second to last on the list of factors employers care about.

It’s easy to continue obsessing over grades since we have been taught that following the illustrious ‘A’ will lead us to success. The majority of conversations I overhear in my classes involve talks of being on the border between an A and a B, students praising a professor for doling out A’s or criticizing them for their strict grading. I hardly hear opinions about the actual material. If our grades are good, we figure we are on the fast track to success and we don’t have anything to worry about. Maybe this methodology of thinking was true when our parents were in school, but I think it is now an outdated way of looking at things.

I’m confused why there isn’t more value placed in acquiring useful knowledge. The real world is right around the corner, but it seems we’re still stuck in the silly thought pattern of believing all we have to do is work hard and get good grades, then everything is going to be perfectly fine when we get out of college. We have so many more options of what to do with our lives, and I don’t think placing our future success in an external grading system is the best option.

Some liberal arts schools, such as Reed College in Portland, have decided to start de-emphasizing grades, while others have opted to ditch them altogether. I understand why the grading system is in place at most colleges, but it’s time to begin looking beyond grades in order to shape our college experience into one that is going to be most helpful in equipping us with tools to succeed outside of college.