LawProfBlawg (Anonymous Professor, Top 100 Law School), ‘You Are Not Your Grades’: WTF Do Professors Mean by That?:

I give a speech every semester to my 1Ls, and I know other professors do as well.  You are not your grades.  I inform my students that they do not need to pass by me in the hall and hang their head in shame if they did not get an A. They are more than their grade.  They are a whole person, and that grade, based upon one data point, does not draw a unique picture of who that student is as a human being.  I’ve written many letters of recommendation to the point.

So, let’s review some basics of grading and what I mean (I presume not to speak for others) when I say “you are not your grades.”  

Chances are, I don’t know my students’ grades.  Unless the students come to review their exams with me, I choose not to look.  If they do review their exams, I focus on what is important:  Not the grade itself.  Rather, what were the weaknesses of the exam, what can be done to improve, and the student knowing that this is a single data point, not their whole existence.

TLDR: Your grade is a temporary marker of the information you conveyed from your brain to the exam.  That conveyance isn’t necessarily what is in your head.  And what is in your head at the time of exam may increase over time as you continue to learn. 

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