So, today, I stayed in and pretty much panicked the whole day until 4 p.m., which marked the last time that I will ever enlist for classes. It’s pretty frustrating because I’m part of the last batch of students in our year to “pick” our classes for our last and final semester in college. I enclosed pick in quotation marks, because we don’t really get to choose by the time our batch is allowed to sign up. All the good professors will have been taken by then.

I personally subscribe to the belief that what is important is that you get a good professor. Because no matter what time you end up getting, you will have a reason not to skip the class because you actually enjoy going to it. Because of this belief, this is the schedule that I ended up with:

Definitely not an ideal schedule, but I really, really wanted that Comm class. It’s reputed to be the “Buffy class,” and I’d been wanting to take this class ever since I stepped foot in Ateneo. There are rumors that the curriculum will be changed to Dr. Who, which I surprisingly do not mind anymore.

I’ve actually been meaning to write about grades for a while. See, prior to registration, there was the release of grades. And prior to that was the calculation of our class standing. In one particular class, Philosophy of Religion, I computed my grades and came face-to-face with one of my worst nightmares: my very first “D.”

I was devastated. The final oral exams had become optional (due to Ondoy) and I had a choice between attempting to lift my grades up (very unlikely because I pretty much suck at oral exams¹) and sticking with the “D” and accepting it for what it is. I actually set my status message on an instant messenger to some sort of plea to anyone to convince me that a D is not the end of the world. The responses I got were pretty surprising, both in number and content.

One of my friends, a classmate I had for another Philosophy class, shared to me how it was also his first semester to get a D, which shocked me because he was really the only person in our class to get an A. I looked up to him and while talking to him, it amazed me how he was visibly disappointed by the turnout, but also very at peace with the results. Another person also assured me that people still thought I was smart, despite the grade, that I was a “genius” in other areas. (His words, not mine.) Others comforted me and told me that it was O.K. because the teacher I took was what we call a Legend, and that it could happen to anybody. What is important, I was told, is that you learned and you absorbed and you put yourself into it. That’s the most anybody really can do.

I was pretty convinced (but not entirely), so I decided not to take the oral exams, so I could focus on finishing up the rest of the requirements I still had for other classes. And then, I tucked this semester away in a little box, did not really think of it much after and went on with my life.

I mean, I’ve always known the well-worn belief that grades do not determine or measure your intelligence. But this never was true for me until recently. See, I’ve been trying to draw fonts on Illustrator, and after hours of frustrated Failing-At-It, it dawned on me how I actually had an entire subject on Typography last year, how I aced it and how, ironically, I had no idea what I was doing. I did not know how to use the tools, what to call the parts; I did not know anything. It just really took me by surprise.

Then my mind wandered to how I practically failed Philosophy of Religion, but how deeply the class affected me, and how differently I see the world through the things I had been shown by my wonderful professor, and by my awesome classmates — most of whom I can’t really name, or have not said ‘hi’ to — and how learning about hope, actually experiencing hope has helped me talk to certain people more openly and, with more insight, and with more heart. (This is true. This actually happened.)

And this just made me realize that getting an A in something didn’t really mean you knew more about it all the time. That getting a D, just because you said stuff that the professor wasn’t looking for, doesn’t always mean that you “failed” the subject. And this knowledge of how petty it is to care about what I get as a grade, instead of just immersing myself in the text, and in the discussion, and in my own experiences, just made me accept that my (kind of dumb) dream to graduate with honors is probably gone.

But strangely enough, I was O.K. with it.

Even stranger, I got my grades and found that I got a C instead. Which isn’t loads better, but it still is better than I’d hoped. I have no idea how to end this entry, because truthfully, I really am kind of tired from all the panicking and girly trouble, so I’ll just end here and say that the best thing to do is to enjoy what you are learning, and to put yourself into it, because the experience of learning is really all that really matters. Not the grades or the numbers, but what you learn from what you have been told.

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¹ No kidding, I am terrified of oral exams.