By Christopher Westley He stood in front of my desk, fidgeting, and avoiding eye contact. This was a necessary but not pleasant conversation.
"Look," I said, "to get a B in the class, you will need to do just a little better on the final than you have so far on your previous tests. But just a little. Remember: Students usually raise their averages on the final exam. You have seen most of this material before. You understand it better now. And since the final is weighted more heavily than the other tests, I'd say you are in a pretty good position to pull out a B. Can you do it?"
He looked up from the floor. "Well, I'll try."
It's a conversation I have multiple times toward the end of every semester. A student wants to clarify where he stands in the class and what he needs to earn on the final to both maintain his current grade and to perhaps even raise it.
It's a short, one-act play in which we both know our parts. I pull out my calculator and show the student the necessary score. Often, I'll add that I am not saying that he has to ace the final but only improve his previous performance by a small, marginal amount.
And then the student says, "Well, I'll try."
It wasn't until the most recent semester that this retort began to… (Read more)
Source: Mises.org
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