Bowing to the god of Success

I have a confession.

I have spent much of my life on my knees at the feet of the god of Success. Of course, that’s not the only false god I’ve worshipped. I’ve also spent plenty of time bowing to the gods of Power and Security. But Success is the one who most captured my heart and attention, my fears and longings.

This might be because the god of Success rules over the world of academic achievement. This has always been critically important to me, from the time I started middle school and learned that there were scholarships available at our eighth grade graduation ceremony to students who excelled academically. I made it my mission to earn one of those things. As it turns out, I did. I received a $50 savings bond!  From then on, I had one major goal: always earn the highest grades possible.

The god of Success is the god of all A’s (and above), and 4.5 GPAs, but not the honor roll (of course not the honor roll!) because you can get a B and still make that list, and that’s not good enough. This god presides over the Principal’s List, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and Honors in the Major. He reminds you that you not only need to be class valedictorian, you need to be the tippy top valedictorian, the one chosen to give the speech at graduation. Because these days, much to this god’s dismay, sometimes there are multiple valedictorians, many students who get all A’s and are deserving. That’s all well and good, but really, you need to claw your way to the top of that heap of overachievers, or realize that you are some kind of a failure.

This is painful to admit and not something I am proud of.

But it’s true.

I always had this agenda for myself. Sadly, I also seem to have had it for my children.  Simply put? All of us at all times need to excel.  We get A’s. There is no other option. That is all.

Fair disclosure and a little irony: I actually didn’t achieve this myself in high school. I got a B in physics my senior year, but since everyone else in my grade over the course of our high school careers got more B’s than that, I still got to be valedictorian. Back in those days, I was the only one. And yes, I got to make the speech at graduation.

I had to achieve this. Because if I didn’t, I would open the door for the probability that things might not go right in my world.

There was no guarantee, of course, that stellar grades would save me, but I was fairly certain that if I didn’t get them, that the chance of things falling apart greatly increased.

Lucky for me and for my mental health, I went to a university that, back in the day, didn’t give grades. Three cheers for the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs! If I would have had a GPA back then, I would most likely have been obsessed there, too.  As it was, our narrative evaluations read like grades, just in longer paragraph form. “Robin was in the top 10 percent of her class and turned in excellent essays!” they might read.  Sounded like an A to me. Good enough.

This fear of B’s still lives in me. I passed it along to my daughter, who was not just one of her class’ valedictorians, but was tippity top enough  to give a speech at graduation, along with one of her best friends who achieved the same. Of course, she had other brilliant, talented, wonderful friends who didn’t get to give speeches. I tried not to think too much about that.  She is now in her second year at UCLA. She learned mid-way through her first year that an A- in a class at UCLA would lower her GPA, so she had a little bit of angst when her GPA dropped below a 4.0 for the first time in her life.

See what I helped create in her?

Thankfully, her college friends, who were also all probably 4.5 GPA students in high school, have helped her move past this. She can get an A- now and not worry too much about it.

I worry about what will happen, though, if she ever gets a B.

My son, who is four years younger than her, got all A’s his freshman year. But of course he did! I said, “Good job!” but didn’t think too much about it.  Then came COVID, and distance learning, and not being in the classroom with his teachers for the first months of the semester. And then returning to school, but only two days a week, as his school instituted a schedule with students in different groups, so they were on campus at different times.

This was not the ideal situation for him.

The fact that this was not the ideal situation for him caused a great amount of anxiety in me. Especially when I checked his grades.

There were missing assignments!

Missing assignments?

Unacceptable!

This was never something that happened in my universe.

Especially since he was doing the work. He was doing the work, but not turning things in.

The missing assignments pulled his math grade down to a C

C?

Such letter grades had never appeared in my world.

Well, yes.  Another confession. I did get C’s in seventh grade in spelling, but that was because the teacher had a strange spelling program where you had to meet with her to take tests in person, and there was never enough time for everyone to do what they needed to do. I remember my Mom was a little dumbfounded that, of all subjects, Spelling was the one I would get a C in, but she didn’t care that much.

So, not since seventh grade have there been C’s in my life. And certainly not in my children’s lives.

Remember that Richard Rohr quote, by way of Paula D’Arcy, that “God shows up for us disguised as our lives”?

That quote is so annoying and very true.

In the end, my son pulled his grade up to a B, and finished his first semester of his sophomore year with A’s in everything else. We are now well into his second semester, and so far, he has A’s in all his classes.

Which is how it should be.

Right?

Maybe not.

Maybe grades are just one metric of what he is learning, and not a very accurate one at that. Because it is possible to get all A’s and not know a thing, to be a terrible, immoral person. To miss out on the things that really matter. Maybe our educational system is inherently flawed and grades don’t tell us much of anything at all. I’ve been challenged by the wise Seth Godin’s writings about education. You can read more of his thoughts here: https://sethgodinwrites.medium.com/stop-stealing-dreams-4116c7dbff7b

This is something I am learning, that my son who did not get all A’s is teaching me: that there are many paths through life, many ways to walk. There is not one optimal road (the road of all A’s, which is the road laid out by the god of Success). I hoped in high school that I might have a charmed life because I earned the best grades, but that was never true. Some of the smartest, wisest people I know struggled through high school, never went to college, and today have thriving businesses where they serve and make the world more beautiful. What could be better than that? Also, my classmates who finished below me in GPA (which was everyone) have gone on to have wonderful lives.

So have I. But not because of my grades. Not because I bowed to that god. But because the God who loves me, the God who is real, has carried me, in spite of how I worshipped at the feet of a god that cannot save. Finally, at this late hour, I am walking a little freer. Sometimes, it’s still a struggle. Sometimes, I still  check my son’s grades a little too often. But right now I am starting to trust more deeply that he is also being held and guided, that he gets to live his life, and make mistakes, and get all kinds of grades, even B’s or C’s, and that he is going to be just fine, because he is always loved, regardless of what his report card says.