What makes a good student? Is it getting all A’s or is it trying your hardest on all of your work? Most students would answer this question by saying getting all A’s is the definition of a good student. We are told that that is what colleges will look at.

What are “good grades?” Well according to most grading scales that you look up, a C is average for students, and a D is passing. Then a B is considered above average and an A is excellent, this shows that both A’s and B’s are above average. So why do students think they have to get all A’s in their classes?

When I asked senior, Sophia Collett, what she thought made a good student she said “A good student to me would be someone who doesn’t give up. I know a lot of kids just give up when things start to get hard.” Sophia then mentions that the students are here to learn, and they should keep trying no matter what.

When Mr. Wurdeman was asked the same question, he responded with “I think what makes a good student is the ability or the desire to want to learn, That is a big one for me. I think that students put too much into grades, grades are important, but I believe that there are other qualities that define a good student besides just a letter grade.”

When I asked Mr. Wurdeman why he didn’t think letter grades were as important, he replied with “I think a letter grade could be misleading in the fact that lets say someone can test really well on the ACT or the MAPS test and they score really high, but then they are giving C’s and D’s in class, there is definitely a disconnect there. Which this is on the student to do better in class, but if I were to just look at a student and say ‘oh this student just gets a D all the time’ then I’m kind of taking away from their potential.”

A good student could be described in many ways, some students that you talk to may say that getting good grades makes a good student, but some, such as Sophia, would say that never giving up is what makes a good student. Teachers often have a different view of what a good student is. Most teachers will respond the same way Mr. Wurdeman did, by saying that grades are not as important as the students desire to learn.