Extra Credit

Friday, June 11, 2010

I love extra credit. Chalk it up the over-achiever inside of me (which thankfully has been dwindling in recent years), but I've always loved the idea of doing a little extra work and getting a little extra padding for my grade. This is probably a result of my good-grade obsession, spurred both by my dominating perfectionism and my parents' astronomically high expectations, but thankfully this drive has also been decreasing lately. This is beside the point, because the cause doesn't really matter; the result is always the same: I love extra credit.

Today I had an opportunity for extra credit, which I'm sure you probably already deduced. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best opportunity. It was an extra credit test. Doubly unfortunately, I actually need the extra credit. My Spanish grade isn't as high as my parents would like it to be, though I consider it to be pretty satisfactory for a class of this caliber, and therefore I was forced to not really jump at the chance but rather grudgingly amble to the testing center for my second test of the week. Not a happy prospect, though I'm hoping my professor will be kind enough to at least give us points for taking it even if we bomb the test (which I have a sneaking suspicion I will).

However, just because this extra credit opportunity was a bit of a let-down, doesn't mean extra credit in general is to be frowned upon. In fact, I absolutely love it (in case you haven't already gathered that from the two other times I've used those words in this post). And, though I don't hold out much hope for the helpfulness of this particular test, I am still grateful for extra credit, and the wonders it works on my GPA.