Ian Mug
As a student, your sense of self-worth should have nothing to do with your grades.
While your grades and GPA will help you look better while seeking a job after college, a bad grade doesn’t really mean you were a bad student, just like a good grade doesn’t mean you were a good student. Despite what some may say, you are not here to simply pad your resume while earning a degree.
You are here to learn.
One can really go through college without really learning anything, simply retaining what one needs until you are no longer tested on it. You can easily get a good GPA this way. This makes no one smarter or better than anyone else, it simply shows they know how to function in the system.
I have known some people who have gotten abysmal marks, but were some of the smartest people I know. They considered themselves stupid and worth nobody’s time because they didn’t function well in the grading system. But they were actually learning and had an active thirst for knowledge and self-improvement.
That is the ultimate goal here, self-betterment.
One’s value in college has nothing to do with how well they can game a system to get good grades. It is how they spend their time here becoming the person they want to be. No amount of high grades can improve you as a person if you did the base amount of work to get there with no actual passion or interest.
In the end, no amount of testing, assignments or essays can determine your quality as a person.
In the end, that is all on you to determine.
You must try to live the standards of what you believe is a good person.
If you put in genuine effort and still do poorly, that does not mean you are stupid or inferior. It means you tried and failed and will try again until you succeed.
Every failure is a lesson in of itself. The most important thing about college is to never stop learning.