He’s lucky he graduated. Back in the 70s my buddies diploma got held up at Pitt because he failed golf - leaving him 1 credit shy. Lost a couple good job offers over that one too.
On phys ed/distribution of studies classes back then. I found out that most graded on how you improved; in other words, how you accepted coaching. So for my two I bagged the first classes and then “got better”. I did come out of the one (archery) better than I started but to me it was more a game of “punch the ticket and get on with your life”.
Funny how often this seems to happen. My wife had a perfect GPA in undergrad except for a B in pottery. And no, she was not a ceramics major!
I got good grades, but nowhere near all A’s. One semester I was taking a heavy load- something like 18-19 hours. I got all As - except for a B in a weightlifting class. The kick was it was the second semester I took it. The first semester I had made significant gains in strength. Second time around they graded largely on improvement, which was limited in my case due to my recent gains. Plus, I had already max’ed out in PE credits, so it didn’t even count to graduation!
I took it as a sign that a 4-pt semester simply wasn’t to be for me!
I thank the gods everyday that my university didn’t give two shits about PE and never forced me to bowl. Bowling was a recreational activity that I did on my own with booze, but without grades.
My GPA from the middle of my Junior year through grad school was 3.75 (2 B+ grades from the same professor in “Pedagological Mumbo-Jumbo 1 & 2.”) That sort of compensated for the fact that a few years previously, I had been basically thrown out of college for “Grades, Lack Thereof.”
Oh, and I was actually only a theory class away from a minor in PE. All A’s.
We had to take PE at my university, and it was one of the top 15 in the country. I can’t recall exactly, but it was either pass/fail, or the grade didn’t count toward your GPA.
I know of at least two other top 15 universities that have a PE requirement, and my wife’s elite SLAC also had.
Hi, Monkey, I was just wondering which one of the fine Georgia institutions do you attend.
I am an alumni of 2 of them, for what it is worth.
If it is too personal, then please ignore the question.
I think this is exactly what they should do, but there is a flip side: it’s not uncommon for students who are floundering in their other classes to stay afloat only because of PE. (This is especially common with students who are “conditional admits” – i.e., taking a bunch of remedial classes, which are not factored into the GPA at my university. If they get less than a C in regular freshman comp, it’s also not factored into the GPA, they just have to retake the class. Often, when you check the transcript of a second-semester freshman who’s really struggling, you’ll see that they’ve managed to stay off of academic probation because they’ve earned As in, say, Yoga, Fitness Walking, and Intro to College Life, which is enough to offset their F in history or intro to psych, which is the only other for-credit class they’ve taken.)
As far as I’m concerned, this is an excellent reason WHY the PE classes should be pass / fail, but the bean-counters don’t see it that way – as far as they’re concerned, anything that keeps students enrolled, paying tuition, and apparently in good academic standing for another semester or two is good.
I made a box hockey board and didn’t sand it. The thing was going to get beat to hell. Why would I need to sand it? I thought the instructor was thinking the same. I found out that he wanted it sanded only after I got graded.
I lost my 4.0 GPA in high school to one particular gym teacher. He had a simple grading scale: a starting position on a varsity or jr varsity sports team got you an A, getting onto a school sports team at all got you a B, not skipping any classes got you a C, not skipping more than 3 got you a D. He was very up front about his grade policy.
Note that those who were on teams got their grades no matter if they showed up to class or not. While this sounds really unfair, it actually made his class a little more fun for the quasi-athletic students, since we were the best of those showing up for class. But since no part of the grade was based on performance or even effort–not so much fun.
Several years later the school finally changed its policy so that only academic classes counted towards GPA.
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In undergrad college, I lost my 4.0 GPA on multiple laboratory courses and several non-major courses. (I actually got As in my college phys-ed classes, because I checked instructors’ grading policies first and took the ones that based grades on rules tests and attendance.) I simply don’t have the touch to do great lab work, which is why I ultimately went theoretical instead of experimentalist in grad school. But since lab courses were short courses, they didn’t affect my GPA too much.
I got non-As in other courses because I refused to fulfill my general ed requirements with freshman or sophomore level courses. I took junior and senior level courses, instead. Some very interesting classes, but hard, and I couldn’t get As in all of them.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In grad school I went to, A is the passing the grade and B is the failing the grade, so getting straight As was simply doing well enough to stay in school. I did take some recreational classes (badminton, dancing, archery, etc) for fun, but took them pass-fail only. It’s funny that to take non-major courses, I had to get explicit written permission from my academic adviser. It actually took some explaining to get it too.
I like where your head’s at, young (wo)man, and invite you to teach at the university I start, if I ever start it.
I actually had my 4.0 GPA ruined once by something even more idiotic than bowling or Tai Chi. Well, maybe not, but it burned my cheese nonetheless. Some idiot sub who took over the last few weeks of class screwed up and gave me a B. I was mad as hell, called the school to have it corrected, but the actual teacher wasn’t there for summer school. First day of the new school year, it was the very first thing I did. I had the highest grade in the class. I *was *the curve. Hmph!
In high school I lost my 4.0 the last semester of senior year by getting a B in architectural drawing, which I took to fulfill the fine arts requirement. However, the final grades from that semester did not appear on my transcript until after graduation day, so on the big day I still was valedictorian and made the big speech.
There, after more than 25 years I have confessed my sin of that day and the guilt is off my shoulders.
Hey, if it was back in the 70s and her instructor was a sanctimonious woo-woo fuckwit, just back from Japan, then she and I should talk.
Bitter? After 35 years? Me?
Would you believe I just spent a frantic 5 minutes racking my brain for the nutritional terms “pins” and “hooks” and was trying to fit it into a nursing diagnosis? Yeah, I think I am glad to be on break.
This. It always astounds me when I hear of colleges with rules like this. Required PE class? Attendance policies? Curfew?? This isn’t fucking elementary school!
(Okay, so the curfews were mostly for schools that were crazy religious and like, made you sign a waiver saying you wouldn’t dance or drink. But still.)
Also, I’ve never had a 4.0 GPA, but I did juuuuuuuust barely miss out on graduating cum laude by a very slim margin. I was pissed about that, not just because I couldn’t put it on my resume, but also because it broke the pattern my roommates and I had. One roomie graduated summa, another magna, and I was supposed to be cum laude. Nope, didn’t happen.
Well there really isn’t a “Core” curriculum in here in the US so there can be alot of difference between schools when it comes to required courses. So for example I didn’t have to take any PE when I was an undergrad. However I did have the 4 course torture requirement plus 6 classes in humanties/social sciences. (Where I learned for example the english word “social” means not.)
