Not making the grade

In the odd beast that is the Princeton short-term semester, students take one class three hours a day, every day, for three weeks (in fact, the total class hours are greater than the 10-week long term). After spending the past year learning the basics of Hebrew grammar, I was hoping to take a Hebrew exegesis class, but none were offered. Instead, I took 2 Corinthians, which I knew would entail reading the letter in the original Greek. I had taken Greek the previous summer, which was like the short term stretched over 8 weeks--3 hours of class every day for eight weeks. Verb tenses and vocabulary were feverishly memorized each day and--more often than not--just as quickly forgotten. Even though I took a Greek exegesis class in the fall to help retain the Greek I had learned, the class emphasized exegesis over grammar, and I felt my grasp of Greek slipping through my fingers like so many grains of sand.

All of this serves as preface to say that I was less than confident about my ability to do well on the daily Greek grammar and translation quizzes that were listed in the syllabus for the 2 Corinthians class and that constituted 30% of the grade. Another 30% would come from a group project, and group projects are always dicey for closet control freaks like me. And so I opted to take the class pass/fail and free myself of the stress of laboring for the all-important A.

However, despite not taking the class for a letter grade, I didn't work any less. I spent an entire Saturday writing my exegetical paper; I studied for the quizzes as intently as I would have if taking them for a grade; and I took an active role in putting together the group project. The fruit of all my labors was a shiny red P on my transcript, which stands for putz, I think--no, that would be Hebrew, or Yiddish. But like a putz is how I felt for having robbed myself of what would have been an A.

And then I took a deep breath--or several, I think I may have been hyperventilating--and prayed to be brought to my senses. In a high-pressured academic environment it's so easy to fall into the temptation of defining yourself by your grades. I know that I do it all the time, and I have no desire to go on to further studies, so it's not as though I need to excel to get into the best PhD programs. Who am I trying to impress? That's a rhetorical question; you needn't respond.

The same principle applies when I'm out running. I always bring my phone, which has the Endomondo app that keeps track of my time, distance, pace, etc. With Endomondo I can measure myself against myself to see how much faster or further I ran against previous runs. Although I carry a phone, it might as well be a ball and chain because I'm a prisoner to it. I hadn't realized that until just last week. I was about three miles into a five-mile run when the app suddenly reset. I stopped my run and restarted the app from where it had stopped, thinking that I would add the two runs together and still be able to calculate my distance. After I took a few steps the app reset yet again. Cursing under my breath--okay, not so much under my breath--I restrained myself from hurling the phone like a discus over Tenafly Road. And then I had to laugh because I remembered that earlier in the run I had said a very brief, impromptu prayer to be set free from obsessing over the scarlet P I felt I was wearing on my forehead (oh that it were a scarlet A!).

And here was the answer to that prayer. "Shut up and run," I felt I was being told. Don't worry about the destination, be it a grade or a time to beat, and just enjoy the journey. Maybe you'll actually learn something in the process. You don't need to keep score by measuring yourself against other golfers. Okay, I added that last sentence just so I could link to this: