My elementary school was fiercely competitive about grades, a phenomenon caused primarily by my fourth grade teacher and the Seriously Freaking Sweet supply of scratch-and-sniff stickers that she awarded for perfect scores on spelling tests. If nine-year-old you scores a little watermelon-scented piece of goodness, you don't care how potentially rude it is to brag because you're the baddest sticker-collecting Mafioso to ever hit Ox Ridge Elementary School. (Once, I got a sticker that smelled like DILL PICKLES. True fact.)
This innocent rivalry set us up well for high school, when our teachers brazenly posted the class' standings on the bulletin board, kept "secret" by student number. While this inspired way too much gossiping and speculation about who was failing and who was the total loser breaking the curve, you did at least always know where you stood. (Remember when you were The Smart Kid? Yeah...)
When I arrived at this hallowed institute of higher raging learning, I naively expected that grades might remain a prevalent topic of conversation, given our ostensible purpose of say, possibly getting an education here. I quickly learned that discussing your results in a class is actually a more egregious faux pas than cutting into a pong line. Where do you think you are, Harvard? Shut up.
Social conventions aside, this grade-discussion taboo can be extremely unhelpful. Given the College's maddening median-based system, knowing your relative position in the class is essential in deciding if you should go rage because you did well or rage to forget that you're failing. Instead, we close off the flow of information, leaving people quietly terrified as they try to figure out if getting a 58 on their Orgo test is actually a bad thing. Why do we do this, aside from our collective tendency to be dysfunctional?
I have several theories to elucidate this bizarre social norm, including the simple principle that explains my own refusal to participate in grade-based discussion: I never, ever look at my marks, so I simply cannot talk about them. I realize that this is more than kind of weird and my tendency to dodge professors passing back exams (you can't look at a blue book if you don't have it!) has led me into more than one extremely awkward situation. (I did actually have to look at my grades last weekend because I had to know my GPA in order to apply for Real Life Jobs. This should probably not be an accomplishment, but I was proud of myself.)
For the more well-adjusted of you, who haven't left every single paper you've ever written patiently waiting for them in the government department's office, I can only speculate as to the origin of the ban on grade-related discussion, but I suspect that it might have something to do with our collective history as the total nerd in high school. Those of us who were socially savvy at a younger age quickly learned that concealing your report card and acceptance into dork-a-licious honor societies would greatly increase your chances of sitting at a cool lunch table. These kids were well practiced in the art of concealment when they came to the College, while those of us who were a little slower on the uptake and spent a great deal of time being stuffed into lockers were determined not to make the same mistake twice. (For the record, I have never gotten up close and personal with a high school locker. I decline to comment on being pantsed.)
If I were to be temporarily less cynical (unlikely) I would speculate that our campus' relative isolation and the Dartmouth Sense Of Community also contribute to the unspoken policy of non-disclosure. Discussion of grades does force us to consider the less-than-pleasant truth that we are all unofficially in competition for those coveted internships and post-grad opportunities (see also: Reality Bites). It's a little awkward to have these adversarial aspects of our lives right out in the open when our bubble contains roughly the same number of people as 9 square blocks on the Upper East Side. Better to sweep the grade discussion under the rug and save the public competition for stuff that matters, like sorority rush.
The final, most obvious reason that Dartmouth students avoid discussion of grades like it's their job is simply that they're too focused on racking up stats in other key areas to focus on silly things like how well they did on that paper. Everyone knows that the number of facetime points you scored while strolling back and forth to the First Floor Berry Greenprint station is the operative thing. So, corporate recruiters looking for someone with mad Collis table commanding skills: hit me up.
