talking about grades?

[tenth8sphere]

There is no advantage to discussing your grades. If you did poorly, people will begin to think of you in that light alone. They will probably not include you in study groups, and you may close them off as recommendations to you once you graduate. If you did well, you will only create competition for yourself, upset other classmates who did worse, inspire jealousy, and may even create resentment if they ask for your help and you cannot or will not provide it.

Be general, if asked. Or just be very clear about your lack of desire to discuss them. There is nothing to be gained from pointing out that you did very well OR very poorly. Allow others to assume what they will.

[shaz]

I only have 2 grades in and they aren't horrendous but aren't great (B, B-).  I don't intend to discuss them w/anyone beyond being super general, but a friend of mine today told me she got an A in the class where I got the B- (I didn't say what I got, she just up and told me her grade), and it pretty much made me feel like crap.  I'm sure she didn't intend that at all and was just excited about her grade, but still, it literally made me feel stupid and unmotivated.  So....I'd definitely advise not sharing your grades even with friends.

One of my friends got an A and I was really happy for him. I try to compete against myself not my peers. One of my Profs, famously, got all C's his first semester (he crushed it after that though) and he went on to argue before the SCOTUS. Hey, why not me?

I admit that there are things that I can improve. I have weaknesses and I plan on addressing them real quick.

[jess427m]

I don't discuss grades either. If asked I just say "There is always room for improvement but am happy with my grades".

[rhombot]

the atmosphere at my school is not tremendously competitive, and most of my friends and i shared our grades with each other pretty freely, with no evident jealousies or nastinesses. except that i got a little annoyed about getting lower grades than the guy who keeps demonstrating in class that he missed the point of the discussion.

[Texas88]

How I feel about grades:

In law school, you know you're graded on a curve. Say your school has a 3.0 curve and you have a 3.1, you know that a little more than half the class did worse than you, and a little less than half did better. Does it really matter to you to know which of your friends are on which side of that? Most schools even publish approximately (or exactly) how many people can get each grade, so your status can be crystal clear without ever asking anyone what their grades are.

I used to talk about grades in highschool, and looking back, I was a huge tool. I did well and wondered which of my friends did too. I didn't think I was bragging at the time -- but why else would I have wanted to discuss grades? I think as long as you know where your are in the pack (roughly), there's no need to discuss grades (unless you want to brag).

The only reason would be if your school doesn't rank or release percentiles and you wanted a ball-park estimate for yourself, but even then you'd have to ask most of the people in your section what their grades were in order to estimate accurately.

Anytime my friends ask, I tell them, "I'm just happy to be here; I don't discuss grades," and most get the picture. However, one friend pushed me to share so many times that I finally told him. I still feel the same way about my grades, but now I think he's a grade-A tool for his actions. I wish he would have just left the subject alone.

[wakaranai]

My school doesn't rank or curve and the grades are generally a lot lower than at comparable schools. As a result people do have very general discussions about grades- e.g. whether you were able to break a 3.0, but aside from that people don't go around sharing their GPAs or asking what other people got.

[LawLady]

I really don't like to talk about grades.  One of my close friends is a real weirdo about them, and keeps trying to ask me about mine.  He even divulged someone else's grades to me!  When I found out that a girl who kind of irritates me did better than I did, it really irritated me.  Since I didn't do as well as I wanted to this semester, I am avoiding talking about grades with anyone, including my family.  I am just going to work smarter and improve instead of focusing on where I didn't do as well as I would have liked.

[Alamo79]

With my friends who did well, it felt good to say "Yeah, I did pretty well too."  But I made the mistake of asking one of my other friends, who I thought would have done really well because he was one of the most intelligent in-class commentators (although certainly not a gunner), and he said, "Actually, I'm in the bottom quarter."  I felt like such a feminine hygiene product, I've vowed never to bring it up again.

Then, there's responding to all the people who give off the intense "I'm pissed about my grades vibe."  If I had a dollar for every person to whom I've said "Grades are such a terrible estimation of your ability, it's only how well you can BS for 3 hours," I could live off Taco Bell for a month.  At least I believe what I'm telling people.