Happily, it is difficult to generalize too widely about “Duke students”—all 6,000 or so undergraduates at this University are not somehow knowable as one blue-clad mass. But there is one thing that isn’t really up for debate: Around here, we tend to think a lot about grades.

Which is often talked about as if it were a problem. Is it a problem? And is it solvable? I may have this all wrong, but here are my thoughts.

It seems that there are some relatively unimpressive reasons for our concern about our grades.

In many cases, Blue Devils have grown up as prototypical achievers and competitors, hungrily seeking validation and definable success—I’ve been there. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with receiving plaudits from teachers, friends and parents, it would be a mistake to live one’s life devoted entirely to approval. I’m sure you already know this, but if you don’t, watch “The Good Shepherd”: It will be one of the few times you’ll be really happy not to be Matt Damon.

But there’s also a damn good reason for caring about one’s grades: they can actually, you know, affect stuff.

You may not like it but, by gum, you know it: the grades you receive here will help determine the sort of employment you can obtain after college, the graduate schools you can attend, even—as in the case of pre-medical students—what type of profession you’ll be able to pursue. If you want to be a Rhodes Scholar like William Jefferson Clinton or Kris Kristofferson (for real—Google it), you’ll need the grades to back up your big talk, bub.

So, for any number of understandable (if occasionally immature) reasons, we often place grades at the top of our worry list. This prioritization may well be a bit of a problem, or at least it has the potential to be.

Bah! “Potential”?, you say. Students place so much value on grades these days, and prioritize them so highly, that it’s nearly impossible to prevent concerns about grades from getting in the way of actual learning! We’ve got a grade-grubbing culture that rewards the hyper-pragmatic pursuit of A’s. At a University with a strong liberal arts vein, we should be seeking to create erudite minds capable of thinking beyond the final letter that pops up on ACES  when the semester ends. It’s a disaster!

I don’t know who you are, but you make some compelling points, Mr. Straw Man.

It is indeed possible for students to idolize grades to the point where anxiety about GPA becomes an obstacle to intellectual growth. As Mark Twain would have it, we risk making the mistake of letting “schooling” get in the way of education.

Ok, full disclosure: At times, I have obsessed about grades. At such moments, I would have been willing to sacrifice not only learning but quite possibly my little finger to get an “A” in a class about which I was worried. Forgive me, Mark, for I have sinned.

My mistake was, not surprisingly, one of immaturity. When those hazes have come over me, the fault has been my own: I just couldn’t let go of my immature need to be fully validated by… everyone and everything. It was a disaster, Mr. Straw Man, but it was a disaster of my own making.

I was guilty of letting grades stop functioning as a tool—a means to an end. I failed to confidently set my own agenda. Instead, I foolishly let grades become an end unto themselves.

That is to say, if I’ve made it my life-goal to be a Rhodes Scholar (I have not), then yeah, grades will be significant, and I should treat them as what they are: an important means towards my chosen end. Fine. But, if I want to work as a shepherd on an alpaca ranch (this sounds more like the real me), then that’s my prerogative, and grades are less an important means to getting there than, say, learning how to speak various Inca dialects. There’s a vast middle ground between scholar and rancher, but you get the idea.

There is no commissar hovering over us demanding that we worry too much about grades, or that we allow them to be anything other than one part of our complex educational experience. Grades exist, they serve a purpose and they can be valuable. But, they can nefariously take hold in our minds as something more than what they are—an imperfect method of assessment that imperfectly attempts to describe some of our actions. And if we ascribe more significance to them than they deserve, then we lose.

Happily, we can’t be beaten by anyone but ourselves.

Connor Southard is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every Monday.