At one point last Sunday, somewhere between hydrating away a mysterious headache and shooting rifles at an old pharmacological textbook with my two best friends from high school, it occurred to me that I should probably be doing more to earn my Duke degree. This kind of thought never troubled me during the sleepless weeks preceding finals, or during the numb hours I spent in K-Ville. But I suppose that a few weeks of summer idleness (I will be in summer school a few weeks from now, thank you) have gotten to me: I feel like a bit of a fraud.

For me, the slings and arrows of self-accused fraudulence have always left me with an oddly anodyne feeling that falls somewhere between extreme smugness and liberal guilt: "There he goes, gaming the system again!" This followed by, "Why don't you be less of a selfish idiot, idiot? Honesty is the best." Most of the time, I can silence the second voice by putting on a little N.W.A. But this most recent bout of fraud-mania reared its head at a time when I was particularly vulnerable to accusations of wasted time and too-easy privilege, because I'm still a bit uneasy about my grades from last semester.

Two semesters into my Duke education, I've managed to get what we'll call Pretty Good Grades. Of course, most of us can say as much at a time when the mean GPA at Duke is 3.44, meaning that we are all children of Lake Wobegone; above average, even if we're not especially good-looking.

And it's a good thing, too. I think the one fact we managed to really hash out in the course of all those long hours in the Wilson common room-other than the fact that Kyle Singler is an underrated on-ball defender-is that grades have a mystical level of influence over our future lives, almost as if we are currently in the process of getting a series of powerful and significant runes tattooed on our furrowed foreheads. "Walk uneasy, ye who do not respect the Grade!"

I do respect the Grade (my mother wants me to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer or maybe an astronaut), and so I was a bit worried that a second semester that was a serious study in frippery, slacking, and all-around tomfoolery could still yield Pretty Good Grades in a slate of classes that, while not quite quantum mechanics and bioengineering, were still a far cry from Bonkistry. I feel like a fraud because I didn't do much to earn my sacred Grades a few months ago, and I'm not doing much now, unless law schools care about a steady hand with a .30-30 Winchester, an underrated legal skill if ever there was one.

To alleviate my sudden insecurities last Sunday, I did what I usually do when I have academic angst: I rushed up from the basement to pester my professor parents. When I loudly asked them about the significance of grades-badly interrupting their breakfast reverie, complete with Grapenuts-there was at first a long, drawn-out pause, and a few Michael-Corleone silent glares thrown my way.

My law professor father broke the silence first: "I give my third year students who work hard mostly 'A's. Because I am confident that they can be attorneys, and I don't want to get in their way. It pisses off some of my colleagues. Don't put this in your column." I nodded sagely. "As for you, you've never shown much interest in any kind of job, so I really wouldn't worry about it." He returned to frowning over David Brooks.

My English professor mother quoted her old mentor, writer George Garrett: "'Give your graduate students high grades, because the world will sort them out soon enough.' Did you feed the dog?" I had fed the dog.

I contemplated these two paradigms for a while-jobs and benevolence. Unbeknownst to my father, I do have designs on some kind of job some day, and I do enjoy a little benevolence.

But, somehow, I wasn't feeling any better. I went out and shot-which always tends to improve things-and brought up the subject with the two aforementioned high school friends, both of whom also get Pretty Good Grades.

While one of them loaded the magazine of a .22 pistol, the other waxed thoughtful: "Connor, the thing to remember about grades is that they don't have universal significance. They just kind of exist. So, are you next on the Winchester, or am I?"

Connor Southard is a Trinity sophomore. His column will run on Thursdays during the summer.