excerpted from the Rector’s Chapel remarks, Nov. 29, 2022
This fall will be the first time in a long time that all of you receive end-of-term comments from your teachers to go along with your term grades. This kind of feedback is intended to be both summative – a summary of your performance in that class for the term – and formative, offering you insights into what went well in your performance, what did not go well, and the invaluable coaching your teachers can provide on how to improve your performance and grow – and those two elements are inseparable, improving one’s performance and growing.
On this note, I’d like to offer two thoughts for your consideration this morning.
First, grades are not the measure of any of us. Second, adding value is, in both the short and long run, a more important and relevant measure of success than individual achievement alone can offer.
The information you will get tomorrow on your individual performance in your fall term courses is important. Grades matter for good reasons. They can measure progress, learning, the development of skills, understanding and knowledge. You need all three – skills, understanding and knowledge — as you equip yourself to pursue your interests, passions and callings. The grades can also measure how much you engaged, how hard you worked, how well you prepared. All important, in terms of your growth as a student and as a person. And while all of those elements are important and definitely add up, the actual measure of you is so much more than those grades.
Over my almost 40 years in schools, now, I have written and read probably hundreds of thousands of comments on students’ work in my courses and in the courses of my colleagues — and in athletics, arts, service, dorm, all elements of life in a community like ours. As a college counselor years ago, I wrote hundreds of school recommendations, and one of the best parts of the fall for me is getting to read each Sixth Former’s college recommendation. These letters spend some time on academic achievement — grades, scores — but then focus almost entirely on everything else a student does to contribute to the learning and lives and excellent experiences of other people. Why? Because how a student adds value is incredibly important to a college reader who has many applicants with great grades but significantly fewer with great values, who add value. Think about it for a minute. Who would you want in your class, the person focused solely on their own grades or the person who does the work but is motivated by curiosity and the group endeavor? Who would you want on your team, in your cast, in your band – the person concerned about individual stats and playing time or the person willing to do anything needed, fully committed to the group’s success? … The real measure of a student comes across in the value they add to the class, to the joint enterprise of learning, to the progress the group makes. That’s the work that life requires of us — that our individual success adds value to our joint work together and to the lives of the people and the communities around us. While we can all agree that being good at school is a great goal, I hope we can all understand that the ultimate goal of your education is learning to be good at life. Adding value presupposes individual success, but it also speaks to someone who understands that succeeding in the task at hand is only a step along the way to a greater goal — someone whose values stretch beyond individual success into that “greater good” we’re re-focusing on this year.
For someone who had an antagonistic relationship with grades and indeed, with school, the scientist Albert Einstein surely turned out to be good at life. On this particular point, Einstein offered this advice:
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.”
In our parlance, a person of value will give more than they receive. Becoming a person of value presumes individual success but doesn’t stop there, isn’t satisfied so easily, doesn’t stop with self-satisfaction or even worse, with arrogance at feeling “better than.” A person of success might qualify as a celebrity because of that success, that fixation on their own success, and so indeed “get more out of life than they put in.” But selfish people are hard to admire and even harder to love, aren’t they? And sooner or later, a person of success who is only interested in their own success becomes irrelevant and obsolete, a bore and a burden to others who understand that we achieve more when we work together and that it feels great being part of something larger, something meaningful, something of lasting value.
We all know many, many people of success. But who are the “people of value” in your life? Who fulfills not only their own responsibility but also supports others at the same time? Who does more than their fair share in the classroom, in rehearsal, at practice, during games and matches and performances and meets and races, to make everyone else’s efforts more successful? Who gives more than they take? Being a person of value carries with it its own kind of celebrity, but it is probably not the one that grabs notoriety or provokes media or social media outrage. It’s called trust, love, confidence, admiration, gratitude, loyalty. It’s how we feel well and connected and known and needed. It’s what we’re after, what we all need and want.
How do you know if you are becoming a “person of value” and not just a “person of success?” Tomorrow, sure, look at your grades, but read your teachers’ comments and read them hard. Do you come prepared and ready to advance the class’s work? Do you ask questions that encourage curiosity and discussion, not just showing off what you know or satisfying your own individual interest? Do you treat others with respect, listen all the way through what someone else wants to say, share the air and show that you consider and value others’ perspectives as well as your own? Are you attentive; focused; engaged and engaging with others and with ideas? Are you curious or do you just want to know what will be on the next assessment? Do you come across as more focused on your own achievement than interested in the class’ learning experience? One of the most important principles in the way we organize our academic lives here is the small number of students per class, not to create a specialized or individualized “delivery-of-learning” experience for each student but to encourage the kinds of active engagement, perseverance and participation that connect people in learning, in work and in life.
Read those comments hard, and talk them through with your family and your adviser. Your teachers’ comments will help you understand yourself as a learner and as a student far more than focusing simply on your grades. Your teachers’ comments will also help you understand how others experience you and allow you to make some important choices about yourself, your motivation, and your performance. Talk them through. Think them through. Make some good choices about your priorities, what you value and what you want to give as well as what you want to get out of your experience here this term. And get excited about the turning of the page and the fresh start this beautiful winter morning offers us all.