There’s a personality type on display here. If you want to understand where so much of the wokeness is coming from, this is one place to start.
A Harvard report found that grade inflation was a major problem and urged more serious academic standards.
Here’s the response from our future leaders.
Sophie Chumburidze ’29 said the report felt dismissive of students’ hard work and academic struggles.
“The whole entire day, I was crying,” she said. “I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.”
“It just felt soul-crushing,” she added.
Kayta A. Aronson ’29 said stricter standards could take a serious toll on students’ mental health.
“It makes me rethink my decision to come to the school,” she said. “I killed myself all throughout high school to try and get into this school. I was looking forward to being fulfilled by my studies now, rather than being killed by them.”
Zahra Rohaninejad ’29 added that grading already felt harsh and raising standards further would only erode students’ ability to enjoy their classes.
“I can’t reach my maximum level of enjoyment just learning the material because I’m so anxious about the midterm, so anxious about the papers, and because I know it’s so harshly graded,” she said. “If that standard is raised even more, it’s unrealistic to assume that people will enjoy their classes.”
Should studying at a top school make you feel “fulfilled” or reach your “maximum level of enjoyment”?
The purpose of a top school is, in theory, to winnow out the best. In this case it’s the best whiners who respond to any setback by crying and claiming that asking them to work hard threatens their mental health.
(Anyone who says that shouldn’t be in any kind of position of responsibility and hasn’t progressed much beyond childhood.)
Understand that and you understand why so many of our institutions are failures. They’re being run by people like this.
