I’ve decided that perhaps grades are irrelevant. While it depends what purpose a grade holds in your life, for example maintaining a scholarship or personal fulfillment, for me I have decided its not the point in my study abroad. This decision has come from several different places, but I think it happened while I was in a car with strangers.
In Spain they have this wonderful website called Blablacar, which is similar to rideshare, and its one of the fastest and cheapest ways to travel depending on where you are headed. I was on my way to Alicante with my driver and a few other passengers and no one spoke English. I am not typically shy when speaking with strangers and we had managed to piece together some conversation about where everyone was headed and where we were all from. After some time, the trip to Alicante takes six hours by car, the people in my blablacar said that I spoke Spanish well. I was completely surprised and secretly thrilled. Just a day before I had received a failing grade on a Spanish composition and it felt like I had been stumbling through the conversations in the car.
I am not sure they would have given me the same compliment after a few more hours of challenging conversation in Spanish, but I noticed a shift in myself. I was more relaxed and begun to follow the conversation better. And later with my host family I even felt like I was contributing more to conversation as well. However, in class I still feel that I struggle to make a coherent sentence. So I’ve decided that I can love my classes and do my best, but that grades just aren’t the point of me being here. Or maybe a better way to say it is that grades aren’t what I feel I need to get out of studying abroad. There’s a lot to be learned and a lot of different ways to do it.