Flashes of Panic

I discovered last week that I got an unexpectedly high grade in a course I’d thought I was struggling in: A- instead of the expected B- or C.

Other grad students have pointed out that, while high school grades can be expected to indicate how you’ll do in college, and college grades can be expected to indicate how you’ll do in grad school, grad school grades don’t really indicate much other than how you are doing. So I’m not taking those too seriously. More pleasant is the letter I got this past weekend:

The Computer Science Department conducts an annual review of all graduate student [sic] to ensure that each student is satisfactorily progressing towards his or her degree.

You are making fine progress toward your degree.

[Glowing praise of my TA work]

We will continue to fund you next year through a graduate assistantship.

What higher praise is there than, “We’ll keep paying you”?