5 Tips for Dealing with a Bad Grade

There is so much anticipation from getting your grades back. Whether it’s for a test, an essay, or a simple worksheet, figuring out how you did can be daunting.

Your heart beats loudly in your chest and you take a deep breath before you peek at your score. Seeing an unsatisfactory mark—whatever that may be for you—is disappointing. You may have studied really hard, or maybe you procrastinated. Either way, getting a bad grade is never fun. You begin to doubt yourself, compare yourself to your friends, and maybe even shed a tear.

School is stressful enough. With so much pressure to do well, a bad grade can easily turn your day sour. But it doesn’t have to... you can move on and learn. And plan to do better next time.

Photo by Bernd Klutsch on Unsplash

1. Take time to process

People will often tell you to just “let it go,” dismissing the bad grade and encouraging you to do better next time. And though there is value in that, it’s first important to take time to process it. It’s okay to feel all the emotions you’re feeling right now: whether it be disappointment, sadness, or anger. If you need to cry, then do so. If you just need a minute alone, then take it.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should wallow in those emotions for too long or act out your emotions in negative ways. But it is okay to simply feel. It’s okay to feel frustrated especially if you’ve worked hard on the assignment. Feeling bad is a symptom of receiving a bad grade. Once you understand your emotions, you can use it and channel that same energy to determine your next moves.

2. Take a deep breath and take a step back

Once you take the time to feel, to vent, to cry, or to do whatever you needed to do, it’s time to take a step back. Wallowing in an emotion for too long won’t do you any good. Take a deep breath and realize you did your best and your grades are no longer in your control; there’s nothing more you can do to change the results.

Now is the time to “let go” and get your mind off of the grade. Go on a walk, watch a movie or read a book, or hangout with your friends and family. Realize that bad grades happen to everyone, so don’t be so hard on yourself. No one is perfect.

3. Look over your work & evaluate

Once your head is clear and you can look back at your grade without feeling frustrated and sad, you can begin to see and evaluate the mistakes you made. It’s not going to be easy to see the red marks, but knowing what and why you got points deducted can help you in the long run. Identifying the areas where you’ve made mistakes in can help inform your studies, like which topics you need to study more of and which ones you don’t.

💡 Ask a friend or teacher: if there’s a problem you can’t seem to understand why you got incorrect, ask for help. Your teachers and mentors are your resources. They are there to help you and they want to see you succeed.

A bad grade can feel like a bad fall, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay down. You can learn from your mistakes and get up to try again. The important part is to get up and keep moving. Don’t let one bad grade stop you from continuing to work hard and trying your best.

💡 When you’re looking over your work, see the parts you got correct as well! It could be a great confidence boost as you’re learning from the ones you got wrong.

Photo by Estúdio Bloom on Unsplash

4. Make a plan so you don’t make the same mistakes twice

Once you identify which questions, problems, or areas you got incorrect in your work, make a plan for how you can improve. If, for example, the majority of the questions you got incorrect on are about quadratics, then make a plan to revisit that section in your studies. This way, the next time you encounter another test question on quadratics, you will be prepared.

Channel your emotions to fuel your motivation to continue working harder and preparing for the next assignment or assessment. And just continue doing your best.

5. You are not your grades

We’ve all heard people say that grades are “just a number.” And it’s true. You may not feel like it because maybe your college acceptance or career could depend on it. But at the end of the day, your grades should not define who you are. The reason we get so upset over a bad grade is because we’ve become so accustomed to tying our identities so closely to our grades. We think that if we get a bad grade, it somehow means we, too, are not good enough.

But that is the farthest thing from the truth.

Ask yourself: “What do I want people to remember me for?”

Did you answer: “All the A’s I got in my maths class” ; “My 4.0 GPA” ; “When I aced the history exam”?

Probably not. We want people to remember us for our kindness, our diligence, our personality.

Yes, grades are important, but they’re not so important than one bad grade should stop you from having fun and enjoying your education. There is so much more to who you are than how well you did in a class.