Disclaimer: The following article is satirical, and meant to be a humorous and exaggerated expression of perspectives of campus culture for entertainment purposes. This article is not intended to offend readers or stoke controversy.

Do Good Grades really matter for courses that do not count toward our major? Well, that is a complicated question, right? The answer should be of course not. One may think that taking those other courses is a complete waste of time and energy but that brings us to the question: What is the point of learning stuff that we will not need to apply in our real lives? Who cares if I get a C in my pottery class which I am taking just for fun or I am taking it because I love the self-accomplishment that comes with finishing the complete product? It is not like my prospective employer will care either so rather than focusing on doing great in that class, I should focus on having fun after a long day of major requirement classes. 

Some people are free to disagree with me but, “Hey man, I am just being realistic and is it so wrong to think practically?”

Let me give you a small scenario to further explain my point: Imagine ten years from now, you were a Political Science and Economics double major back in college, and now you are a successful lawyer who just won a major case in court. You go back home and you stumble upon a picture from your past pottery class. It is a picture of you holding your finished product with a big smile on your face. It brings you immediate joy seeing that smile on your face but you recall that behind your smile was fear and apprehension of failing the class and tanking your overall GPA. Oh, boy. That’s a rabbit hole down there. Your very happy day becomes stressful. You may start wondering about a  thousand other things instead of celebrating your victory. There starts your quarter-life crisis. You will start thinking about whether Law is really the profession for you. Why are you not getting married when everyone in your friend group is happily engaged or committed to a serious relationship? What about you? You are doing the same old, maybe boring, route of drinking wine alone on your couch rewatching Friends for the millionth time? Let’s stop here before you are completely lost in the rabbit hole of your failures which might not be failures and come back to the main point. Why did you even fall down this rabbit hole in the first place? Did you find your old elective picture? Because instead of enjoying the fun elective back in your sophomore year, you worried about the various ways in which getting a C in that class will affect your career. Well, look at that scenario we present now! Did it affect your career? No. But are you still worried? Yes. 

Now imagine an alternate reality where you were actually focused on having a good time in that class and you did have a fun time! That is very important in my story. How would your victorious day look like when you found that picture? Seems happy and peaceful to me. I know as humans we can find a number of reasons to push ourselves down that rabbit hole but let me tell you, you won’t fall down the rabbit hole due to your fun elective at least. Phew! Did any of that make any sense to you? If it did, congratulations! If it didn’t, you still have some time. This is just a warning guys from my end. It is up to you what you want to do. We really need to give some serious thought to what might happen if we focus too much on courses that will not really be useful to us later 🙂 

My conclusion is choosing to focus on good grades for courses in our major will determine if we get our dream job. But for the other “not required” courses, have fun with it! It is your only chance to do so and if you really really want to be at peace with college life and life after college, PLEASE stop worrying about courses that do not count toward your major. A considerable amount of effort toward them will just be fine. But hello there, at least you’ll have a great GPA in your major courses. And isn’t that what really matters? In the long run.