#1: The Law of fear and Loathing

This is Harvard, after all--where every eager applicant is ranked on a 1600-point scale, a first-year's self-esteem depends on his Expos grade and a senior's life revolves around her thesis evaluation. Grades, scores and marks assume mythical proportions: a student poet has even posted an ode to the SAT on the Lamont Poetry Board, bragging, "I got a 1560."

Cross this grade-madness with a vigorous species of Ivy-League megalomania and you get an ugly hybrid: the B+ blues.

"I hate it. I hate getting a B+. For me, it means I've done nothing particularly worthwhile," growls Nathan E. Lump '96, who says he's trying to "break the B+ barrier." Mourns Michael B. Smith '97, "It's so darn close to an A." Some even refuse to discuss the issue. Just ask Iris Y. Carrillo '96 to say something about the B+. "No," she'll retort. "It depresses me." Others tell stories of near tragedy. "A friend of mine got a B+ on an essay, and he was almost suicidal," says Hanna M. Pasula '96. "I thought he was overreacting slightly."

Sharon L. Kunde '96 says her first year left her painfully sensitized to B+. "I just remember in expos, when I got my B+. I had been crushed on my first paper, and I basically wrenched two pretty good papers out of my soul, or my guts, or something. And then for, like, my final grade conference, [my preceptor] delivered the blow.

"I knew it was coming." Kunde recalls. "I just numbly accepted it... I was left with a vague, unsatisfied aftertaste--sort of a vague defeated feeling."

Professors tend to discount the psychological effects of the B+. "What's happening is that a materialistic concern is being made into a psychodrama," remarks classics professor Gregory Nagy. But according to UHS psychiatrist Dr. Irving M. Allen, grade-anxiety is real. "It's a problem. People... aren't doing as well as they'd like to... You certainly get the impression that Harvard is a pressure cooker." But, Allen warns, victims of the B+ blues "weren't made at Harvard. It long precedes Harvard... [They] come to Harvard full of desire to get A's." Pasula agrees that the B+ blues have deeper psychic origins. "Most people who got [in] here got A's in high school," she explains "So when they get a B+, they get upset, because that's not what they're used to getting."

Then again, there are just naturally cheery souls who don't understand the B+ blues. "I must say personally that I don't see what wrong with it. It's a heck of a lot better than a B," point out Shaun M. Kunisaki '94. "I think Harvard students in general are much too concerned about grades," says Larry E Wilson '96, another angst-avoider. "None of my friends will come out to play because they're working too hard."