Grades

My first semester in college I had an option to opt out of college algegra
but I went ahead and took it anyway -- I'd been out of high school a
couple of years and thought I could use the review plus thought it would
be an easy grade.

Pretty early in the course I figured out I didn't need to go to class,
just show up for the exams. So I did that. I wasn't making an A, a B or
C, but that was fine with me.

The final was all stuff from the last two weeks of class that I'd never
seen in my life. We hadn't covered it in high school. I made a zero on
the final.

F

The next semester I went to class, did my homework. Made an A.

The A did not replace the F in the transcript. Forty years later that F
is still on my LSU transcript. It never caused me to not get a job and
never caused a problem with admission to graduate school. It just made no
difference at all to my life. And although I have met women who wouldn't
sleep with me, it was never because of a grade I made in college algebra
in fall 1969.

I did learn something about figuring out what's actually important though.