By: AVA WOFFORD
Staff Writer
It’s nearly the end of the year. During this time it’s complete chaos as people run around trying to get their grades up before the finals and eventually the end. While it might seem impossible to get your grades up now, there is hope however it’ll take some hard work and homework.
The debt snowball method is primarily used to help pull people out of debt, though it can be used with grades as well. In this method, you make a list of all of your grades from the highest grade to the lowest grade. You then proceed to kick out any grades that are a C or higher from the list(you can work on those later when all your grades are up). From there you look at your list and start tackling your highest low grade. To do this you will need to do any and all missing assignments while staying on top of any current work. When that grade is a C you will move on to your next class until you finally reach your lowest grade. By the end, you should have a C or higher in every class. From there you can either stop this method (while still doing all current work in the class) or you can fine-tune your grades in order to get them higher.
The reason this works is because of how the grading system works. You can’t get your grade up in a class by doing only new work and no old work. This is because when new work goes into the system the points add up and put you in the same spot. For example, let’s say that there are currently 300 points in the class and you are at 100(that’s an F), if the teacher were to put a grade in for 75 points and you did the assignment you’d think that grade would look like this, 175/300, but instead it looks like this 175/375. You have not changed your grade, it is still an F and you are in the same place that you started. On the other hand, if you were to do old work that was 75 points then your grade would turn into 175/300, this is because the teacher hasn’t put anything new into the system so the class points haven’t changed.
This method is an amazing way to fix your grades, but it only works if you are willing to put in the time and effort. You dug yourself into a hole and now the only way out is having to work harder than you would have if you had done the work. As long as you try your best and make the effort to follow the debt snowball method your grades should go up in no time.
