Keeping mum on the subject

We just got our Triple III midterms back. The average was quite high and I did just fine. At least to me and to the rest of the class, I thought I did. It was the resulting response from people in my household who think otherwise

Exams that I have now are pass/fail. The point of the exams being pass/fail is that there is so much information that it would be next to impossible to know all of the information and to attempt to know all of it would stress you out. Therefore, having pass/fail helps to relax students that are trying to be really hardcore. That doesn't mean that 50% is the pass mark. For example, the pass mark for this midterm was 65%. So you do end up needing to know more than half of the information. With about 40 lectures to have to study for this midterm, there is a lot of information...just in case anybody had any doubts of how much we are learning.

So after checking my mark out and telling my mom what it was she simply asked me, "And you are happy with that?". I happened to get above class average so in a class of med students I must say that I was pretty damn happy. It was almost as surprising as the comment Tino got from his Student Advisor. I had already spoken to her previously about this very thing. I had already mentioned to her that exams were pass/fail. What is important is not so much your mark, rather if you actually internalize the information (at least this is the propaganda they throw at us). She gave me a similar comment after intro block about my mark. I already told her that I was content to get the marks I was getting. You would think that after already telling her that she would have got it the firstt time. For one thing my GPA was ~ average to the competitive GPA going in so to me that means that I've stayed at the same level. Second of all, I have to work hard for the mark that I got so to get a comment like that sure makes it seem that I need to work just that much harder. FYI, I actually do have to work harder to get the mark that I did compared to undergrad.

So I've always been fairly open in sharing my marks with my parents. I mean it was a good thing to do especially since we live in the same house Now I decided that I'm not going to tell my mom anything. If she can't respect what I'm getting, then she can be left in the dark until she figures it out.