By Anonymous
Picture this: it’s 4:00 p.m. on a chilly Thursday afternoon in Calgary, and you’re alone in your room. As a 1L starting their second semester, you can hardly even begin to summarise whatever you learned in Foundations II that day, because the countdown to your midterm grades has reached its final hour.
Your group chats have been largely silent all day. It’s almost a pre-mourning moment of respect for all your hard work, which may have not been reflected in your Legislation grade released just the day before. You know your grades won’t be sent for another 60 minutes, so you keep your computer shut and put away, as you’re triggered by every Outlook ding. Seriously, could the CPDO emails not wait another hour?
But then, your phone buzzes. The unthinkable has occurred. Your grades have arrived one whole hour early. Your stomach drops and your breath hitches as you open the email.
The plot twist, however, is that the grades aren’t yours, something that’s clarified by the faculty minutes later.
The Great Grade Mix-up of 2023 was a traumatising moment for every 1L. To this day, some people are unsure if their grades were witnessed by other people.
“The [1L Instagram] chat was flooding with messages,” said one student. “At first, I was confused. And then, honestly, I was completely traumatised. What if someone had seen my grades?”
Although another apology email was sent from the faculty to all 1L students with a grand settlement of a PDF containing their actual marks, some 1Ls were still aggravated.
“I don’t understand why they couldn’t acknowledge it more,” another student stated, “it was really awful.”
Other students were able to derive humour from the entire debacle. “Well, at least I know that person got better grades than me,” one student said with a laugh. “I might even ask them for help in Property this semester!”
One of the leading theories as to how the catastrophe occurred is that grades of people with surnames close to one another in the alphabet, with similar midterm grades, were the ones swapped. According to another student, their grades were almost identical to the student’s with whom they were swapped.
“It was a little less humiliating finding out that [student’s name] pretty much did the same as me. We could truly just commiserate together,” the source stated.
Ultimately, the true heroes were the 1L class, who were able to take this traumatising scenario in stride. According to another source, the students decided to keep all information learned from the debacle anonymous, as to prioritise class morale. So far, rumours of the marks of other people have remained anonymous.
One particularly optimistic student revealed how the shared trauma may have bonded the class. “I think it’s been able to keep us honest and remind us not to develop any crazy superiority complexes. We’re all in this together, and I think it’ll keep egos down before Recruit.”
Although traumatising, humiliating, and at best memorable, the Great Grade Mix-up of 2023 hopefully bonded the 1L class together and will remain in their memories as a funny experience as they navigate their careers.
