Tuesday, May 29, 2012

How are your grades?

When I was in school, my mom and I worked out a deal: at report-card time, I would either be paid or fined for my grades. A C was breaking even, As and Bs received cold hard cash, and Ds or Fs would result in fines... usually I walked away with $60 or so, but I'll bet I could have negotiated a bonus if I got straight As.

Anyway, this whole concept of the Base Acceptable Minimum got me thinking about that whole grading system thing, and how the money didn't really motivate me to do anything more... but now that I'm older being able to chart my progress and see where I am and what could be improved or how I can more accurately track myself. (The whole concept of tracking has really impacted me in my pursuit of self-employment.) So, I developed a grading system for how much and what types of work I'm doing.

I earn a C for doing the base that is expected of my by my family: paying my bills. I don't get any extra rewards for that, aside from the knowledge that I'm not going to have to ask the Schmoogie to bail me out on a couple of things. For more forward momentum, I earn a B, and by being an absolute rockstar in June, I get an A. Am I setting that bar too high? I mean, for what I want, it didn't seem like too high a bar when I set it.

Anyway, I shared the tracking/grading sheet thing with my director, and I'll see what her feedback is and if she thinks there's anything that needs adjusting. 

Oh, and the weekend was great... how was yours?

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