My grades made no more sense at the end of last year than they did throughout the rest
Last year, I posted a lot about how some of my grades made little sense. Some assignments that I understood or worked hard on got bad grades, and some that I had no idea about turned out very well. Sometimes that was because I missed the point of the brief, and sometimes it was because I underestimated my own bullshitting ability.
This trend didn’t end at the end of last year.
My final two assignments for Integrative Practice last year - for Speculative Design and my academic portfolio (in other words, this blog) - were both A+.
I can’t complain about either grade, of course. I’m very pleased that I got an A+ for my blog because I worked pretty hard trying to update it every day. That got pretty hard to keep up at some points. One day, I forgot about it completely, and I would have missed a post if I hadn’t chucked a backup filler post at the end of my queue just in case. But in the end, I kept it up as long as I said I would, and so I think I deserved a high mark on that (though I think I got higher marks than I deserved on my research).
But I was really surprised to get an A+ for our Speculative Design project - the one where we made a game called Troposphere: The Sky is the Limit. Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty proud of the game, even if it was unfinished. What I didn’t expect was getting high marks for it - I was worried we wouldn’t pass.
I think our trailer and game were quite well made, for what they were. We were pretty inexperienced with gamemaking and didn’t expect to make a total masterpiece, just a playable game with basic platforming mechanics, neat visuals, and few bugs. Our trailer was almost just one big amalgam of the inside jokes we had during development, but it was still fairly well-made.
Thing is, though, I don’t think either thing we made communicated any speculative technologies that well.
I mean, there was some stuff you could maybe infer - the space suit that shoots, the structures orbiting the Earth, glowing projectiles of energy used in weapons - but none of those was ever made explicit, and they’re all incredibly cliche sci-fi tropes.
But we still got an A+. Maybe they interpreted the game/trailer in the context of our blogs, not needing any more explanation. Whatever it was, I guess I should just accept my A+ and move on.
And I guess the moral of the story is that if you try to make something you like and do a good job on that, you’ll probably do pretty well in the end.
