Confession: Four years ago, at exactly this time of year, I was failing my high school journalism class. Literally – I had about an 8 percent. I was into Medill and slumping hard; I had four years ahead of me at what was supposed to be the best undergraduate journalism school in the country, and would receive a degree that would one day get me the best jobs in the field.

I ended up with a D- in the class that term, and though it was the lowest grade I’ve ever received, I’m far from a straight-A student. My GPA hovers somewhere in the 3.5s; my parents only ask about my grades when it comes up in conversation; I’ve always been too proud to grovel with professors and niggle over petty points.

So it was with shame and a bad taste in my mouth that I found myself quibbling with my Winter Quarter art TA last week about the difference between a B and a B+, and this week questioning Dean Weimer about a C that I was handed arbitrarily and without warning by a visiting fiction professor last spring.

Here’s the thing: I’ve always been told that in journalism, it’s my writing, not my grades, that will matter. And it’s true – no journalism job I’ve applied for has asked for my GPA. But four years ago, no one told me I might have to apply outside the field.

So in the last months of senior year I’m trying to muster every weapon I can to prepare for an unfamiliar and unpredictable job market. I added a last-minute minor and I’m clinging tightly to every lousy grade point. It’s not just me going grade grubbing. Northwestern is notoriously competitive; my psychology professor delays posting final exam grades precisely to reduce the window students have to complain.

Assistant Dean Mark Sheldon said he’s seen students who, under economic stress, are striving for higher grades as a way to prove the value of their education. Dianne Siekmann, the associate director for NU Employer Services, said, “You don’t know what to worry about and when people are in a situation where they are either experiencing or perceiving that they are having trouble getting a job, you try to look for ‘what can I change?'”

But what, after all, does a third of a grade matter? Throughout college that 3.6 cumulative GPA has always been frustratingly just out of reach, but it’s no glass ceiling. “Above a 3 nobody really thinks about it,” Siekmann said of the employers she has spoken with. At most, she said, in a market with fewer opportunities and more applicants, GPA is “maybe my sixth characteristic” employers consider.

At the Medill résumé workshops I’ve attended, students are instructed not to put their GPA on their resume unless it’s at least a 3.7, so I’ve always left mine off.

“If you’re a graduating student, your GPA is what it is – you don’t apologize for it,” Siekmann said. “When you write that cover letter and when you introduce yourself to them you present that whole package.”

To Sheldon, a GPA means “consistency, work ethic and maybe a little intelligence … a 3.5 passes that test.”

My grubbing pleas after all came to naught. I’ll be looking for a job armed with some As, a bunch of Bs and a C.

Medill senior Jen Wieczner can be reached at [email protected].