“I need this ‘B’.”  Sarah’s voice is plaintive.  “If I don’t get an ‘B’ in this class this quarter, I can’t get an ‘A minus’ for the semester, and then my grade point average won’t be good enough for three of the colleges I’m applying to.”

“Well, I understand what you want, and why you want it, but the real question is whether an ‘B’ is an appropriate grade for you.  Just looking at the grade summary, it doesn’t look like it to me.”

We have the sheet in front of us, along with five contracts that she completed this quarter, and it’s clear that her work has been inconsistent.  

“Sarah, your work has gotten much better in every way over the past month.  You did more work, you did more of it on time, and your test scores were better, too.  Why is that?  What were you doing differently?” 

“Those middle two contracts were during YAMO (a theatrical production), and I was on the crew and put in a huge amount of time.  Towards the end, I wouldn’t get home until 10PM, and I wouldn’t have enough energy to do all my work.”

“And after that, you were able to get more work done for class?”

“Much more.”

“But even then, there’s room for improvement.  Looking at these last two contracts, you did exactly the minimum required.  Your test scores improved, but not as much as they might.

“The fact that there’s a trend in your work gives us some flexibility in interpreting what an appropriate grade might be.  Talk to me about this quarter and what you think you might be able to do better next quarter.”

“For one thing, I know I can’t put that much time into an outside activity and still get good grades.  Physics isn’t the only place where I lost ground.”

“Okay, but aside from your outside commitments, what have you learned about your work habits that will help you be more effective this quarter?”

“It took a while, but I realized that I save homework for the last thing I do before going to bed pretty much every day.  A lot of times, I’m so tired that I give up before I can do everything I need to.”

“So what could you do differently?”

“Obviously, doing homework sooner in the day would be better.  It should be possible to do some of it, maybe most of it, before I start texting friends or getting online.”

“You know, I have a similar problem.  When I get home from work, I like to dive straight into reading the paper, and when there are bills to pay or errands to run, they often get pushed back and sometimes I just don’t get around to doing them.  So just like your idea, I started by doing the things I have to do before anything else, and I think of the paper as a reward for taking care of business.”

“A reward.  That sounds like it might work.”

“And one more detail that’s worth thinking about is that you consistently do well on your conceptual tests, but your skills tests are pretty erratic.  Any thoughts on that?”

“Sometimes I just don’t have enough time at the end of the contract to do enough practicing.”

“So one improvement might be to figuring out earlier in the contract what you still need to practice.  That would give you more time.  Does that seem plausible to you?”

“Yeah, I can do that.  I know when I’m having difficulties, I just need to get to the review problem sets right away rather than waiting til the end of the contract.”

“Okay, so back to your grade.  What if we were to call this quarter a ‘B’ so that you are within striking distance of the grade you want.  But in order to make that legitimate, let’s say that it’s contingent on your improving in the ways we are talking about here.  That will give you some additional incentive to do the things you need to to be more successful.

If you aren’t able to work more effectively, your grade for the second quarter will probably look a lot like this one, and the semester grade you’re after won’t be possible in any case.  In order to raise your semester grade to an ‘A minus’, you will have to have a solid ‘A’ for both the second quarter and the exam.  Do you think you can do that?”

“I do.”

“I do, too.  So we’re leaving the door open.  We’re anticipating a trend.  Does that make sense?”

“Definitely.”

“So we have a plan?”

“We do.”

I write down comments summarizing what Sarah has said she’ll work on, and we both sign off on the grade summary.  She’s clearly happy with the outcome, and motivated to improve.