by Madeline Best
During their sophomore year, a small group of seniors decided to share their PowerSchool passwords with each other as a way of checking up on each other’s grades. Weekly, they would calculate their GPAs and type them in a shared Google Doc. The idea of sharing this information with friends would scare a majority of students, so why did these girls decide to?
When senior Shelby Hawkins first suggested this idea, a few fellow seniors like Emily Cosgrove and Madison Fitzgerald were on board, while some like Abbey Haines decided to not participate.
“I’ve never actually shared my Moodle or PowerSchool password with anyone,” Haines said. “As such, I don’t know anybody else’s either. Most of my friends participated in the password-sharing, but I never felt comfortable with it. Instead, so I could still keep updated with everyone else, we had a Google Doc where several girls would periodically, weekly maybe, update our GPA.”
In the end, maintaining privacy kept Haines from sharing her password.
“I decided not to share my password because it is private to me,” Haines said. “I was okay telling my friends my GPA if they told me theirs because I had control over telling them. I wasn’t comfortable knowing they could log into my PowerSchool or Moodle account if I gave them my password.”
For students like Hawkins, sharing passwords helped her work harder at maintaining her own grades.
“My friends’ grades motivate me to work harder in classes,” Hawkins said. “In a way, seeing a friend with a 100% or 99% shows me it’s possible and helps me set goals for myself. I can also use my friends’ PowerSchool accounts as a reference for who I should study with or who could help me improve my grades in a class.”
Even though teachers at STA are unaware of password-sharing according to Fitzgerald, the girls’ parents not only know about it but are also on board with the idea.
“My mom will ask me if I know what certain friends got on a recent essay or project,” Hawkins said. “Since she doesn’t know what my classes are really like day-to-day, hearing how my friends did on an assignment gives her a frame of reference for my grades.”
“My parents didn’t make a big deal out of it,” Fitzgerald said. “It was a way to push each other to do our best, and I think that’s how they saw it as well.”
Hawkins said that she doesn’t always receive positive feedback from other students.
“Usually other students react like we’re crazy,” Hawkins said. “Most students think we’ll be too competitive or too hard on ourselves. But the people I share passwords with all use this as motivation, not a self-standard.”
Even though the girls have access to each other’s grades, they never confront each other about a bad test score.
“We’ve all had the experience of a bad test day or an assignment we just couldn’t finish in time, so there’s no need to bring up a low grade to each other,” Hawkins said.
The days of comparing GPAs ended for the girls sometime during their junior year, but the benefits of learning how to strive for a better grade have had lasting effects.
