Entry slip Oct 9

 As a student who graduated with an astronomy bachelor's degree, I struggled with grades a lot. I have several instances where I would barely pass a test or a course, and I don't think that is because I wasn't interested in the learning material. I love physics and astronomy, but whenever I am placed in a room with pen and paper, and am asked to write a test, most of my focus shifts from wanting to explore more on the topic to focusing on the materials that will be tested, which narrows my view on the topic. The same goes for projects; if I were to focus on my grades, oftentimes I would be focusing on hitting all the criteria that are worth points rather than being passionate about the project. These make me feel like I wasn't exploring but rather doing target practice with points. However, now that I am a teacher candidate, I am having conflicting views, since, as a teacher, other than allowing students to explore freely, we still need a method to evaluate if the student truly understood the material. Without assigning a grade, it would be extremely hard to gauge where the understanding of the students are at, and it would also be hard to catch misconceptions, which could be catastrophic to a student's learning if it weren't caught early and it snowballs.