Contract Grading + The Anxiety Habit Loop

One of my worst vices as a professor is taking responsibility for my students’ anxieties. In Brené Brown terminology, I tend to overfunction for them: answering questions that they could easily find in the syllabus or one of my handouts, creating systems to remind them of due dates and deadlines, adapting my teaching to account for the extremely high levels of anxiety and overwhelm that seem to be a hallmark of college life in 2023.

My latest foray into trying to alleviate my students’ anxiety has backfired, but not for any reason I could have ever predicted. This semester, I’ve switched from assignments that have points attached and the overall percentage-based grading system to contract grading, where students are evaluated by their adherence to a matrix of expectations (see what it looks like here). Essentially, they are graded based on their efforts rather than by their outcomes. There are research-backed pedagogical reasons for using a contract grading system, but to be honest, I was sick of reading agonizing emails where students either begged for extra credit to make up for lost points, or even worse, directly accused me of sabotaging their future because they were unhappy with their essay grade. Teaching at the college level brings me many delights and joyful moments of inspiration, but the “points” obsession was the energy vampire that sucked me dry of motivation and left me feeling burned out and dreading opening my inbox. 

So, yesterday, when a student came to office hours to tell me that he didn’t like the grading system, my defenses were up. He told me that he had no idea how he was doing in the class. He told me that normally, he would look at his grade to gauge his progress and see what he needed to do in this final stretch of the semester. 

After my initial scritch of resistance that there was anything amiss about my new system that would banish “points obsession” to Beyond The Pale, I recognized: he was right. 

Anxiety is born out of a discomfort with the feeling of uncertainty.  

Evolutionarily-speaking, there is nothing more anxiety-inducing to the human brain than what is clinically referred to as: Not knowing what the fuck is going on. 

But here’s the other thing: Anxiety is a habit loop. 

And my students (and probably you, if you are reading this) are stuck in that habit loop, thinking that there is no alternative. 

One of the best books I read last year was Unwinding Anxiety, by Dr. Judson Brewer and in it, Double Dr. B (he is an MD and PhD) explains that like all habit loops, anxiety is learned, reinforced, and practiced. 

Of course my students are anxious about points and grades. Everything in their academic lives thus far has taught their brains to worry about points, texts, midterms, grades, GPAs, acceptance rates, and future salary projections of various college majors. I’m not exactly going to undo an entire culture that builds anxiety habit loops in students by saying: ‘You know what? I don’t want grade anymore.”

This kind of culture can only be broken by me explaining to the students WHY I’m using this “no points” system: to teach them about intrinsic motivation, to show them the transcendent power of learning, and directly addressing this widely-held yet ultimately false belief that anxiety is a good source of fuel for productive work

In Unwinding Anxiety, Brewer describes his protocol of developing mindfulness awareness of the habit loop of anxiety, surf ing the urges instead of giving into the actions that are driven by the anxiety, and creating new habit loops of intentional practice, including emotion-based habit loops. 

We think we need anxiety to motivate us. But what if we’re just in the habit of using anxiety to fuel our actions? Brewer writes “Simply mapping out habit loops and seeing their lack of value doesn’t magically unwind years and years of entrenchment.” 

It might seem like an unreachable goal in our society of information overwhelm, but it’s possible to be motivated without using worry about the potential negative outcomes to motivate us. It does require us to rewire our brains and choose a new source of fuel for our actions. However, there seems to be quite the menu of appealing options. Instead of using anxiety habit loops to get me to sit down and write this newsletter, I can use curiosity instead. I can use an intentionally cultivated habit loop of feeling curious, or creative, or playful, or irreverent, or determined, or whatever emotion I want to call upon. They all feel quite a bit better than using anxiety. What this takes is a willingness to recognize that the anxiety isn’t necessary. In fact, it might be the thing that’s getting in the way of unleashing our full, unbridled creative potential. 

It requires a leap of faith to break this habit loop, but from where I’m sitting, it’s much more pleasant. 

Pickled Herring Feelings

On my first trip to London, I went to a gastropub known for its avant-garde cuisine. I was traveling with my mom who is not an adventurous eater, but I was determined to find the best food in the burgeoning food scene in central London.

At this gastropub, the atmosphere was cozy, but all I remember is that we were seated in this strange alcove off to the side, like a private dining area, which was the opposite of what I wanted as a 22-year-old traveler on her first night in London, at a fancy restaurant she had researched on ChowHound.com and who was not paying the bill. I ordered a fish dish because I imagined the seafaring English knew how to cook fish, and while I had probably not eaten more pescatarian fare than a tunafish sandwich at that point in my life, I wanted to seem cosmopolitan and refined, and a fish I’d never heard of before seemed the way to go. 

When it arrived, it was a plate of cold pickled herring sprinkled with dill. 

I love dill, but nothing was going to entice me to eat this plate of cold, salty, pickled herring from the North Sea. I felt like a fool. I couldn’t even pretend to eat it. As I am an inveterate optimist, I probably took one, maybe two bites. When the waiter returned, I was deeply embarrassed by my terrible choice in ordering and even more embarrassed that I had made absolutely no progress. He offered to bring me something else, but I was so full of shame that I demurred and went hungry. 

Right now, my life feels like that plate of pickled herring.

I want to say “this is not what I ordered” but the truth is, this is exactly what I ordered. 

Ever since I went to graduate school in my mid-twenties to study education, I had been planning on a career as a community college English professor: teaching composition and literature classes, spending my summers working on curriculum revisions while squeezing in travel and my own creative writing projects. I even went back to graduate school in my late twenties when I needed another degree to secure a tenure-track position.

I’m now a tenured professor, working at a community college near San Francisco, a place where I imagined throughout most of my twenties I would “settle down,” build a community, find a life partner, have a family, maybe even enter the gauntlet of the Bay Area real estate market. No small feat, indeed. I ordered up this life just like I ordered the pickled herring: completely unaware of what I was getting myself into, and too ashamed to admit that it wasn’t what I wanted. That is wasn’t to my taste. 

On that first trip to London, I had a vision that all my research on the ChowHound forums would make me look like I knew my way around London’s culinary map, finding hidden gems and impressing everyone with my sophisticated taste. I held on to that vision throughout the entire trip, steadfastly refusing to admit that I didn’t like cold, Scandinavian specialities or slightly too garlicky pasta or curried lamb shanks that were beyond my threshold for spiciness. 

It’s been almost fifteen years since that first trip to London, and I had many good meals in the Big Smoke since that visit. 

I’m older and hopefully, a bit wiser. Even though this is what I ordered, I think I’m finally able to say to the waiter: Thanks, but this isn't for me.

Can I take another look at the menu?