It should come as no secret to anyone who has taken a gander at the editorial page in recent weeks that the proposed grading scale change is something of a hot button issue in this county.

Those who would move to have the current scale used by the Powhatan County School System changed to a more forgiving one are no doubt waiting eagerly for the School Board to take up the issue, which is projected to happen this summer.

The issue has already generated as many letters on these pages as any that I have encountered since taking over as editor last December. The ongoing litter problem may be a close second, but I digress.

One of the letters we received last week, which I hope you had a chance to read, contained a well-thought-out, very articulate argument in favor of the grading scale change by a young woman at Powhatan High School.

Most of the people I have talked to, as this student did, have pointed out the unfairness of the situation, and how a higher grading scale puts children in our county at such a disadvantage.

Ok, sure. As the young woman noted last week, having a B average will probably put you behind a candidate with a perfect A average in the running for acceptance at an Ivy League school.

What I am hoping does not get lost in all this talk of unfairness, and how the college acceptance rates of our students are being jeopardized, is what many of our students are going to find once they get to college, or better yet, when they get out into that proverbial real world.

They will face unfairness again, I can just about guarantee it. Once they get to college, their work may not be recognized for its brilliance. Once they graduate, they may lose out on a job they desperately want because one of the other, less qualified, applicants was the hiring manager’s second cousin. Unpalatable? Yes. Unfair? Sure. But it happens.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to make everything fair; I’m saying we’ll never actually reach that goal.

The truest measure of success, in this humble editor’s opinion, is the determination and grace you display when facing obstacles, regardless of how fair or unfair the playing field is. Blaming the fact that you did not succeed on the fact that you had to work harder is missing the point. If we do not instill that in our children, we are failing them.

By no means am I saying don’t fight unfairness. If people threw up their hands every time something was deemed unfair we would not have had a Civil Rights movement. There would be no child labor laws. For all I know we’d still be burning witches at the stake if no one ever stood up and said, ‘wait a minute…there is something wrong here.’

But if you wait for everything in life to be fair, or factor it into becoming a success, you may be waiting quite a while.