My palms are sweating so much I’m worried they will stain the notes I’m clinging to. My pounding heart deafens the voices around me and I am so nauseous it feels like my stomach is digesting itself. No, I’m not being questioned by the FBI. I’m sitting in the middle of a graded Socratic Seminar.

The pressure mounts with five minutes left in class and the discussion winding down. Mustering all my courage, I blurt out a five-word comment to best the bell and secure myself a C. Grading Socratic Seminars is ridiculous. It puts students under an ungodly amount of pressure.

Of course, Socratic Seminars can help students by forcing them to listen to and develop ideas. However, graded seminars don’t only challenge students. Teachers can find grading seminars tricky since it can be subjective. Also, tracking how many times each student speaks isn’t fair because some kids repeat the same idea while I may speak once with a thought I spent an hour on, and I’m the one with a C. It’s the same as grading an essay based on the number of sentences it has.

Grading Socratic Seminars is not beneficial to many students either. Kids like me can’t focus on the discussion while talkative classmates dominate the conversation. They cannot possibly hear any new ideas over the sound of their own voices, defeating the purpose of the seminar.

However, I can focus when the grade is gone. The pressure vanishes, and I can learn from listening to the conversation, which is a form of participation in its own right.

Also, without pressure I can actually speak more. For example, my eighth grade social studies teacher allowed me to write an essay to take the place of a seminar grade, but I still sat in the seminar. I ended up speaking several times because I felt so strongly about the topic and wasn’t worried about my grade. As long as they’re not graded, Socratic Seminars can be effective by talking over texts or listening to what peers think. However, learning cannot happen when students are so worried they can’t focus. For this reason, Socratic Seminars place too much pressure on introverted students who panic at the thought of public speaking. Typically, Socratic Seminars are used to try to break these students out of their shells. Introversion is not a disease. It cannot be cured and it’s not wrong. Graded Socratic Seminars tend to hurt introverts more than help.

Some students view seminars as an easy A and love them, but for me and other quiet students, graded Socratic Seminars provide so much pressure that our otherwise active minds shut down and all we’re left with is a pile of sweat-stained notes.