In our modern society, anything less than the most extreme positive comment has become damning with faint praise. I was talking to a girl a while ago and she asked me what I thought of one of her friends. I said, "she's cute" (which I sincerely meant) and her response was one of near-indignation, as if I'd just implied that she was horribly ugly. This occurrence illustrates a concept I call "compliment inflation," an idea that can be easily applied to other aspects of life.

Many practitioners of the arts of all kinds-musicians, artists, writers, actors-feel like they've been harshly criticized unless their work is hailed as "genius" or "amazing." "American Idol" is a great example of this-just one viewing of any of the early audition episodes yields a parade of mediocre (or worse) performers experiencing the shock of being called exactly what they are: mediocre or worse.

At nearly all top colleges the F is long-dead, the D is now extinct and the C is a dying species. In most cases in most departments, mediocre work gets you a B+, competence an A- and anything from above average to amazing is an A. In some departments (naming them would make great fodder for another column) this modicum of some sort of hierarchy of quality of work has disappeared completely, with the grades often simply ranging from A- to A. Amherst isn't even close to the worst offender in this regard; one need only look at some other top schools (Brown and Wesleyan Universities, in particular) to see examples of far worse inflation, with Wesleyan professors doling out A+'s now in large quantities. Also problematic is that this condition is self-enforcing: As long as students are graduating with inflated G.P.A.s and employers and graduate schools are aware of this inflation, it would be a disservice to students for a college to just suddenly start unilaterally de-inflating their grading systems.

Perhaps the worst part of this new trend is how it is being used to poison the minds of children, who are raised with the idea that they are the next Mozart, Nureyev, Renoir, Stanislavski, Ford or other public genius. At some point these notions will have to be shattered, and the emotional impact on an individual who has been raised to believe that they are a future giant of civilization will be immense indeed. To some extent, we are now living in an even more extreme version of the community of Lake Wobegon; no longer is everyone above average, in fact, everyone is better than everyone else.

To anyone who agrees with what I'm saying, I encourage you to take personal action against this horrifying trend. Each day, try to tell a hack actor that he sucks, a bad singer that he has no future, not even as an "American Idol," a teenage poet that he is pretentious and annoying and just in general crush the dreams of those with inflated senses of self-worth. Or at least stop calling people geniuses so often, please.

And finally, note that writing a letter to the editor saying, "I'll take the first step, Andrew Moin '05 is a bad writer" doesn't make you witty, it just makes you a tool. My sister thought of that one about five minutes after reading a rough draft of this column.