The title of this post refers to the two ways your grade in a class can die.

Death by a thousand paper cuts: Between weekly quizzes and homework assignments, discussion problems, lab reports, cleanliness points, and the ever-popular "participation grade," there are a million ways for you to earn but also lose points. The danger of having a class structured this way is that you tend to ignore the 0.5-point lost here and the 0.75-point lost there, until the law of subtraction catches up with you and suddenly you are out half a letter grade. Examples of this in my academic history include: Chemistry 245, 246 (organic labs), Microbiology 520 (laboratory portion), English 405 (Carmen-based science writing course)

Guillotine: You have two, maybe three, exams in which to prove your mastery of the course content. One of them has just passed. You got a 75. (This situation being PURELY hypothetical, of course.) This happens more the higher your course number. Examples of this include PCMB 432 (Plant Physiology) and Mol Gen 607 (Cell Biology).

Sometimes I wonder why I didn't just major in general biology rather than specialize in molecular genetics. I thought that entomology and plant biology would be horribly boring, but it turns out I need some of those classes for my teacher certification content anyway. Why, why, why. I used to be able to say that I found it fascinating, which I do, but not enough to compensate for the damage I am about to do my GPA and sanity.