The Better Side of B

Graduate school is good, but professors are strange. More than half of my work has been making sense of strange profs. Maybe it's just the economics department. Maybe not.
My manager, Tina Marie, whose husband will soon be a philosophy professor, has assured me that professors are just a strange bunch.
This was proven to me again this week when my World Economic Development prof handed back our midterms.
My grade was a B (arrow). Sincerely. The B was there, and so was an arrow, right beside it.
Confused, I said, "Dr. Kondonassis, what does this grade mean?"
He said, "That means you earned a grade that's on the better side of B."
Further perplexed, I said, "Isn't that an A?"
He said, "No."
Dr. Kondonassis has been teaching at the University of Oklahoma for 50 years. He retires at the end of this semester, and I am not the only student who is perplexed by his actions.
Two weeks before Spring Break, we took what we all thought was our Midterm. It smelled like a Midterm. It looked like a Midterm. On the syllabus, it says, "You will have one midterm, one paper and one final exam. That is how you will be graded in this class."
We take the test, which Dr. K calls, "an exercise."
In his thick Greek accent, he says, "I give you exercise to see how you understand material."
For me, my mother died, so I was gone for one week (the class only meets once a week, so a lot happens in one class), and I come back. I go to Dr. K's office hours, and I ask for my Midterm.
He hands the paper to me, and there is literally a check symbol on it. (Keep in mind that this was an intense essay exam in which you have to integrate all the economic principles and theories).
I said, "Where's the grade?"
He said, "You got a check. That is good."
I said, "Yes, but where's the grade? How did you grade my midterm?"
He says, "Oh, that wasn't your midterm. Your real midterm is next week."
You can't mess with a person who's in grief. I had studied so hard, and so had all the other students, for what we thought was our Midterm.
And now I had to take the REAL Midterm?
He administered a test to us, calling it our real Midterm. All the other students were perplexed. But we took the exam.
And then he gives me a "B" arrow.
I swear.