Scholars of STEM education worry that curved grading discourages students by facilitating competitive classroom environments, yet scholars rarely directly observe how students make sense of this evaluation regime in real time. Our longitudinal interview study enables us to learn how students apprise and navigate courses with curved grades before, during, and after course completion. Observing 74 undergraduate students enrolled in 22 courses with curved grades, we find little evidence of sentiments of competition. Detailed longitudinal observation of 8 students in a single chemistry course reveal that students calibrate their own capacities relative to peers, then select strategies, from exit to cooperation, to navigate the course. Students consistently express uncertainty about their own grades during the course, then feelings of gratitude about final grades, suggesting that curves may serve to enforce the authority of instructors and the curriculum. Findings encourage researchers to be sensitive to student-level variation in the dynamics of sense-making when considering the relationship between grades and academic progress.