Never again will I worry about my grades–at least not for the rest of this year, my senior year.
When I spoke to my school counselor about the matter a couple weeks ago, I was shocked when she informed me no college would request my 2nd Trimester grades.
“Whichever one you decide to go to will look at your final transcript to make sure you graduated, so, don’t flunk out,” she said, and then we both laughed.
Although I still intend to do all of the work in calculus and French, in my other classes, who knows! I could get a B! I could get all sorts of flavors of B: B+, B, B-. I could even get a C! Just the prospect makes me jittery with anticipation.
I’m not sure why I feel so embarrassed to admit this, but I have never gotten a B. I haven’t even gotten an A-.
How did this happen?! At the end of every trimester in high school, I would think to myself in horror, “This is it, this is the end, I’m going to get a B, I’m going to get a B.” And then somehow, through my tenacity, I didn’t. Granted, this is a result of relaxed late policies and retake opportunities, particularly in math and science, but I did get As in everything.
Before the age of 10 I was a happy-go-lucky, cheerful, calm, and unfocused child, disinterested in school and academic pursuits–and then something changed. I became quite serious. Come junior high and my transition into the ICCSD, I became a maniac. Having grades online made me acutely aware of their permanence. One can destroy a piece of paper. The internet will (in theory) exist forever.
I became obsessed with getting not just As but A+s. I remember going in to talk to my 7th grade language arts teacher because I was concerned about having gotten only 98% in his class. I also distinctly remember the fury I felt after my art teacher told me she didn’t usually award grades above 95%.
While fixated on my individual grades, I never quite understood the logic around GPA. “Why do people think about their GPAs–what does it matter, when if I always get As, my unweighted GPA will always be a 4.0? How does that work exactly?” I wondered to myself.
On some level, my perfect-grade-obsession never made sense. My parents almost never check my grades on Infinite Campus. They don’t worry about my grades.
But no matter how often or how many people told me that grades are arbitrary, they don’t matter; your high school transcript really doesn’t mean anything; everybody gets As nowadays; grades are just a letter; even when I believed them, I could never quite parse these letters from my sense of self, from my worth.
The world is a different color now. I feel like a completely different person. I can do anything now! I can ignore school if I feel like it. I can be unproductive without feeling bad. I can become a glorious couch potato.
I’m not certain of what will happen. Will I end up getting terrible grades? Will I end up getting all As thoughtlessly? Will I discover myself to be an unchangeably programmed robot who simply must get good grades even when it no longer matters? Who knows.
Now is the time! Time to get a B! Or at least, time to try.
