I hope you realize there are some kids out there where their parents don’t settle for anything less than the best. That A- might seem good to you, but that kid could have a whole series of degrading comments and ‘you could have done better’ thrown at them at home.
It’s the way they were raised, anything less than perfect is a failure.Repost for the comment
Yeah, lemme tell you about the time I got 99% on an exam, and my father bellowed at me, “WHERE’S THE OTHER ONE PERCENT?????”. It broke my heart, and almost thirty years later, it STILL hurts.
You know what one of my most vivid memories of Year 7 science is? Throughout the year I’d gotten 96%, 98%, 99%, 99.6%, which was my teacher’s way of saying ‘I know you know your shit, but don’t slack off, I want to push you to be great’. Well FINALLY I got my prized 100%, and I packed it in my bag especially to show my grandpa.
You know what he says?
‘So you ARE smart. Why couldn’t you get this mark on all those other tests then?’
The next year I had such high expectations on me, when I got 80% I was shattered.Every time I get a report card, my dad points at the lowest grade and says “what happened there? Maybe we should start working on that next semester.”
One day, I get ALL As except an A- in English. I had worked hard for that A-, English was my worst class, and I had been getting consistent Bs and B-s for the past few semesters. He sees my report card, points at the A-, and says “what happened there? Maybe we should start working on that next semester.”
This, friends, is why I will be VERY stressed if I get an A- on a test or a paper, even if you got a lower grade. Because if all my grades aren’t perfect, I will get constantly harassed about it by my parents.
Can I talk about the fact that teachers will do this too? You get some good grades at the beginning of the year, and then whenever you have a bad day or slack a little they go “well look at that, why couldn’t you have done better?” Or the kids around you who happen to get a better grade than you on something and go “YES! I GOT A BETTER GRADE THAN ___ I MUST BE AWESOME!”
Seriously guys, this is fucked up.
What you guys don’t know is that person has probably put extreme pressure on themselves already, and you have just made them feel like shit.
Also, if you raise your hand in class and get the wrong answer when you’re the “smart kid, goody two shoes, teachers pet” the entire class makes a joke out of it.
I scored in the 98th percentile for the PSAT. That means if you had 100 people lined up from scoring the most to least, I’d be second in line, essentially. When I got these results I broke down weeping. I had won a national merit commended scholarship.
Only commended, not finalist. Not even semifinalist.
When I told my dad that night, he didn’t say anything or even look at me, he just made this face like “well that figures.” He was dissapointed, and not even in a lectury way, but in a “I shouldn’t be surprised but I do wonder how I got saddled with such a lazy kid” kinda way, which fun fact can feel worse
anyway academics is killing children and should probably be completely rehauled to follow european practices as they’re factually more effective and results in less kids that grow up anxious messes incapable of functioning out of perfectionist-fueled terror
I just want to say how sorry I am that everyone had to go through this shit. I know from personal experience how fucking bad it hurts.
I’ve had to spend years and years just getting over my anxiety over grades, and I’ve succeeded for the most part (with the grades part, not the need for perfection part). So maybe some of what I did can help you.
One of the big turning points for me was in high school when the pressure got to be so much that it was a Very Not Good Time. I was taking the most advanced math and science classes our district offered outside college classes, advanced English, I was taking seven classes in a six-class hour day. In those advanced classes, I got the first C of my life, and another, and another and another. Long story short, this time culminated in a HUGE shouting match with my dad which ended with me screaming at him that “You will never be as hard on me as I am on myself.”
After that, he shut the fuck up and didn’t pester me about grades again until college. I think those words finally got him to see all the effort I was putting in instead of the percentages I was missing.
This kind of set the tone for the rest of my schooling career. At one point, I just decided not to give a fuck (I know this is easier said than done so I can’t really give this as advice). I decided stress wasn’t worth my mental health. I made a promise to myself that in college that no matter what I would never pull an all-nighter for a paper or a test. If I didn’t do well on something then I would just have to put more effort into the next assignment (as shown my senior year where I went from a D paper to an A paper from satan herself). My motto was and still is, “You can do your best and nothing more.” Eliminating all kinds of floating “what ifs” from my life is probably the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.
My dad still got on my case for every B I got in class, sometimes the A- as well. Didn’t matter that I spent almost my entire college career on the Dean’s List. Oh no. But now that I was older and he asked me, “Why did you get a B+ here and As everywhere else?” I gave him a simple answer:
“Fuck off.”
The worst it got was in Harbin, China because ALL the teacher’s there were like clones of my dad. I got 95% on each daily quiz, but once I dropped to 92% for a week the teachers wanted to have a meeting with me. I told them that people have off days, whatever. Their advice, and the words that still serve to enrage me today were, “努力学习” or “put more effort into studying.” In the end, I told them in much kinder terms to fuck off. For my final paper, it had to be about 12 pages, hand-written in Chinese, but we were encouraged to first type it (note that handwriting, even just copying, would have taken me at least 4 hours). They told us that if we turned in a typed copy we would automatically lose 5 points (a drop in the bucket). A friend and I decided to say, fuck it, and turned in the typed copy anyway. My one-on-one teacher told me she understood my choice, but she said, “I know they said its just 5 points, but it will MEAN more than 5 points.” I just shrugged and told her that’s their problem, not mine.
Through all this, I realized that because I developed a strong sense of self and an even stronger sense of right and wrong, what I could, and what I should do that I was able to navigate situations like these. I was able to put enough trust in myself to know my limits and cut my losses when they got too unreasonable. I know this is easier said than done too but try and foster these feelings. They may help you like they did me.
And the final thing that helped me get over my grade anxiety:
I found my dad’s college transcripts.
I could count the amount of As he got on one hand, the amount of Bs he got on two. Everything else could fill a room. After that, any time he got on me because of grades I simply brought out the transcripts, read the class name and resulting grade, going on and on until I felt he got the point. Sometimes I would read my own transcript to drive the point home.
Again, I know that not really applicable to everyone, but if it is, let me tell you, it is so very effective. And validating.
You are not defined by your grades. Keep your chin up and spit in the face of anyone who tells you otherwise.
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