Grades

School is neverending. The pressure is crushing. The situations are many and varied. It never lets up. School is always on your back, dragging you down, holding you accountable, everchanging and never the same. We're expected to devote 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, to this institution of education. For what? The grades. The grades that lead to placement in advanced classes to set high achieving students above their peers in an attempt to get them as prepared for college. Grades rule a student's life. It's all about the grades. You need good grades to get into a good college to get good preparation to live a good life. It's a circle that never ends. And it always comes back to grades.

In this second semester of my junior year I'm starting to see how good grades and good academic performance can set you apart from others. I scored a 30 on my ACT. Before I took the test and (stupidly) got my scores sent across the United States I was recieving minimal college mail traffic. It was enough to weigh down the mail whenever we got it, but it wasn't off the charts. After the ACT, there was a sharp increase in college mail for me. Colleges are looking for those students that will make them look good, the students who are strong academically. They don't want the average kids. They are willing to do more and go the extra mile to obtain a strong performer on the academic side of school. Grades are everything.

I don't want to brag, but I'm a straight A student. I have been ever since I started to get letter grades. No blemishes on my academic record. I'm a good student, some would say great, and it comes pretty easily to me. I don't know why, but I just...get it. Good grades are something that have always come my way because I put in the effort and I want to learn. I'm eager to expand my knowledge. It's not that hard to get the good grades people like to see...you just have to be willing to put in the effort. With that being said, I have lapses. I just got my progress report for the third nine weeks and, for the first time ever, I have a B and (gasp) a C. What was my first reaction? There was none. I was shocked. I had become so accustomed to getting the grades, making those A's, getting mercilessly (and teasingly) ragged for being so good in the classroom that seeing a C on my progress report....it was a shock. How could this have happened to me? "Graham Duncan doesn't get C's", "Graham is too good for that", "What has the world come to?" that's what my friends will say. And you know what, that will be worse for me than anything I can say to myself. I have this obsession with being what others see me as. They see me as smart, so that's what I am. I am what they expect me to be, and what I expect myself to be. But comments from friends always affect us as much, if not more, than our own comments ever could, after all they are friends. To those of you who read this, I don't want any of you to feel bad, this isn't a call for pity. This is an expulsion of my thoughts and feelings into a blog that I have to write for school. This is everything that I'm thinking as it runs through my head. I'm bearing my soul to the merciless filter of the Internet, what an idiotic thing to do.

Ah well, I have vented my feelings and surprisingly I feel better about everything. The pressure from school is neverending. We have to succeed and be successful. There's just too much negativity surround success. The only thing the successful have that they unsuccessful don't have is the desire to be successful. They want to succeed...so they do. That is a principle that has been lost through the years. As success seems to become hereditary and people lose their drive to succeed, that's when the problem starts. My grades will come up, I have to look good for colleges and meet the expectations that everyone has for me. But most of all, I have to do it for myself...

And so we go.