Grades Do Matter

When you were young were you excited to go to school? I know I was. School was just so exciting and so new, you could meet new people and learn new things, you thought that youwould know things that your parents wouldn’t. As you get older you got more work, and the work gets harder, and things get more stressful.

But when you were younger things seemed so easy all you had to do was learn a couple things and you could play the rest of the day, grades didn’t matter. When you got older people expect you to be more responsible and more grown up. They give you more work, and that work gets more and more challenging everyday. Sometimes it’s not even the work that is challenging it’s the environment or the people around you: the little things can cause you to give up. I want children to not get behind like I did, once you’re behind it’s so hard to get caught up again.

When I first started middle school I was the new kid, The school was huge compared to my last school, each hallway was a different grade and they all looked the same. 5th and 6th grade one top floor, 5th on the right and 6th on the left, and 7th and 8th grade where on the lower floor, 7th on the left and 8th on the right. There were so many class rooms and they all looked exactly the same. It was a very new and very confusing.I had just moved into a new house, actually a new state, it may not have been very far but it was all new to me.

Since I was new, I had no friends, so I didn’t really talk to anybody. For some reason this girl who was very tall compared to me and very intimidating with her dark hair and dark skin had it out for me, and all she wanted to do was make me upset. She made everything 10 times harder, I would try and pay attention but I was just so mad, and that’s all I could think about. I managed to get good grades that year but only because we never got homework or had tests. In sixth grade that girl moved away. Every year you go over what you learned the year before, since I was never paying attention I was really behind.

Once I would learn what we were talking about the teacher would move on to a new topic. School became really stressful, and my “friends” hated me. I was so behind in work that I thought, this is middle school, none of this is important, the only thing that is important is high school, so, I only need to try then. Seventh grade came around I had made a couple friends, I was a little taller than both of them, but not by much, one of them had long blonde hair and pale blue eyes, and my other friend had light brown hair with black underneath and red and blonde highlights throughout her hair. By then I’d start doing my work okay, but then it got more difficult and I would have more work in other classes, so I would rush and guess on all the answers, maybe I wouldn’t know them or maybe I was sick of that subject, it didn’t matter to me.

I would get points for doing the work but when the tests came I failed them all. My teachers would say “I don’t understand, if you did your work then how come you’re not passing the tests?” My response was, “I don’t know,” but honestly I didn’t care. It was the same through eighth grade but a little worse, and I didn’t even attempt doing the work. I think the saddest part about all of that is my teachers didn’t even care. Freshman year came and I knew that I had to do my work. I was ok with doing my work.

The first couple weeks were easy; you just had to get used to the school and where your classes were, not every teacher gave you homework, and the ones that did were just something that could tell them a little about yourself. As the school year went on things got harder, I knew that I had to get passing grades or I would have to repeat that year. I kept up as much as I could. The nice thing about the teachers is that they didn’t move to the next topic as quickly as the middle school teachers did. I’m not really good at asking questions but I knew that I was never going to get the work if I didn’t ask.

I managed to pass with okay grades, but there are some subjects that I still struggle with because I didn’t pay attention in middle school. School work is hard. I know that there are times when you probably think “when in life am I ever going to use this?” I think the same thing all the time. But I have realized that it doesn’t matter, teachers are still going to teach you it because it can be important to some people, it could even be important to you eventually. Middle school and high school are tough but they are important. It’s the start of the rest of your life and if you want to be successful in life you have to pay attention to what’s in front of you and how you want your future to be like.

You can not even try and make everything harder than it needs to be. Or you can give it your all and make things more doable and a lot less stressful.