There Is One In Each Classroom
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.
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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.
When I was younger I always was pulling high Bs and As but rather than focus on what I did well my dad would always criticize what I didn’t do well enough. By 7th grade I figured “nothing is going to be good enough, so why even bother?” Now the word homework gives me so much anxiety, even if it’s in the middle of July “What did I miss? He’s going to yell at me. I won’t be able to see my friends”. My parents have taken so much away from me that I don’t even have any sort of attachment to physical objects or privileges because in my mind they are temporary no matter what you do.
Seriously though! I’ve been given so much shit at home and at school about my grades that an A- feels like an F. My friends are all like “I know I failed that test blah blah blah” and when I agree that I probably bombed it they all scoff and say yeah right but with the pressure I’ve been put under a B is bombing something
My counselors believe that my anxiety is from my parents expecting nothing less than perfect grades starting in second grade because I needed to do my best and my best was, to them, an A.
