Obviously, like anybody else who's reached this point in time, I had to experience many "highs" & "lows" just to reach this point, but @ least before now, the "highs" were usually more regular, & the "lows" were usually more uncommon & less severe, @ least academically (since my social life was basically the same throughout all 12 years)! Throughout many of my K-12 years, I pretty much passed each grade with practically all A's & B's overall @ the end of each school year, & anybody who had me in any of their classes can certainly "second" those facts, even if not everything that occurred along the way was A/B material! Out of all of the few C's/D's/etc. I received throughout those years, 99.99% of the time, I recognized that those situations called for slightly more desperation/urgency/etc. than the rest of my grades that particular quarter of the year, so I usually focused more on my lower overall grades while focusing slightly less on whichever grades I noticed were the highest that particular quarter! Among those C's/D's that I got up back to a B or perhaps an A were the following: 1: Q2 of 2008/09: My last year of middle school seemed fairly pedestrian early on, considering I had fulfilled most of my "requirements" (to the extent that any classes were "required" back then) in my previous 2 years there with all A's & B's overall @ the end of both years! Around the middle of that year, however, I guess the fact that my middle school years would be done by June finally reached the back of my mind, & while I had all A's & B's elsewhere, my 2 English grades (considering the "language arts" & "writing", or whatever the heck they were called, components were split up that year, for some reason) were both 78, which meant that my average between both of them was also a 78..... It took me a few days to recognize the slight threat that those 2 78's posed to my chances of moving on to H.S., but considering I had more than just middle school graduation depending on my grades that year, I worked myself to the point that by the beginning of the last-ever quarter of my middle school years, my grades everywhere else were pretty much similar to what they were throughout the 1st 1/2 of the year, but most importantly, my 2 English grades (again, don't ask me why, but "language arts" & "writing" were separate that year, & that year alone) were both back to exactly 90, saving me the trouble of having to keep working to the extent that I did throughout the 3rd quarter of that year! 2: the following year, my freshman year of H.S.: After all the trouble I went through the previous year just to get 1 grade from 90 down to 78 & then back to 90, I figured that if anything similar were to occur the following year, that it would occur in a different class, & sure enough, they resurfaced, except in algebra instead of English! This time, however, the situation was more drastic, as I started off the year in there with an 80, meaning that I couldn't afford as big of a drop without risking failure in that class for the 2nd quarter of that year..... While that, thankfully, didn't occur (I got a 70 in that class the 2nd quarter), I recognized that the only way to go in order to pass the class would be up, not down, so I kept my quarter grades in every other class high enough that I could focus slightly more on fixing that 70, & by the end of the year, I had a 70something the 3rd quarter, & I was back up to the grade I had started the year with to end the year (another 80)! 3: Having averted that grading crisis before it started, I figured that I would never come that close to failure ever again throughout 3 years in the main H.S. building, & considering I got above an 85 in every class except for geometry (where I started the year with a 78), I considered the events of the previous year to be a "blip on the radar", & for the most part, despite that 78 & a 76 in English the following quarter, those situations weren't nearly as troubling to me or anybody else as the previous year's events! 4: The following year was mostly uneventful grade-wise, considering I kept my usual all A's & B's everywhere except for algebra II, where I kept high C's every quarter throughout that year, allowing me to look forward to senior year basically from the halfway point of the year forward to the end of the year, when I figured that I would mostly be concerned about my future beyond that year, despite the fact that there was a 75 listed for my 4th quarter French grade, which I had already taken care of during the previous 3 quarters with my usual grades, so while that stuck out more than the rest of my 4th quarter grades, that never bothered me because I had already gotten enough points to pass for the year by then..... 5: The beginning of senior year, however, turned out to be the quarter that tested everybody's patience the most..... I hadn't yet fulfilled my "fine/performing arts" requirement during my previous 2 years in the main building & my 1 year @ the annex (where, ironically enough, 1 of my middle school art teachers was suddenly teaching a few art classes!), so considering I had to pass that class, as well as my English & P.E./health classes (which are the only 2 required 4 year-classes @ my H.S., for some reason), I was mostly focused on fulfilling those requirements early enough in the year so that I could just enjoy the rest of my senior year, but after receiving a 58 in my engineering graphics class to start the year, I figured that the 1st 1/2 of the year would end up being a "roadblock" of sorts to all of the end-of-H.S. enjoyment that I was hoping I would be able to look forward to from the beginning of that year! As soon as I noticed that 58 on an otherwise all A & B-filled report card, I figured that I wasn't 100% @ fault for what happened in that class, & as it turns out, the teacher in there admitted after a few days & a bunch of meetings with a bunch of different people, from the school's head of the technology department, to my family, to a few of the administrators who (thankfully) also noticed the situation, to not checking all of the work that had been assigned that quarter, & while that created a scandal that involved too many people, once everything was said & done, my grade in that class was "flipped" from 58 to 85, meaning that my lowest grade that quarter was somewhere in the 80s! After that "scandal" passed, & I was finally allowed to focus on all of my classes without having that distraction bothering me every day, I was able to keep the rest of my grades @ their usual levels the entire year after that, meaning that all the enjoyment I thought I wouldn't be able to experience in June had finally returned to my life! It's simply something that I hope to keep around once this semester &/or year are done; if nothing else, this semester &/or year, if that ends up being as rough as this semester has been, will remind me if anything else in the future ends up being rough!
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