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Grade A Idiot Feeling: reminiscent hamak0san: i just opened the letter with my high school transcripts
hehe.. that got me to cheer up. Which is good, because about a minute before that i'd gotten the guts to open the envelope that contained copies of my HS transcripts, and I wasn't feeling too happy. The girl was nice enough to include a copy for me. It's so weird looking over that stuff. The classes I had forgotten I'd taken. The grades I got. My SAT scores. I sat here at my desk for a while poring over everything. Analyzing it all. I wasn't that bad of a student.. but i know i easily could have been awesome. I don't know why I didn't push myself. I guess I didn't realize how easy it would make things later. I'd always done extremely well in my English classes. Essays, reports, always got A's. It was easy for me. Math, was harder. I loved Algebra. The thinking process behind it. I remmeber i hated doing calculations on paper though. Ever since I was a kid I always did them in my head. Maybe that's where I went wrong? But for some reason I loved doing them in my head. It was fun to see if I could figure it out and whether I could do it faster than my friends could do it on paper. I clearly remember once when I was a freshman my friend and I were sitting in the back of the class like we usually did. We were both working on our problems and the teacher (who was actually a pretty cool guy) asked why I had answers, but my problems weren't worked out on paper. "Are you copying from her?" he asked, pointing to my friend next to me. I hadn't been.. but before I even got a chance to answer my friend jumped in, "No way! Casey always does them in her head. She's really good like that." I wasn't as good as I could have been. I mean, I didn't try. All the grades I ever got were without trying or much studying. I'm not real proud of that. Because now i'm left to wonder.. how good could I have been, had I tried my very hardest? Freshman year, I averaged a B in everything. Then we got transferred to another school in our sophomore year (our school only went up to the 9th grade). Sophomore year.. i started out good. Great, even. Everything I got A's in.. except for math. That I got B's. I remember the teacher being SUPER nice.. but it was her first year teaching and I just couldn't grasp it all. I loved that class but I hated the work. I didn't like how I couldn't get it no matter how hard I tried (okay, admittedly, i didn't try as hard as i could have- but i tried harder than i did with everything else so when i didn't get it, i got discouraged). A lot of the people in that class were a year or two ahead of me. Some were guys on the football team. That's how i started being friends with them. I forget what position Josh played but he became one of my best friends in high school. We ended up taking chemistry together the next year too and were lab partners. So he helped me with Geometry and I repaid him a little the next year with Chemistry. But back to that sophomore year. The first semester, great. History, Japanese, Biology, all A's. The only class i was doing bad in was math but i'd still managed to get through it with a B. Scratch that. English. For the first time I found myself actually having to stress over an english class. The teacher was a complete ARSE. I didn't just hate him, i loathed him. He was so arrogant. I almost failed the second semester. Not even just with him.. but all of my grades dropped. It's SO blatant. I remember my step dad sitting me down and talking to me. "Casey, what happened? You were doing so good last semester and now look. Is it me?" He asked if it was him because that second semester.. that's when I moved out of my grandparents' house and in with my mom and step-dad. It wasn't my choice. My mom and I were in the car on the way to school one morning and she looked over at me and said, "We're going to move in with Bi||." I knew it was what she wanted. She was happy with him. She'd finally found happiness after all of the years of unhappiness with my dad and I knew she deserved it, but I'd waited my whole life to be able to live with my grandparents again.. and now I had to leave them? again? We'd only be moving 10 minutes away, in the same town.. but still, it wasn't the same house you know? I remember staying silent after she told me. Just staring out the window, tears streaming down my cheeks. Praying she wouldn't see me cry. He was a good guy, my step-dad. So it wasn't because of him that my grades dropped that semester. I think it was just the adjustment of it all. When he asked me if it was the change that caused my grades to fall, i admitted that it was hard. My mom walked into the room and overheard our conversation. She yelled at me and told him not to listen to me, that I was just making excuses. Perhaps. I'll admit i've always been the type to get involved with something.. then tire out. So it's not uncommon for something to start out amazing and then turn 'just good' or passable in the end. Not everything is like that with me, but who knows. Junior year, nothing noticeable.. I aced most of my classes again. A few B's.. but never anything less than that. Overall, that was my best year. That was the year I went to Washington, D.C. too. I spent most of my year balancing schoolwork with fundraising for my trip. Math went really well too. heh of course it helped that the teacher was awesome. He was this really nice guy, funny, (and hot). Plus I liked the stuff we were studying. It was complicated but in the way i loved. The thing i remember most about that year though was Chemistry. I aced that class. The reason that was so memorable for me was because a LOT of students failed. A LOT dropped out too. They'd actually had a talk with the teacher because so many people had failed. It was her first year teaching there and she was tough. Nice but tough. She didn't mind failing people. I actually started out the first quarter a little rough with that class. It doesn't reflect in my grades but I DO remember that. We were in class one day. I remember it being REALLY empty too. For some reason a lot of students had decided not to show up.. we'd probably had a test planned or something. But we were doing some work the teacher had assigned in class. I somehow wasn't getting it. Josh was sitting next to me trying to explain it to me and I still couldn't get it. Then she looked at me, the teacher. And i'll never forget this.. she said, "Casey you know what your problem is? You create a mental block for yourself. You get this idea in your head that it's hard and you can't do it.. so you don't. You don't allow yourself to." She was trying to be helpful and she wasn't mean about it at all. And I totally respected her for that; making that observation. She'd actually gotten in trouble for speaking her mind before too. heh. But I think it's one of the best things she taught me that year. Of course, I still find myself up against that mental block. Even more so these days.. but that's never stopped me from trying to work past it (when i have the courage to realize it in situations). Anyway, I had a lot of fun in that class. Honestly, I didnt like the labs.. I liked the bookwork. odd i suppose. Josh made that class fun too. I think that's one of the most memorable classes for me ever. I could have hated chemistry like everyone else but that experience made me really learn to enjoy it. Senior year. I'd never cut a class before in my life. There was this silly 'enviromental studies' class that was required. I swear i didn't learn a damn thing in that class. So after the first month, I never went again. I simply didn't go. Instead I hung out in the computer lab and learned to work with Ph0t0sh0p and I||ustrator. The only reason i didn't have to repeat that environmental class was because it was only a semester long. I'd gotten an A the first quarter and an F (ouch) the second quarter. It all averaged out to a C. Again, more trouble with math. It was different than the stuff we'd done the previous year even though i had the same (hot) teacher. Because I was a senior and i'd passed all of my math requirements, i didn't have to take a math class that year. My parents had made me sign up for it.. the first or second day of school I got my paper to drop the class.. went up to the teacher to get his signature (damn i wish i could remember his name) ...and he refused to sign it. "Casey i'm not signing that. you belong here and you're taking this class." So while all of my friends were math-free my senior year, I was stuck in a math class. To be honest, i'm glad i didn't drop it. I wasn't the greatest at it, again, because like the rest of my high school career- i simply didn't try. but i managed to pass. Everything else aside from that environmental mishap, i aced. I managed to graduate with honors. I'm still a bit surprised by it actually. I didn't try nearly as much as I could have. I'm pretty disappointed about that.. but all you can do is learn from it, right? So when I go back to school.. at least now I know what mistakes not to repeat and what I areas I could use some extra work at. My sister just turned 17. She's getting ready to pick out colleges, studying for SATs.. i'm always after her about school. I don't want her to make the same mistakes. But she's a lot smarter than me.. she hasn't slacked off like I have. She reads a lot, just like i did. She'll be fine.. I think she just needs to be told that and pushed a little more. I know my mom won't do much and it'll all be put up to her to deal with picking out the right school, scholarships, all of that. So yeah, i've been helping my kid sister pick out colleges while simultaneously trying to deal with my own crap. I think that's got to be the most pathetic thing ever. ugh. I wish my mom would be a lot more proactive about this stuff. I know I definitely could have used that from her growing up.
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