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A mother races to pick her daughter up from school. Once she picks her up, she’s unresponsive, dried tears remnant on her face. The mother urges her daughter one last time to tell her what had happened, and she finally reveals the conflict that’s been suffocating her–which is that her grade lowered from an A to a B.
To some, this event between my aunt and my younger cousin may come off as a comical story about how dramatic kids can be. To others, this may be a relatable feeling. Maybe not all of us had to get picked up from school because our grades lowered, but some can definitely relate to experiencing a diminishing of our self-esteem when we don’t achieve a high grade, which raises the question: why is this phenomenon so common? After all, aren’t grades only letters? The perspectives of two students, one part of the S/T program and one in regular classes, were gathered to get to the bottom of this question.
When asked about how they felt about B’s and C’s, the S/T student responded; “I feel like a failure. Not even when I get a B, if I have, like, a 94, I feel dumb.” Similarly, the other student responded, “I feel like I am smart, but not smart when it comes to schoolwork.”
Additionally, there are numerous other factors in the student’s self-esteem come into play. There is, as the S/T student describes, parental expectations– “my parents are always pushing me to become a doctor or engineer”– and pressure from teachers, as the anonymous sophomore details, “They give way too much work, which stresses me out.” Students are constantly reminded by the world to work hard in school so that they’d get into a good college, work hard in college so that they can get a good job, and so on, causing students to feel that if you fail once, you’re “dumb”. However, this fatalistic belief is the true obstacle, not school itself.
Mr. Robertson, an LSN Government teacher, acknowledges that “students are extremely worried about getting something wrong or failing. Even though our grading policy has failsafes.” Additionally, he insists, “Sometimes you are wrong. You learn more from your mistakes in application than you ever will from knowing the exact question and answer. Make mistakes, it’s what makes us human.” At the end of the day, you’re still alive if you get an A- or lower, and every time you make a mistake—basically, every day that you are alive—there’s a chance to “Learn from them to improve.”
So next time you get a grade you didn’t desire, remember that it is not a reflection of your intelligence, but an event that can strengthen you. If you get a low grade on an assignment or test, there’s no guarantee you’ll always get a low grade in that class. You can always ask peers or educators about the mistake you made. You aren’t ‘dumb’ or ‘slow’ for struggling to understand something. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and we don’t need every strength in the world to go far in life – sometimes, you may not always succeed the way you expected at first.
Mr. Robertson makes one final statement, a quote that can uplift the spirits of all ERHS students in these tough times: “Turn off your phones. Stay off my lawn.”