When Bad Grades Are a Good Thing

Riley's a good student, a great student, really. She's a high school junior and was in the GATE program in elementary school. She too Honors classes in middle school. In high school she takes Honors course, AP classes, college prep work, as well as actual college classes.

She's received all A's (maybe there was one B) for as long as I can remember. Her weighted GPA hovers around 4.5. This summer all of that will start to pay off as she starts applying for colleges and scholarships...that is until this week when we received her latest progress report.

She's at a school with the block schedule, only four courses each semester, but they run longer than most at 90 minutes a class. Riley is only taking three courses, and her latest progress report showed that she not only had no A's, but had a B- in math, a C- in Business, and, get this, an F in History.

What the heck is this?! My wife and I have never seen anything on a report card with grades that would help spell "BIFOCAL" if they were Scrabble tiles. Angry? No. Surprised? Yes. There had to be some sort of mistake with the grading system. I'm sure we'll get it worked out soon.

We called Riley over to ask her about it. Turns out, it was no computer error. She explained each part: the B- was now a solid B, the Business teacher just hadn't inputted all his grades yet, in History she hadn't been participating, and she didn't realize that was a big part of class (really, you get an F for not raising your hand?.. I think there's more to this story). 

Riley asked, "Are you mad?" And, I honestly answered, "No, I'm just confused and a bit surprised." She explained that it would all be worked out by the end of the grading period.

Here's what I think: some of what she's said is legit, but I also think that she's been cruising all of her life through school, and since it's been so easy, thought she'd just coast by (especially in History).

I remember high school being easy for me, then when I went to college, I was smacked in the face with about a 2.0 GPA my first semester, because I hadn't been prepared early on to realize that although I could get by on my fast-thinking, charm and my incredibly good looks (okay, maybe I'm pushing it here) in high school, college was a totally different beast.

I'm glad that Riley is getting this taste of reality today, with enough time to make the proper shifts and create habits that will benefit her in college in a little over a year. So, there's my silver lining, my lemonade from lemons. Just keep your fingers crossed that in a month, BIFOCAL reads AARDVARK (three A's in that word...please disregard the D).


image courtesy of ​https://www.flickr.com/photos/docksidepress/240029788