Grades Aren't Everything
“School Literacy doesn’t guarantee success. Don’t let your grades define who you are”— Anonymous
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Dear readers,
Grades aren’t everything. Grades aren’t everything. Grades aren’t everything…
It’s like a mantra, I repeat, hoping it would someday stick.
Has it? No, my self-esteem had just lowered, and I gave up trying.
When I was in elementary school, I was horrible at school. As mentioned in my ASL post, I was awful with languages and learning new ones. Now imagine a girl who can barely speak English suddenly has to learn French since I was in french immersion. I have no idea why my parents put my sister and me in french immersion, but there I was, doing eight years of elementary school all in french.
I was a horrible student. Now I don’t mean in the sense that I was a troublemaker or the class clown or disrupted the class or anything. Frankly, I was the opposite; I was quiet and didn’t participate. I was a horrible student in the sense that my marks were awful. In my province, you can’t fail elementary school. Like legally, they couldn’t fail students, so I never “failed.” I had several classes where my final grade was 51% because they couldn’t put my real grade below 50%. The reason for it was that it was in french, and I understood nothing. With that, I wasn’t a good student and barely tried.
When the rules changed, and now math had to be taught in English once you passed grade four (for me, that law changed when I was in grade 5), and I was still bad at math. It took a while, and everyone in my class was confused for the first year because we had to translate everything we had learnt from one language into another. We constantly asked each other what the vocabulary English words were in french. The first year was a transition period for all of us.
It wasn’t until grade 7 that I realized, “hey, I’m not bad at math.” I started getting 80% or higher on my test, which was a first, and it was a shock. Funnily enough, when my mother stopped trying to teach me math, study with me, or do homework with me, I started getting good grades in math. Is there an actual correlation? Or was it a coincidence? I don’t know, but I like to laugh about it.
I was only good at math; nothing else changed. I was still horrible at science (which was still taught in french), and obviously, I was awful in french. I wasn’t bad in french class, just whenever french was the language used to teach other subjects. I understood base level and could hold up a conversation, but you want to teach me biology in french? Nope, not happening, sir.
When I got to high school, everything was in English because I changed high schools. I didn’t go to my home high school, and the one I went to, I didn’t need to do anything in French except French class. It was mandatory to take french once (in grade 9), but I took it during all four years.
Since everything was in English, my marks for science, geography, history, and other subjects went up. I got the high 80s to low 90s average in all my classes. It was great!
Until it wasn’t.
I started basing my worth on my marks. I had an expectation for my grades, and if I got below it, I was upset and hated myself and pushed myself too hard and raised the bar even higher.
I became so obsessed with my grades that I checked my grades at least twice daily. It was a habit at this point; the second I turned on my phone, I was checking my grades. It was like second nature to me; I didn’t even realize I was doing it until I was already on the app. Even when I knew there wasn’t any assignment that had been marked or when I knew the grade wouldn’t change, I would still check. Hell, I worshipped my grades more than I ever did in church.
I became so obsessed with numbers. NUMBERS. The percent on my phone. The mark on the test. The points are taken off on each question. Everything.
I remember this one time I got a 68% in a biology class, and I was upset. I checked the app the second I woke up, saw it, and cried. I sat on my bed and cried. 68% is still a pass, and my mark was so low because this was around when my migraines had gotten worse. I was starting a new medication and still trying to figure out what was happening, so studying was hard, but I ignored that. It didn’t matter what was going on in my life; if my mark was low, my self-worth was low.
I pushed myself beyond my limits for the next test and did better, but my health was getting worse. I didn’t care, though, my grades went back up, and I ended the class with a mid-80.
If I got below an 80%, I was stupid, worthless, and should be ashamed of myself.
My fixation on numbers translated to social media. How many likes did I get on my post? How many followers do I have? How many “friends” do I have in my contacts? I needed high numbers to feel good about myself, and I hated it.
Why? Why did I do that? Why did I focus so much on something that shouldn’t define my worth? Why did I put so much power in fucking numbers?
It’s numbers on a page or on my screen, yet I treated it like the numbers have given me life or whatever.
Grades shouldn’t matter.
In this day and age, grades aren’t everything. It would be best if you had more than a university degree to get a job nowadays. You must have good people skills, workmanship, and other personality characteristics the job requires. I knew that. I knew it, and yet I still mainly focused on grades.
I wouldn’t go out with my family or friends because I had to study. It got to the point where my parents would ask if I wanted to go with them somewhere, and I answered, “no, I have homework,” and they would say, “I knew you were going to say that.” They knew. They knew it because I used that excuse multiple times.
I hated school, yet grades were everything to me.
They still are, but since my health went to shit, my grades went to shit, which meant my image of myself went to shit.
I genuinely don’t understand why I did that. I don’t know why I let myself get so obsessed with something as small as numbers, but I did, and it cost me my mental well-being and self-esteem.
If you are reading this, don’t do this. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself because, let me tell you, once you get into the workforce, you only need 10% of what you learnt because our knowledge in whatever field is constantly changing. We would need to adapt and learn new concepts, so our marks shouldn’t matter much.
Thank you for reading; I hope you have a fantastic day or night or whenever you’re reading this.
A. B💜
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