96 is less than 100. Doesn’t take a child prodigy to figure out which is better. 
And yes, I had tests in K. I went to a private school until 3rd grade, which is maybe why that sounds unusual.
Absolutely.
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I was the smartest and the youngest in my grade, and my parents knew it. They didn’t want to bump me up a grade because I was already so much smaller than everyone else, but they sure as hell expected me to be a straight A student.
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All the other kids knew I was the smartest in the class, so I knew if I got a B and anyone found out, I’d be teased.
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I was, an still am, a worrier. I’d consider skipping homework or slacking off and then tell myself (although now I realize it’s not exactly true) that if I didn’t ace this test, my grades would be lower, so I’d never make it into a good high school, which would mean I’d never get into a good college, which would mean I’d never get a good job and I’d die of starvation.
My God, yes. I figure this has got to be some kind of pan-Asian meme.
I remember getting my first B+ in 7th grade history (“social studies”) because I thought it was boring. From the fuss my father kicked up, you would have thought I was destined for a life in the gutter, and I was going to take everyone else in the family with me on the way down. “How do you think you’ll ever get into medical school with a B+ in history?”
Uh, right.
Nope, grades were never really that important to me. Drove my parents and teachers nuts. I got tested when I entered kindergarten and as a result of my IQ tests, I ended up taking a lot of classes with older kids since it was too small to have any real advanced classes. I moved around a bit between age 8 and 12. Other schools weren’t so good in some ways. After getting teased a lot for being a smart kid, I started getting C’s, probably as a way of saying, “See, I’m not so smart after all.” Not one of my better decisions, even though it wasn’t really a conscious one.
Gifted classes in middle school helped, but my study skills sucked. I almost never did my homework, though I got good grades on tests. I really hate that your grades depend so much on homework; if I’d been graded only on tests I would probably have had a low A average. I got a high C average in high school (2.8 or so, if I remember right) despite having standardized test scores in the 99th percentile for everything except math, where I was only in the 85th to 90th percentile.
I really wish I’d thought about doing well in high school as a way of paying for college with scholarships, but I had a very short-term view of the future then. I’d like to blame it on home issues, which I did have, but the reality is that most of it was just my being short-sighted.
Junior college was way too easy, so it was easy to fall into the old habits of high school, and I probably needed some time to mature and deal with things like my mom’s death and my family basically falling apart. My grades were average, at best. Once I finally saved up enough money to go to a real university, I started actually working. My major wasn’t particularly tough, and I wish in fact that I’d gone with a technical or science degree instead of humanities, but it was interesting and challenging enough to keep me involved. I made the dean’s list for the last three semesters.
The school system mostly fails people like me. I like to be challenged. I like learning how things work. I hate grunt work and I hate being told how to do something. Most teaching seems to emphasize brainless step-by-step repetition. If I’d had more teachers who gave problems to solve as a goal, and then taught us the tools to solve those problems, I’d probably have gotten engaged and would have seen any necessary homework as a series of steps to take to reach that goal. Instead, I saw homework as a complete waste of time. Why do homework when all you need to do is to read the material, understand it, and remember it for a test?
It wasn’t until university that I had the kind of teaching style that worked for me. They give you something to do, give only relevant homework, answer questions and explain how things work together, and leave the rest up to you. I know that there were an awful lot of people, who had done well in high school, who found that disconcerting. They felt like the teacher didn’t care (and maybe he or she didn’t) and that it wasn’t fair to be graded on only a few tests and a big project. I loved it.
I actually dropped a required writing class once because the teacher was grading us on how we wrote our papers. She was more concerned about the process than the end result. It was like being back in high school. I was getting a C in that class because I would turn in a great paper, with proper grammar and spelling, but I hadn’t turned in any “brainstorming” sheets or the required two rough drafts. Excuse me, I revise as I write and I don’t need crap techniques to generate ideas. I took the class with a different teacher and got an A.
In the end, I was the one who was really responsible for my academic non-achievements. I made the decisions to be lazy, to not see grades as a goal and a tool for the future, and to just sort of drift my way through. But I can’t help being a little bit bitter about a system that almost seemed designed to turn me into a lackadaisical slacker.
Quicksilver, it may be that your daughter just isn’t being taught in a way that connects to her. If she doesn’t do well with some things, it may be because she’s bored and doesn’t care. Maybe you can figure out what’s appealing about the stuff she does do well with and see if that whatever-it-is can be cross-applied to those she’s not engaged with.
Not life in the gutter but maybe a life of mind numbing drudgery of cubicles and dead end corporate jobs subject to the whim of half-wit managers.
I have seen first hand the difference between companies that hire the best and brightest vs those that hire…well…everyone else. Those companies that tend to be highly selective tend to be places where the people working there value being there. If not for the actual work environment (which can be stressful) than for the financial and career opportunities. There is a rewarding career path for staying but if you do leave, the experience opens up doors that would normally be closed to you.
Compare someone working at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, an Am Law 100 law firm or management training program at a Fortune 100 vs some shmoe working accounts payable at Annonymous Inc. for mid five figures.
The point is if your eventual plan is to go to med, business or law school or enter a highly competitive profession, good grades can be the difference between being a Director at 30 making $200,000 and being just another anonymouse drone
Same here (mostly). Skipped a fair bit of secondary school (11-16) for lack of motivation and was still best in school. Skipped Sixth Form (16-18) pretty much 2 or 3 days a week and came out with A-C’s. I’m in university now, still unmotivated so I’ll let you know how that goes.
But even then, do the grades matter as much as having personal drive and an outgoing personality that makes you leader material? I’m sure there’s countless people who made topnotch grades all through school in college, but are working in cubicles because they’re just not cut out for the corner office…and may not even want it.
Oh yes.
Once I entered school and my parents figured out I was smart or whatever, they’d freak if I didn’t get an A because “I could if I tried.” I was in the gifted program as a child as well. Always scored high on standardized tests. In high school I realized I could slack off and still get A’s, and that mindset doomed my first year of college - ended up with a 2.2. I’d never gotten below a 3.5 before, and my parents were pissed, to say the least. But I realized this matters now and I pulled straight A’s last semester (damn plus/minus grading not counting A- as much as an A) and got a 3.86. This semester I’m looking at most likey 3 A’s and a B. But I’m still super lazy. But grades really matter. I can’t tell you how stupid I felt when I got my grades last year and saw C’s and even 2 D’s! I’ve never really felt stupid before and it sucked.
Grades matter now because my freshman year grades got me kicked out of my early admission in my major program. I even got a letter from the dean of journalism last summer telling me to pick a new major because I wouldn’t cut it. But I got my grades up high enough to get back in and I start my major courses in the fall