Brettia

My last final exam (chemistry), is done. I got an 82%. I have a 95% in the class. Yummy.

As I noted in yesterday’s entry, today I took three finals: Algebra 3-4, AP European History, and Spanish 5-6. I think I did reasonably well on the algebra one, and I should end up with a low A in that class. In AP Euro, I got a 92%, which was good considering the difficulty of the test and my general inability to score higher than a 95% on finals. I will finish somewhere around a 97%, first-in-class. In Spanish, I got a 91%, which dropped my grade from a 97% to a 96%.

Quick Story

For a long time now, this one kid, John, has been bugging me about grades and GPAs and such. He’s a pretty smart kid, when he feels like it, but at all other times he’s just annoying and stupid. And when I say this, I mean it. Jim has said repeatedly that his hatred for John burns like the white-hot fires of a thousand suns, and though my dislike for the kid never quite reached that level, I can understand why Jim would feel that way. Anyway, John has a history of cheating on tests and such, but he is smart enough that he never gets caught for it. Because of this, he maintains a higher GPA than I have, and even though I don’t put much by GPAs (see other entries), his constant gloating about it can get tiring. But today it has been proven that what goes around comes around. In Spanish, John had some kind of insanely high grade (98%-ish) for most of the semester, which he made sure to tell me about. I just shrugged and said, “Good for you,” as I was perfectly happy with my 94%. But something happened in the last few weeks, and my grade began to trend upward while his went downward. Because of the final exam, my grade surpassed his. Of course, he wasn’t happy about this. Did I rub it in? No; I’ve learned my lesson after having to put up with him. But I couldn’t help but smile a bit as he realized that the ranking had changed. Second in a class of thirty still isn’t bad, heck, tenth out of thirty is still respectable, but I have to say that being ranked first can have its advantages.

Am I Really That Arrogant/Proud/Selfish/Mean?

Yes, probably. Everyone has their faults. And it is especially hard to be modest about one’s academic performance when one outperforms his classmates so handily. Okay, I’m done bragging now. But really, if not on a blog, where else would I do it. Anyway, I’m done. This all goes back to my earlier rant about the problems with the grading system. Students should not have to worry about their grades this much. Kids like John should not have to cheat simply because they have a brother who was valedictorian and they want to live up to his legacy. They should learn because they have fun doing it, because they feel enriched by it, and because the subject truly interests them. Just fulfilling one of those requirements is enough; or at least its better than fulfilling none of them, which happens too much these days.

How Much Do I Care?

As I said, I like being first-ranked in the class. It gives me confidence, a reason to keep going, cheers me up. But my basic goal is just to get an A. It could be a 90% or a 108%, but either way it still ends up as a 4 (or 5) on my transcript. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Yes, it is nice to have a solid cushion when finals come up, but it isn’t necessary. Students can do well on finals; all they have to do is pay attention, take notes, and keep a record of questions they miss on unit or chapter tests. It’s not as hard as people think. Being a good student doesn’t make a kid smart; it just means that they have hit upon the right way to manipulate the system to their own advantages. I happen to be very good at that. From experience, I always know what will end up on tests, even if it isn’t announced. I can usually find the right answer in a multiple-choice question that I don’t know, just by thinking about the teacher and judging which answer they would most likely make the correct one. Sometimes I even look at the distribution of other answers on my Scantron answer sheet, checking to see if I have answered A more than C or C more than B or whatever. Then I just choose whichever answer is logical and has a letter that I haven’t used in a while. Stuff like that is what distances me from other students, not intellect. There are kids in my AP Euro class that could kick my ass (remember, still not profanity-free here) in an academic competition, but I can still manage to do 10% better than them on tests. It’s not fair to them, or to me, for that matter, but that’s just the way it is. In some ways I’m not much better than John.

Up for Tomorrow

My only test tomorrow is in Honors Chemistry. I’m afraid, and for good reason. Mrs. Reisener, while a good teacher as far as knowledge of her subject goes, has this “every test should have a C-average” mentality that is not popular with her students, most of whom are used to getting straight As and Bs. On the last test, the class average was a 77%, but I somehow got a 99%. Not bad, not bad. (Note that the 99% was after the grades were curved upward by 7%.) So it isn’t impossible to ace one of her tests, just difficult. We’ll see how I do tomorrow, but either way my grade should remain stable. According to my own final exam grade calculator, I can score as low as a 50% and still eke by with a 91 in the class. Nice.