The word next to your score was what being a kid was all about. When you’re little, you don’t understand how big the world is. Test grades were huge.
Have you heard of a #2 Ticonderoga? Look at how sharp that point is? Joy was associated with sharpening a pencil. Remember the little sharpeners that you’d store in a your backpack? Those would never get the point as sharp as one hanging from the wall. Back to the grades.
Teachers would grade your tests with numbers and the number would be associated with a word:
100% Perfect.
98% Excellent.
95% Super.
90% Bravo.
85% Decent.
80% Ok.
75% Average.
70% Almost.
65% Poor.
60% Bad.
<55% See Me
I had a “see me” in 10th Grade Ms O’Donnell AP history. I handed in an Encarta version of Lewis and Clark and she must have seen it before. It was probably May and I avoided her until the end of the school year. I was frightened every single day of the year in that class. It was an AP class and I was by far the dumbest kid.
The only teacher who scared me more was Mr. Sukits in Corporate Finance my junior year. Every morning he would start the class with some classic rock like David Bowie and Jackson Browne. He’s the reason I know the song The Pretender. Anyway, corporate finance was made up of 33% Participation in class, 33% Tests, and 33% Quizzes. My participation score was 0. I could not have gotten better than a 67% in that class with 100% test results and I promise you that didn’t happen. I wrote a crying email to him pleading to not fail me in this subject because it would have stopped me from Graduating. I got a C. Perhaps the email was an A.
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