Lessons that Stay With You by Jade

Lessons that Stay With You by Jade - August 2014 Scholarship Essay

On the surface, grades in elementary school don’t matter that much. Colleges don’t look at them. Scholarship providers don’t look at them. Parents might, but that’s about it.

My parents were always of the type to look at my grades. I had straight As through elementary school under penalty of grounding. Those As were really only on my report cards, however.

In elementary school, you don’t change classes during the day. Because of this, you might not have any grades in a subject in the first part of the year, simply because your one teacher never really got around to certain subjects until later. Before the first interim of third grade, we only had one assignment in Social Studies. Our class had to move into a portable in the first few weeks, so we didn’t have time to do much at all. One day, we had a worksheet to do in Social Studies, a subject I hated with every fiber of my being. I disregarded the assignment, knowing it wouldn’t count very much in the long run of my grades, and I ended up skipping one out of the three short answer questions on the paper.

My interim report came home about two weeks later, and next to the 95s and 98s I was so used to was a 70. My parents were furious. They expected more from me not only as their child, but also as a member of the gifted program. I explained the situation to them and they were a little more forgiving upon realizing that the grade was based on only one assignment, but I was still grounded for, if I remember correctly, a week.

Even after my parents had forgotten about the incident, I still felt bad. I was, in my mind, a C student, and it weighed me down. Only once the test came around and I pulled my grade up to a 92 did I stop worrying about it.

I know, I know. I was in third grade, I made a little mistake, and it wasn’t my fault our classroom was moving. But I’m pretty sure that I’m more detail-oriented now. I don’t just dismiss questions on tests that I know I won’t be able to do. I don’t just give up because I’m tired and it’s been a long day. That one incident when I was eight years old has probably made me keep my grades up for the last nine years.