Edumacation - learn me some stuff (day 9)

I'm a bit late! Yay! :]

So, what grades did you make in school? Do you think you could have done better, if you wanted? What about if you were forced to?

I remember coming home with my very first report card. It had some c's on it; I think it had some a's and such too, but I know it had at least one c. I didn't really think that was too bad until my mom saw it; I knew it was all above average, which I thought at the time was pretty good.

Turns out, it was not pretty good. I remember being informed that I could do better. That they knew I could do better. And in fact, if I came home with grades that low again, I'd be grounded till the next report card came in. I was terrified. 6 weeks is an insurmountable amount of time for a little kid. Hell, 6 weeks of school is generally a long time for anyone, no matter their age. But especially teens or earlier. And their groundings were hard-core. No video games, no friends' houses, no phone, no TV... I'd be lucky if they didn't take my fiction books away from me (it happened once or twice over some things). Sometimes, if I remember correctly, I couldn't even go outside. That may have been when I was small enough to want to go outside and play. Not sure.

So I had to do better. How much better? A's. Nothing lower would do. If I came in with anything below an A, in any subject, from then on, I was grounded.

I worked my ass off. In a way, I appreciate it; it showed me what I could do. I learned a lot because I had no other choice.

But overall, it was an asshole move in my opinion.

They'd give me a little money for A's and A+'s. No money if I had an A-. In fact, they'd be mad if I had a couple of A-'s. But I could get out of the grounding. I guess I just don't like the carrot and stick approach, looking back.

I failed a couple of times. But only a couple in all my years of school. Mostly, though, I did it. It's slightly impressive, I guess; it was years before I had even so much as an A-. But I learned in sheer terror, essentially. I would be in so much trouble otherwise. So I whipped myself like an Egyptian slave to keep my grades up. I learned a lot, but not at anything resembling a comfortable pace.

It burnt me out on learning, too. By grade 10, I just about didn't care anymore. By 11, I didn't. I didn't really get in trouble at that point; we were all already at each others' throats so much no one cared. It's just fortunate I didn't have any real classes at grade 12.... I might have walked instead, if I couldn't have just breezed through it. I still have dreams about being in grade 12 and wondering to myself, "Why am I still here?" "Can't I just quit and leave?" In retrospect, it didn't leave me much of a chance for college, since college was just regurgitating the same things I'd already been taught two or three times. I slept instead and just aced all the tests, and wondered why I was paying for it till I ran out of money and just gave up.

I guess, looking back, I'm still a bit bitter. It's exactly how you don't try to make a child learn.