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My sister Sue thoughtfully gave me some of the
mementos that our deceased mother left. Among the items I perused, I came
across 2 of my elementary school grade cards. One was from the 5th
grade and the other from the 7th grade. From the 1st
grade to my freshman year in high school, they were blue, and then all through
high school they were yellow. NOTHING struck fear and terror into me like
taking my “grade card” home! They came out every 6 weeks, so every 6 weeks when
the teacher gave out our grade cards; I would go home in great fear and
anxiety! This was partially due to my father yelling at me for getting such bad
grades! The main reason for this was that he was on the School Board and he
said because of my bad grades it made him look like “2 cents”. I wondered how
the rest of the school board knew what grades I got? Maybe they received a list
of everyone’s grades every 6 weeks and singled out the kids with bad grades who
were kids of the school board members to make the other board members look like
“2 cents” too! An ironic side note to this is that when I was in high school,
after my father died, I found some of HIS grade cards in the attic. HIS grades
were worse than mine! When you
see a copy of my grade card from the 7th grade, you will know WHY I
was always full of fear and trepidation every 6 weeks! Actually, all my grade
cards were bad every 6 weeks for 12 years! It may be of interest to note that
my grade card from the 7th grade was one of my BETTER ones! My worst subject (among many others) was mathematics.
It was and still is. At least I got much better grades in Spelling! That was
always my best subject. One odd thing is the statement on the grade cards right
under the grade explanations, which says, “U-after mark indicates the
student is capable of doing better work”. NEVER in my 12 years of
school did I ever see a “U” beside any
of my grades! Now that I think about it, that was a good thing because an “FU”
wouldn’t have sounded or looked too good! I guess they figured I wasn’t capable
of doing better work! On the contrary, my parents and many others who knew me
told me I was very capable of
doing much better work, but when I was in public school, to be quite honest, I
just didn’t care. In spite of this, my parents and others told me that if I would
just “apply myself”, I could have been at the head of my class. Instead, I
choose to be the little toe. In direct antithesis to this was when I was in
College (it’s a miracle they even accepted me with my public school grades) and
Graduate School, I DID graduate at the head of my class in both of them. I
guess I finally “applied myself”. This shows the difference between “not caring”
and “caring”! I think in my later years of public school I
realized that there are no grades on a diploma and the only people that actually send for public school
transcripts are colleges. On the other hand, I wonder if the college I
graduated from actually sent for my high school transcripts? It
makes me wonder that if they did, maybe someone at the post office knew me and
as a result, they “got lost in the mail”. Other than that, no one really cares
what kind of grades you received. Each
year of public school, with my bad grades it was a miracle that I was always
advanced to the next grade. I was always greatly
relieved each year at the end of the “final 6 weeks”, that it said on the
bottom of the grade card, “Assigned to grade ____”! I always passed! I constantly dreaded the
possibility that I would “flunk” a grade. Kids that “flunked” a grade had a
real stigma attached and we all thought that they were really dumb! The fact
that I always “passed” in spite of my bad grades could have been compassion on
the part of each teacher, but more than likely, the REAL reason was that they
didn’t want me in their class
again for the 2nd time! If you look at my grade card from the 7th
grade, you will note that all the grades are written in long hand rather than
printed. This applied to all 12 years. I think they did this so kids like me
wouldn’t try to change an “F” into an “A” by adding a line. Pretty sneaky I
always thought! Of course, now days any kid can “hack” into the school’s
computer system and change their grades. Well, at least these
days I don’t have to worry about grade cards, but I STILL have anxiety attacks
every 6 weeks. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence! To see my grade card for
the 7th grade. Click
Here If you can’t see it,
then you need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can do at the
following link. Acrobat
Reader. It’s free and, you need it
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