100 Percent Does Not Mean Full
Today my report card came in. Junior year. The last year that counts for class rank at my high school. I looked down the line seeing the final grades of each class: 97, 98, 97, 98, 98, 98, 100, 100. All the numbers look good, but I have never felt more unfulfilled from seeing a 97 or 98 repeated over and over. These numbers used to fill me with pride and designate my accomplishments, but now they are no less foreign than trying to read a dialect that is not my native tongue.
I have tried over the last couple of years to distance myself from these numbers and not let them define me, but I was not expecting my best grades ever to almost degrade me. To mean so little that anything less than perfection still is not good enough? It makes no sense. Why are these grades that are my best to date, dragging me down, belittling the knowledge I was proud to have gained before. My GPA was a 104.64 weighted. A number greater than what is mathematically considered full, and yet I feel empty.
I guess the best way I can explain this to myself is to remember a place you knew so well growing up. For instance, as a child I lived in what I thought was a mansion sized white house. I moved out in, I think, fourth grade, and haven’t seen it up close since. Now a few weeks back I decided to bike to my old neighborhood and stand on the very sidewalk that I rode my first bike on, the very sidewalk I attempted to rollerblade on (but got too nervous and never wore them again), the very sidewalk that outlined the lawn that I ran around on for years as my shoes got too small as I grew.
The house was no longer a mansion. It hardly felt big at all. The memories I had that I thought were so vivid and clear now were just a lie; a figment of my short-minded perspective of the time. And now, that’s what my report card feels like to me: a visual distortion from what I thought I knew, but clearly never fully did.
Grades no longer define me. That means they no longer have the power to destroy me, but they equally no longer have the power to build me either. I guess I wasn’t expecting that.
***
Here is an excerpt from a blog I wrote over the summer for my AP English Language and Composition class that inspired this piece. I was surprised to read how my younger self which I often discredit, held a lot of good thoughts even before my continual evolution throughout my junior year. The excerpt was published on a class blog my teacher had set up in response to the prompt: A pivotal moment in your education so far and your six-word memoir and explanation.
3 September 2019
Success. I often ponder the ways of this word— the way it drives many of us into lives we never wanted. Why is that? Well, simply put, we all know that society emphasizes certain qualities that pressures individuals to think success is one thing when in reality, success should be individually defined. I have only just taken this advice to heart in the past year. Prior to my “mid-high-school-life-crisis” I blindly followed the recommendations of teachers, parents, and the world as to what classes I wanted to take. I saw school as nothing more than the numbers on my aspen page (the online grades portal). But pretending to be something I’m not definitely took a toll on me. One quarter in my sophomore year I somehow completely switched my paradigm and now I see school as an opportunity to actually learn. There will always be a part of me that still wants to care about the numbers on the screen, but now my main focus is to learn for my future and become a better person with my knowledge. I am no longer trying to learn just for a test. I still have not fully comprehended why or how this major shift came about, but I guess that’s for more time and thinking on my part.
And on top of all my educational thought shifts, my life has basically taken a complete 180 in the past couple of years. I went from horder in the making to a minimalist. I went from never going a day without eating cheese to being vegan. So, I suppose my six-word memoir would be “there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow.” That’s a quote from Disney appearing in the Carousel of Progress. For me, the phrase reminds me that I can always become better and change in order to craft the life I want to live.
