High Expectations
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- Now tell us Amanda, what will you be doing with this award for being an outstanding, straight A, perfect attendance, amazing student?
- Wooo! That's my baby girl!
- Honor Roll Awards Night
- It's crazy you ask because actually I will be saving up to go to Stanford because I'm clearly making it in with my perfect attendance and grades
- Quiz
- When I was younger, I would always attend my sisters school events where she would receive some type of award for being an outstanding student. I wasn't happy for her and I was just jealous because she would rub it in my face and my mom had such high expectations that she was underwhelmed when I showed her my essays or grades.
- report cardmath: FEnglish CScience DHistory D
- This caused me to be more shy with my teachers and kids at school and less confident in my work. I would always turn my quiz over before even reading the score just in case somebody saw and it was a bad grade. I would never ask for help or ask any questions to the teacher or my classmates because I was afraid that they would think I'm dumb for not knowing already.
- It's okay honey
- I always looked up to my dad because I thought he was the smartest person in the world and he knew everything. He wasn't super involved in my school life so he didn't know how I was doing and if I was struggling. I liked it this way because I thought since he's so smart that he would think of me differently if I had such mediocre grades while my sister and him succeeded in school a lot.
- One day, my dad saw my progress report in the mail and was the first to open it. I was so worried since he didn't have an expression on his face while opening it up and wasn't saying anything.
- But he actually didn't think I was stupid at all. He told me that it was okay to not be an expert at every subject and that I can still be good at other things but when I set expectations for myself so high, it's hard to focus on the things I succeed at. He told me that he struggled in English but was good at math so he just focused more on things that he is good at and got a job involving math.
- Now it's easier to ask for help when I need it and not be so hard on myself when I get a bad grade. I realized after talking to my dad that I got so stressed about school that that's all that would consume my mind which just made it harder to focus and harder to enjoy other things in my life.