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Grades are so important, especially in high school, when you are expected to get good grades on big projects. This weighs down on you your entire high school career, and it can cause a lot of stress. And you can be affected by it differently by what your work habits are. In high school, no matter where you are planning on going afterwards, you expected to hold to a standard of a decent grade, and if you aren’t you are either 1) looked down by your teachers and peers or 2) looked down on by yourself. This is a horrible feeling, when you believe you could’ve done something to fix this assignment but you didn’t. And now you put yourself because of one bad grade. You need to know that there could be so many variables behind the narrative of this grade, and a letter or number doesn’t define you. This is one of the many problems with most grading systems in school. If all you get is a letter to tell the narrative of your assignment, you don’t know what you could do in the future, and what you did wrong the first time. Grades don't define you, and whether you decide to further your education or not, whether in a college essay or job application, you will name your strengths. More so with a college essay, you can describe this bad grade with a story behind it. It many depend on your learning style, or an event that caused stress or anxiety in your life at that time, etc.
Here are some things you can do to feeling better about that low grade:
- Ask your teachers or professors what you did wrong, and how you can improve this in the future. 1) Teachers love when you ask questions and 2) being aware of this can help you figure out what your strengths and what your weaknesses are.
- Use a journal and reflect YOURSELF on how you felt during this assignment. What did your teacher say you did well? What was a weakness of yours? Write these down and list solutions to how you can improve your weakness in this academic environment.
- Reflect on your learning style. How does this make your environment better? How does it not? Write these down and solutions to any problems with your style of learning that are hindering you to not do so well on grades.
- If you can revise, please do so! Unless revision causes you stress, you are not going to get this opportunity a lot elsewhere, to take advantage of the situation.
- Ask an honest friend to review your assignment and tell you what you could improve on. Sometimes friends can be the most brutally honest people in your life, because their intention is to help you, and support and love you at the same time.
Questions Forum
I almost feel unable to turn something in if it isn’t perfect, and this sometimes causes me to turn in assignments really late. Should I just turn things in and accept that I might get a bad grade, or is there a better solution? I’m a huge perfectionist so I get this and it’s super tough when something isn’t perfect but if perfect is your standard, nothing is ever gonna live up to that line. You can get it close but perfection is always going to be a harder goal to obtain. I would say try your best on the assignments, especially with essays because it’s hard to get a good grade on them. If there are a lot of opportunities to revise, use that resource and check in with teachers and your peers and get feedback for your work so you’re not your only judge.
How can you motivate to continue your successful academics when you have received a bad grade? Being honest, it will be hard to get back on your feet after you feel like you have failed. Especially now, when the weight of grades is terribly unclear in school, we constantly worry about what the consequence of this one bad grade is. Use those anxious feelings, anger, and determination for your next big project. By learning about what happened with your last project, you can use that feedback to do better next time!
What are some self care routines you can do after receiving a bad grade? It is so incredibly hard to do something for yourself when you have received a bad grade, but this is the time where self care most counts. Some things you could do include taking a shower (this represents a fresh start, cleansing yourself, and you can start planning your next task), or using some kind of product for your skin or hair, because healthy body means less stress when it comes the time for the next assignment. And there are so many more. Find your own routine to make yourself feel better.
How can you not feel sad about an academic failure? Firstly, you have to understand that whatever you feel after an academic “failure” is completely valid, and you don’t have to get over those emotions. But if you would like to feel more calm and happy about this one mess up, you need to create a plan for next time. Write down what your challenges, distractions, and strengths were previously. Come up with a plan for these weaknesses and distractions, such as: if you are typically distracted by your phone, make time where you can take a break from your task and set a timer for how long so it doesn’t get out of control, or even keep it out your environment you like to work in! Tell your social media contacts that you are working on a class assignment and to not contact you for a certain amount of time. I swear, they’ll understand, because they're probably dealing with your same challenge.
Resources:
Motivation Tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmbVB1v9Lqw
Revising effectively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr9ANuX4ud0
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