Nobody likes to fail. If anything, we try our best to avoid it, but sometimes we’re willing to accept it if we have no other choice. This is what I’ve been doing throughout all my years in public school, and it worked out pretty well for me until I got to high school. 

That’s when I realized I was going to face actual repercussions for failing and had very little excuses that I could use to get out of it, since I was given many opportunities to prevent it; tutorials, retests, corrections, and extra credit were available for me to take advantage of, so there was no reason for me to have such low grades. Of course, I always bounced back up by doing better on major grades, so I thought the aforementioned opportunities weren’t really necessary for me to take. That is, until senior year came along.

As we all know, daily grades no longer exist in our grading system. Many students, including myself, weren’t very happy with the change since it could make a big difference in our grades. That being said, though, the difference wasn’t always a positive thing; I can’t count how many times I’ve been a few points away from a grade higher than a C because of a few low daily grades.

It’s almost enough for me to embrace the current grading system, but that’s an almost. Along with that, there’s also the enforcing of mandatory tutorials and lunch detentions, both of which can be miserable to deal with if you find yourself getting assigned with one. But to get to my point: the new grading system is meant to encourage students to put more effort into our work and be better with deadlines. As aggravating as it may be to deal with, there’s no doubt that it’s doing exactly what it intended.

The new grading system encouraged me to communicate with my teachers and not be afraid to ask them questions or send them emails to ask about any work that I need to make up.  I’ve always struggled with deadlines, but it has motivated me to turn my work in on time–however, I do tend to overwork myself in the process sometimes–and makes me a little less lazy. I’m sure other people feel this way as well.

We’ve been dealing with this system for about four months now, so a column on this is a bit overdue. But I just believe that we should be a little more embracing of the system and acknowledge that this wasn’t implemented just for the sake of making school harder for us, but instead the opposite.