I’m sure this has happened to a bunch of freshmen. You used to just show up to middle school, mess around through the day and still pull out straight As at the end of the semester. Then, high school starts. For some reason, some of us can’t kick the habit of messing around, and we treat high school like middle school. Unless you are ridiculously skilled, this is impossible to do. I got my wake-up call after conferences first semester. My parents are kind of strict and the one B on my report card somewhat troubled them. They said if I didn’t get straight As, I was going to get grounded or placed under some kind of restriction. I worked really hard for the rest of the semester and ended up with 4 As and 2 Bs on my report card. It didn’t go over very well with my parents. But out of some miracle, my parents decided that since it was my first semester of high school, they could understand I was still transitioning. I strongly agreed mostly because I didn’t want to get grounded. Second semester started, and all of my teachers gave me the “third quarter slacking” talk. Hearing this speech from every one of my teachers from 7th grade to this year, I shrugged it off as if it didn’t apply to me. Now, I’m not doing so great (at least to my parents standards) so now I need to work twice as hard to get caught up. And it’s the little things that drag me down: A point off on my homework here and there for not showing my work or a few points off a test for misspelling something. That all adds up and at the end of a quarter or a semester, it can really put you in an uncomfortable situation that you don’t want to be in. Sometimes I’ll stress out over something that’s already been finalized like a B in a class I could’ve gotten an A in. For me, I could’ve avoided it all by trying just a little bit harder or paying more attention in class because if anything counts at our age, it’s school. And although some classes are hard, or boring, or whatever your excuse is, I think everyone at this school can do well in them.