William looked down at his paper and groaned. It was a C+, which was better than how he normally did. However, he thought he had done really well on this assignment. He guessed his feeling of “really well” was only C-material. It was better than a C-. It was still passing. Still, he thought he had made it a whole letter grade higher. He hoped he would at least get a B-.
He asked his teacher after class why he didn’t get a B-. He teacher expressed how proud she was of him for making it to a C+. She wanted to give him a higher grade, but a C+ was what the paper was worth. She did give him an A for effort though. However, that grade was invisible. It didn’t actually count. While he was grateful that his teacher recognized how hard he worked, he wished it could have reflected in his overall grade. He had As and Bs in all of his other classes except for this one. Sure, he knew everyone had their strong suits. Everyone had that one class they just didn’t understand. They were bad at it no matter what. English was that class for him, despite him speaking it every single day of his life ever since he learned how to talk. Writing essays? It was a joke. It didn’t matter how well he knew the material. It didn’t matter if he enjoyed the book they read and understood it on a deep level. He still couldn’t write an essay to save his life. Well, to save his overall grade.
He heeded his teacher’s advice in going to the tutoring center. He had stayed after school a handful of times but whenever it came time for him to do the work himself, he couldn’t do well.
William should have been proud of his C+. He worked hard and he understood the material matter and it was still passing, so a C+ should have been good enough for him, right? He still felt as though he could have done better though. He didn’t understand why essays were always such a struggle.
The moment his teacher had given their essays back to them, she assigned a new one. William couldn’t help but groan again. He wasn’t going to get a chance to recover and recharge from the last essay. He stressed out about the grade he had gotten on the last essay and now the stress was going to continue as he tried to work harder on this new essay assignment.
When class ended, William gathered his graded essay and his new assigned essay and exited the classroom. He had an open campus as the last period of the day. Normally he went home and started his afternoon earlier than everyone else, but he had decided to go to the library this time.
There was no break in between the assignments, so he wasn’t going to take a break either. He had good mojo with the C+ essay and he didn’t want to break that streak. If he was able to get a C+ on the last essay, then he needed to repeat what he did for that essay and add a little extra to make it to that B-.
He found a vacant computer in the library. There were two other classes there for some reason, but he tried to stay away from what they were doing. He could only hope neither of the teachers would kick him off of the computer because they needed it for their own students. This new essay required research and he wanted to get a good head-start on it before the weekend.
William logged onto his student account in order to get access to the Internet. Once it had booted up, he went into the search engine and… stared at it. He looked back at the assignment his teacher had given him, looking at what he needed to do for the essay and the grading rubric.
Creativity was one of the graded portions of the rubric. He raised an eyebrow and took a look at the assignment once again. It was another essay based on the book they had just read in class. He enjoyed the book and understood it well, even if it didn’t put his thoughts into the right words on his previous essay. Still, he had a solid idea of what to do for the essay.
He now realized this essay was more or less the same as the previous essay. It had a creative spin on it and it was more of an opinion piece rather than an academic one. Knowing what he does now from the previous essay, maybe the creativity part will finally push him over the edge to that B.
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