95%

     Last year, I was an eighth grader at St. Gregory, and I was having problems with my grades. I knew I was capable of getting good grades. I had gotten good grades in the past, and even had good grades in some of my classes now. However, in other classes, such as geometry and Spanish, I would have problems. Even though I could do the homework, sometimes I would forget to do it altogether. Other times I would do the homework, but forget to turn it in during class. If my homework was late, I would be even less likely to turn it in next time, because I was usually too caught up in my current homework to work on, or even remember, my late assignments. So the missing assignment would remain a 0, and bring my grades down for a long time. One of my problems was that I wouldn't remember having homework in a class. Even though I could access the homework from the internet, if I thought I didn't have homework I wouldn't check the websites at all. The best solution was to use a planner, and write down my assignments the moment I got them. I would try to be organized and keep writing down my assignments in my planner, and it worked for a time, but eventually I would start to get lazy and stop writing down my assignments. My memory for things like homework assignments is bad, and not writing things down in my planner caused me to forget to do even more assignments. Having 0's in my grade book brought my grades down a lot, and when my parents noticed these 0's and my bad grades in certain classes they would start to get worried. One evening, they would sit down with me and start talking to me about it. I would then get embarrassed and somewhat nervous about not turning in my homework. My dad would take the initiative of talking to me, while my mom usually just sat there, aware that I was uncomfortable. My parents would then tell me to get in the assignment as soon as possible. This motivated me to turn in my homework and increase my grades, so I'd start working on the assignment as soon as possible. I would get the assignment in the next time I had that class, and soon my grades would start going up again. Soon, however, I would forget to turn something in again, and this would start a chain reaction which would make my grades go down once more.

     About midway through the fourth quarter, my parents had to decide which school to send me to for high school. The two choices it was narrowed down to were St. Gregory and Catalina Foothills High School. While St. Gregory was expensive, it had better facilities and smaller class sizes, as well as the fact that most of my friends were going here for high school. Catalina Foothills High School was a good choice because not only was it way closer to our house, my parents didn't have to pay a small fortune for me to go there. My parents didn't want to pay a lot of money to send me to St. Gregory if I wasn't going to get the most out of my education and keep my grades up. They came up with a plan, and one evening, around 7:00, they sat down with me in my house's living room and talked to me about it. At first I thought that this would just be another uncomfortable evening like the other times they talked to me about my grades, but this time I found that they had a specific goal for me. They said that if I could get an average grade of 95% for the fourth quarter, they would agree to send me to St. Gregory for the following year, and otherwise they would choose to send me to Catalina Foothills High School. When I learned that I had to try harder if I wanted to go to this school for high school, I realized how much I really wanted to go here and be with my friends for four more years. It gave me much greater motivation to do well in school.

     So, for the rest of the quarter, I started putting more effort into my work. Right after I got home from school I would start working on my homework, getting it over with earlier so that I wouldn't have to keep putting it off, which, from my experience, tends to make me not do it at all. If I happened to not turn in a homework assignment on the day it was due, I would make sure to turn it in on the next day, or even e-mail it to the teacher on the afternoon of the due date. If I had a quiz or test, I would make sure to thoroughly study for it and not entirely rely on my memory of the homework assignments and classes during the quiz or test. As I started putting more effort into my work, my grades started getting higher and higher. Finally there was my last chance to increase my scores: finals week. I studied a lot for my math and Spanish tests, and worked longer than usual on my project for science. I read over my Latin book some more in order to get ready for the translations we would be doing. Finals week passed, and I got good grades on them! One of the last things to happen before I graduated from middle school was the Middle School Awards Ceremony. I got two awards, the Drama Award and the Growth and Progress Award!

     Finally summer had started. I was free for a couple months! I didn't hear about my grades for a while after school ended. However, about two weeks into summer vacation, my parents and I were eating dinner at a fancy restaurant when the topic of my grades came up. I learned that my average score for the quarter was a 93. I had a short moment of disappointment, but then my parents continued. If each of the awards I got counted as an extra 1%, that boosted it up to 95%. A large wave of relief passed over me. I could go to St. Gregory next year! At that restaurant I made a deal with my parents that I would continue to get 95s to show to them that I was making the most out of this high school. So far, it seems like I've gotten a good start! I have started working on my homework the moment I get home from school, and have installed a calendar program on my netbook which makes it a lot more fast and convenient to write down my assignments. It has done a very good job of keeping me from forgetting what assignments I have and when they are due. That uncomfortable evening in my living room in the middle of the fourth quarter made me finally realize that if I want to get the things that I like, such as St. Gregory, I will have to really work for them, and now, as far as I can tell, I'm changing for the better.