In elementary school, I was an A student, however when I got to middle school, I was overwhelmed.  My grades were negatively impacted.  Since then I have been a reasonably steady “B” student.  However, my grades tend to decline as the year draws on.  I have had classes fall as low as a “D” before school ends.  I realize that grade decline and “D’s” are common problems, but I have always used that as almost an excuse for my bad grades.  My grades also seem to have a direct correlation with the amount of mess in my locker.  I was stressed out by the piles of paper and other junk in my locker, reducing my grades further.  However, thanks to the help of both parents, I hope to increase my GPA, reduce my grade decline, and become an A student once again.
In elementary school, everything was easy for me.  I would ace almost every quiz or test with ease, sometimes even studying the next year’s topics over the summer, or even while learning about the current year’s subjects.  I joined a choir from another town that met Monday nights, as well as starting piano lessons, both of which I continue.  I love topics like math, language arts, and science, as well as having a respect for history, and by extension, social studies.   However, in middle school that all changed.  The idea of having a locker, and walking from class to class, sometimes halfway across a giant school was very daunting.  I would carry folders, notebooks, and an agenda with me at all times, creating many paper spills.  I was prone to losing pencils, and my locker gradually became more and more of a “science experiment”, as my dad called it.
Now we fast forward to freshman year.  In the past three years I have used several organizational tactics: the aforementioned stack of folders, an accordion folder, and binders with many folders inside.  All of these were accompanied by a large stack containing notebooks and an agenda.  Combined with the ever present book I would be reading, my school-issued laptop (which had horrible battery life), and it’s cord, I had way too much to carry.  So I made a logical decision.  I tried the tactic of an accordion folder for each class, as well as an agenda and notebooks for every class.  This was a bulky system, which added stress on top of stress due to starting electives.  Oh yeah, I also hadn’t fixed the locker situation, in fact, it had gotten worse.
My first semester I fared reasonably well.  I had signed up for band and a study hall, so I had very little additional workload compared to middle school.  I became overconfident, thinking that high school was little challenge for me.  Boy, was I wrong.  By second semester, my locker was a mess again, but other than a few assignments that were a few days late, I was fine.  Then the next semester started.  The drafting class that I had signed up for was cancelled due to a lack of student sign up.  I had to take Basic Woods.  Now, I love shop classes, in fact the teacher in charge of most of them is one of my favorite teachers.  However, if there is one thing I am not, it is a hands on learner.  Basic Woods is a hands on learning class that requires a lot of energy.  I learned how to make a table pretty well, and I ended up with a decent grade on it.  It wasn’t very good but it wasn’t bad either.  However, it required a lot of energy, it was on the other side of the school from everything else, and the teacher couldn’t watch the clock because he was watching to make sure that we didn’t cut ourselves.  This meant we would usually run overtime cleaning up.  Without the study hall to give me extra homework time, I had to do my homework at night, staying up late to finish assignments.  This added to the stress that my locker was causing me.  Then I decided to join the spring play.
Our cast met almost every day after school for three to six hours.  We had weekend rehearsals as well.  This goes on for about a month, and at the end of the month we performed three shows over the weekend.  Combined with my choir, and piano lessons which took up a section of my Monday and Tuesday nights, sometimes arriving home around 10:30 pm.  I also was in jazz band that year, which meets Monday and Thursday mornings for an hour before school starts.  This added a lot of stress to my inventory as well.  I gradually stopped writing in my agenda.  I didn’t have time to do my homework at night some nights, and would have to finish it during lunch, or even breakfast the next day.  I had many missing assignments, and couldn’t finish the backlog.  I barely kept my grades above failing in several of my classes.
I had just gotten home from school about three weeks before school ended.  The play had finally ended, and my choir had adjourned for the summer as well.  I had just gotten a “D+” on a speech that I had given, though it was on something I was extremely passionate about.  In fact, I was probably too passionate about it.  It went over five minutes past my Comm 9 teacher’s (very reasonable) ten minute time limit.  I had simply skimmed the assignment, and I left out several required elements of the speech.  In catching up with my assignment backlog, I had very little time to write, check, or practice the speech.  At dinner I told my parents about it, looking for some sympathy.  They suggested several ways to fix the assignment, something that I did not deem helpful, as I was already planning to review my speech, edit it to improve it, and take advantage of my Comm teacher’s re-speak policy.  We spent an hour arguing and eventually, I went to bed crying.  I honestly can’t tell you what we argued about, I can’t seem to pin it down, but as I fell asleep, I realized something.  The problem was my outlook at school.  I had always looked at it as more of a social experience or a fun use of knowledge than a place to learn.  I did learn there, but I didn’t consider that to be something important, I only considered it as a nice secondary function.  Realizing that it was important put my mind at ease.  I quickly, turned on the light and wrote a resolution to take school seriously.  After signing it, and several others I thought of to help me improve myself and my learning, I turned off the light and fell asleep.  The next morning, I asked my Comm teacher if I could re-speak the next coming Friday.  I started putting my resolutions into effect immediately.
So far, my resolutions have assisted me through my subsequent high school experience.  They are not tried and true, but they have worked for me, and I hope they will continue to.  I have improved so much in such a short time.  For example, my lack of backlog and clean locker (thank you resolutions!) helped remove stress, and my cribbage board is beautiful.  It will be a long journey ahead to do this, but I look forward to improving my grades, and hopefully continuing to improve in future activities as well.