Dumb Kwestion #62 - Skool!

Things seem a bit slow around here the last several weeks so that must mean its time for new Dumb Kwestion!!!!
I know you are super excited, but don't be.  I mean this question is really, really lame.  Don't get your hopes up.

Ok here it is (I told you it was weak).
What were your grades like in school?

Well to start (for our non-U.S. members) in the U.S. traditional education is K-12, that's Kindergarten through 12th grade (or 13 years of required education, public for most people).

I did very well until 5th grade when I broke my leg in 3 places and missed 6 weeks of school.  My grades were terrible.  I also didn't want to do homework (so I didn't do a lot of it).  In the 6th grade (middle school for most states), I completely failed.  I had to repeat the 6th grade (thankfully in a different school because we moved across town).  I had really good grades after that until I got to around the 10th grade, and music and girls became more important.  I graduated the 12th grade (high school) with a C+, or a 2.5 grade point average (out of a maximum possible of 4.0)

I took a break from school for the next 6 years and didn't start college until my mid 20's.  I actually did much better in college.  I transferred from Community College (or junior college) to the University with a 3.8 gpa.  I think I graduated from the University with a 3.5 or 3.6 gpa (can't remember...exactly).  Taking time between highschool and college was a good idea for me.  After being in the work force I saw the value in a college degree (in a good field) and really applied myself at it.

So what was your experience like?  Did you like school?  Did you get good grades?  Did you go to college?  None of my children have completed a college degree, but I'm not even sure I would recommend college for a lot of people especially nowadays (unless you want to work in medicine or engineering/applied physics)

My grades were not the best. I was at school to see my friends. I believe I had ADD. I wasn’t a hyper kid but nothing held myattention. It even plagued me in college where my grades weren’t that great. In my mind I wanted to finish and I was happy with C grades in college (and now I wish I would’ve applied myself better). I did make some A’s every now and then even in college but it would be because the course was interesting to me. 

One time in high school my first 4 class grades on my report card were A C D C. I was so proud of that and I remember showing everyone on the bus. “Look! AC/DC!”.

Even NOW at work I can get easily sidetracked and it is frustrating because I am still new on the job. Sometimes I miss some critical things and get called out for it. Sometimes I can “catch “ something no one else sees or even thought about. 

I have fond memories of my school days. I was just a regular kid that blended in. Nobody bothered me but I could’ve cared less about my grades. 

Bottom line is I was an average C student. Made some F’s but things always averaged out to a C from grade school to college.

Your account sounds a lot like my wife's journey in high school (and mostly college too).  She had a lot of fun in school and enjoyed the social aspect with her friends but she was always a C student.
She was on the drill/dance team and even spent a year on the swim team (and possibly track)... so she did a lot of extracurricular type stuff.  But I remember at one time she was in danger of getting dropped from the drill-team if she didn't get her grades up.
You needed a certain number of credits to graduate high school.  So you could fail one or two classes (maybe even three) and still graduate.  I think you got 5 credits per class, and if you spent a whole season/year in an extracurricular like band, football, track, cheer etc. you would get 1 extra point for each.  My wife said if it wasn't for her activity on drill team for 3 years she never would have had enough credits to graduate. 

We found out later that our youngest son had a learning disability that mirrored some of the issues my wife had when she was in school.  He was in 9th grade before we found out he had an "Auditory Processing Disorder".  It still gives him some issues as an adult.

I hated high school as I got picked on quite a bit.  Also, my brother likes to get into trouble and the teachers just assumed I was like him, too.  It was miserable.

I was a straight A student until my Jr. & Sr. year.  I skipped school a lot and almost dropped out because of how people treated me.

I did go on and get my Bachelor's in Biblical Studies.

I was an A/B student.  Sometimes I got straight As, other times not so much.  I graduated High School with a 3.33 GPA.  No college.  I was oblivious to cliques and social classes until the 7th grade.  By the time graduation showed I was so done with school nonsense.  I haven't gone to any of our reunions.

Fortunately our church youth group was a good group and that's where the majority of my social life stemmed from.

alldatndensum wrote:

I hated high school as I got picked on quite a bit.  Also, my brother likes to get into trouble and the teachers just assumed I was like him, too.  It was miserable.

I was a straight A student until my Jr. & Sr. year.  I skipped school a lot and almost dropped out because of how people treated me.

I did go on and get my Bachelor's in Biblical Studies.

I didn't know you had a BA, very cool!  I'm always impressed by people who do well in junior high and high school academically.  To me those were kind of turbulent times of figuring out who I was and how I wanted to identify myself, dating, boozing/drugging and partying.  There was no way I was going to devote enough time to my studies to get good grades.  My wife had a similar issue as you did with your brother.  Only it was her 3 male cousins.  They were very popular in high school and at least two of them got in quite a bit of trouble.  They had the same last name as my wife, so when she came along a few years later, most of the teachers were still there and expected her to be a lot of trouble (but she wasn't). Being a short kid I got picked on a bit in junior high, but I quickly transformed myself into a class clown as a means of self-preservation.

Xid wrote:

I was an A/B student.  Sometimes I got straight As, other times not so much.  I graduated High School with a 3.33 GPA.  No college.  I was oblivious to cliques and social classes until the 7th grade.  By the time graduation showed I was so done with school nonsense.  I haven't gone to any of our reunions.

Fortunately our church youth group was a good group and that's where the majority of my social life stemmed from.

So you are the brainiac of our group!
I probably wouldn't have had a social life in high school either, except I went to a huge school.  Started with just over 700 students in my senior class (but only graduated a little under 600).  The two classes below us were even larger with the freshmen starting at just over 1000 kids. 
With all those students I was able to find a small group of head-banging rocker, pot-heads to fit my short little frame into.
Didn't you go to high school in WA state like I did?  I graduated from Auburn High School in 1986, where did you graduate? (I should have asked that in the original question).

So Mike and Alldat, if you guys want to share...what high school did you graduate from and when? (no pressure to share, just curious).

I went to and graduated from Everett High School, Everett, WA - 1988.  Go Seagulls?  Yes.  Our mascot was the almighty, fearsome seagull.  Ooooh!  What are you gonna do?  Pooh on me?

I did pretty well through high school, taking mostly advanced classes at one of the better schools in the state. Since I wasn't obsessed with grades, I finished with a 3.4. I actually got a D in AP Calculus - goofed off too much senior year. That trait followed me through mostly the first half of college career at one of the toughest engineering schools so I only managed a 2.6 there. Even once I did buckle down again, it wasn't worth the effort to try to get A's so if I wasn't done with the most important homework by midnight I called it a day.

I briefly started back to college to become a math teacher in 2005 after being unemployed for a few years. I got an A in Linear Algebra during the summer before starting full time in the fall. Thankfully (for me), Katrina hit and I quit to do relief work for several months, because I was not at all enjoying the insane amount of reading I was having to do for most of my courses. I'm not sure I even had a math class that semester.

Staybrite wrote:

So Mike and Alldat, if you guys want to share...what high school did you graduate from and when? (no pressure to share, just curious).

Gordonsville High School in rural Gordonsville, TN.

We had a little over 700 kids.....K-12! My graduating class was a humongous 45 people!

We were too small to have AP or even honors classes.

Staybrite wrote:

So Mike and Alldat, if you guys want to share...what high school did you graduate from and when? (no pressure to share, just curious).

Farragut High School in Knoxville, TN which at the time was a large school. Like you I think we had around 700 in our class. I had a great group of friends and many of them were from my youth group at church. 

I graduated from UT in 1994 with a BS in Communications. Most of my group of high school also attended there and we remained a tight group of kids.

Yucca Valley High School, CA class of 1987. Like others here, I hated high school and had my share of bullies who picked on me. I was an average student who was more interested in hangin' with my buddies than doing school work. I only had good grades in classes I liked, and didn't apply myself in classes I didn't care for. If I could, I'd go back and actually apply myself in all subjects (except for Biology with their evolution crap). When I went to college a couple years later, I got serious about my studies and had the highest grades in my Pharmacology and Art courses.

Wow, thanks for all the responses guys!  Sounds like most of us had similar experiences.  Well except for Alldat, holy cow man, a graduating class of 45?!  That's like a co-op school.  I was going to joke that I knew home-school kids that had larger classes (but that would just be silly).  Still just crazy that you and Mike graduated from high school in the same state, but with vastly different school sizes.

My kids went to our small-town public high school for some of their classes (but all graduated with home-school degrees).  Their entire 4 year high school population was only a little over 500 students.  So their classes would only have around 120-145 students.  You could pretty much know everybody by name in a class that small.

Staybrite wrote:

What were your grades like in school?

Basically I was in the C range.

But wait, it seems like actually you want to know about our life in grade school.

Firstly let me say it was not always K-12. My dad graduated after the 11th grade. They didn’t have 12th grade back then.

I was also one of those that got picked in a bunch mainly because I was so skinny. Only had to go to summer school once back in the 4th grade.

Middle school I was playing trombone in band and enjoyed it. 

High school moved on to the NJROTC. Got real active in that. Freshman Drill Team, Varsity Drill Team, Leadership Academy ( a summer time boot camp w/Marine D.I.s for only a select few between junior and senior year). The ROTC was my main social group there next to some friends in the FCS (fellowship of Christian Students).

Hardkore wrote:

Staybrite wrote:

What were your grades like in school?

Basically I was in the C range.

But wait, it seems like actually you want to know about our life in grade school.

Firstly let me say it was not always K-12. My dad graduated after the 11th grade. They didn’t have 12th grade back then.

I was also one of those that got picked in a bunch mainly because I was so skinny. Only had to go to summer school once back in the 4th grade.

Middle school I was playing trombone in band and enjoyed it. 

High school moved on to the NJROTC. Got real active in that. Freshman Drill Team, Varsity Drill Team, Leadership Academy ( a summer time boot camp w/Marine D.I.s for only a select few between junior and senior year). The ROTC was my main social group there next to some friends in the FCS (fellowship of Christian Students).

Wow, did you do all those extra-circulars and not join a branch of the military?  Did you go to a public high school or private?  We had a very large public high school, but I don't even remember having a JROTC program (maybe we did, and I just don't remember), heck we even had a golf team and an archery team.

I wonder if I could have avoided having to repeat the 6th grade if we had a summer school option.  Probably not, as I think I had failed at least half of my classes.  I think I even failed P.E. somehow. 

Your comment about your father only having up to 11 grades is a little surprising to me.  My parents both graduated high school at completion of grade 12 (around 1966).  I'm not sure about my grand parents (except one grandpa who only completed up to the 8th grade.... but that was because he dropped out to go to work).

Hardkore wrote:

But wait, it seems like actually you want to know about our life in grade school.

I'll tell you a little secret.  Most of the threads I start only have one agenda. That is to encourage the active members of this board to "talk" to each other (even the not-so-active members are great to hear from).  I don't really care too much what that discussion is about, or even if I talk that much.  The dozen or so active people here are the only real friends I have that communicate with me on a weekly (or even monthly) basis.  I have a very old friend from high school, but we only talk about twice a year.  Almost all my other friends are here at CHM.  If my wife wasn't also my best friend I would be one lonely guy. (I don't mean to bring the discussion down, but I think some of us probably don't have a ton of good friends).

Nope, it is not required to join a branch of service from the JROTC. It was a public school. I think all the schools ,except private schools, had a JROTC. Some were Army and others Air Force. I was at the only Navy JROTC in the city. When I went to Leadership Academy, that was at NAS Dallas. Everyone that came was from a Navy JROTC somewhere in the nation. Usually only 2 or 3 from each school got to go. That year my Commander managed to pull some strings and got 6 of us in.

We even went to NAS Pensacola every year for the Blue Angels Air Show.

It was a full school with all the workings including the football, baseball, track, and even golf. Don’t know if we had archery or not. I would have to dig out one of my old yearbooks and look.

It always bogs my mind how anyone could fail P.E.

Where did you parents go to school, area wise? Maybe things changed between when he graduated (1950) and when they did around ‘66.

Hardkore wrote:

....stuff....

Where did you parents go to school, area wise? Maybe things changed between when he graduated (1950) and when they did around ‘66.

My mother graduated in Southern California (Long Beach area), and my father actually didn't graduate until 1967 (I had to look it up) in Seattle. Unfortunately none of my grandparents are still alive (they graduated in the late 30's and very early 40's) in California, Kansas, and Wisconsin... so it could very well be they didn't have a 12th grade at all.