Doing Just Enough to Pass by Shenna Simpson

When I first came to Cedar, I was kind of scared. I thought that high school was going to be hard to the point where I wasn’t going to be able to graduate. But as I went through my first semester of classes my freshman year, I began to realize that it wasn’t as hard as everyone had said it was. Don’t get me wrong, though; you still had to work in order to pass those classes. And, unfortunately, even then I didn’t do all my work. I only did enough to pass but only just barely. My teachers kept telling me that they knew that I could do better. I would then work harder but soon return to barely passing again.

I have learned from looking back on my freshman year that I should have tried harder than just barely passing. Believe it or not, the teachers and other adults weren’t joking when they said the colleges actually look at your grades. They seriously do. So if you are definitely looking to go to a good college then you will really need to make sure you get good grades like A’s and B’s in all your classes. Since I didn’t try harder in 9th grade, I can’t go to UGA first. I’m going to have to go to a community college for 2 years first before I can go to UGA. Oh and don’t forget to listen to your teachers when they give you advice. They wouldn’t waste their time telling you something useless.

What you can learn from this is that playing around, not doing your work, and just barely passing your classes during your first year isn’t a very smart thing to do. Plus you need to do the same for your sophomore and junior year. So put a little more effort in to your class work and homework. Don’t settle for a C. Go for a B and keep that grade up. If you do all of this then you won’t have to worry about making classes up. If you have to do that, you will also be able to get in to the college that you want to go to the first time around and not a community or junior college first.