In elementary school we got “S” for satisfactory, “U” for unsatisfactory or “N” for needs improvement. In the fourth grade “E” was added for excellent. In many ways, keeping it kind of vague was a good idea. Students could concentrate on learning the subject and not trying to outdo each other.
However, children are going to rank each other, no matter what, sometime during the school day. Once the recess bell rang, the students flooded onto the playground ready and willing to label all the guys as good or lousy at baseball. Guess which one I was. Lousy. I couldn’t play baseball, tag football, you name it, and I was lousy at it. So All day long the only label I was stuck with was “L” for lousy.
Then I advanced to junior high school, and they had grades—“A”, “B”, “C”, “D” and “F”. “A” was best. And I started making “A”s. That was not lousy. The school had this group called the junior honor society for students who made all “A”s. I was selected to be a member. They didn’t care if I was lousy at baseball.
In high school the grading system became more complicated. They had pluses and minus by each of the letter grades. What a thrill to make an “A” plus. I didn’t make all “A” pluses. I didn’t mind regular old “A”s. I was a little uneasy with “A” minuses.
I have to admit that I became addicted to “A”s, especially “A” pluses. My self-esteem was high for the first week after report cards. The local newspaper published the honor roll. It was a small town without much going on, so the editor had to fill up the space with something. And was I glad. There it was in black and white. My name. After the third or fourth week I was wobbly again. I was still not any good at sports. I was not exactly a babe magnet—very skinny kid. By the sixth week I really needed that report card to validate my reason to exist.
Another disturbing development by my senior year was that I started thinking I wasn’t good in algebra or chemistry because I only made “A” minus in them. Now I’m sure there were students in my school who thought they were great in math because it was their best grade—a “B” plus. It was many years later before this fact dawned on me, and I felt very foolish.
No. I felt lousy.