insane // chris schistad

thirteen

[tutoring and milo]

Tuesday 10:13 am

I swapped out my books during my transition to my next class. After shutting my locker, I pushed passed the crowds of people who decided inconveniently stand im the middle of hall instead of off to the side. I tried to make an attempt to find the girls, but I knew I would be late to class if I tried to look for them.

The crowd subsided as I reached another hall which was free from the lockers, where most people were, and I continued to walk to class. There were still people in these halls, just a significantly less amount. I reached my maths class and took a seat. There were already 3 or 4 people here and soon enough it would be full as the bell would ring to bring back class in session.

As people began making their way to the class, the room and halls got louder with chatter. I sat at my desk patiently, anxious for class to start so I could get my test grade back. I had been doing quite poorly in calculus, but to be fair who actually did well in that class? I felt quite good about this test and was hoping it would boost my overall all average in the class.

The bell rang and Mrs. Sandvik shut the door to the classroom. She began rambling on about what we were going to do and learn in class today, and then she finally got discussing our tests. Her hands held a stack of papers with a grade written on it and passed it out to us face down, just so no one else could see the grade.

While everyone was boasting, complaining, or ignoring their grade, I intensively watched and hoped to get my test. Finally Mrs. Sandvik approached me and set my paper on my desk face down, and smiled at me before moving forward. I assumed her smile was a good sign and I turned over my paper secretly, not ready to see my score.

There was a big, fat, red 'F' circled on my paper and my heart sunk. I was actually pissed that I did so awful on this test. It wasn't fair, because I had studied especially hard for this test. I flipped through the pages to see what she had marked wrong on my paper. The excessive amount of red marks on that paper compelled me to just close the test and leave it face down, so that 'F' wouldn't make me feel even more worse about myself.

She answered questions we had on the test and I was too embarrassed to ask any since 90% of my test was done incorrectly. We continued to review the test and then moved onto the lesson. The fact that I had to tell my mom, who was already struggling with her current job, made me feel even more worse about my mistake.

-

The bell rang, dismissing class, and everyone was out within seconds. I stayed after and walked to Mrs.Sandvik's desk with my
head hanging low. This was my opportunity to ask for help or something to fix this awful grade. I had to hurry too since I had another class and soon people would start coming in, and I didn't want anyone to know how poorly I did.

"Yea Saskia?" Mrs. Sandvik asked, noticing how I had been standing there silently and not expressing my issue.

"I need to fix this grade." I sighed, referring to my test grade, but she probably already knew that.

"Why do you think you got such a low grade?" She asked me, wanting a truthful answer in order to help me and not judge me.

"I just haven't been understanding these concepts lately." I explained to her, and I was praying for some sort of miracle.

"Well appreciate you coming to me and wantig to fix your grade. How about I let you retake the exam next Friday? Until then, come see
me after school today and I can assign you a tutor for after school." Mrs. Sandvik had done me the biggest favor and I was now determined to turn that grade around.