The Richardsons

Video #42

"Today is the day that all of the teachers decided to release all of the grades and I'm so nervous and panicked, like I couldn't sleep all night, I'm serious, that's why I look like a sleep deprived 12 year old. Even now."

I yawned and then slowly started to fall asleep.

I woke up in class, my math teacher looking at me.

"That's not like you to sleep in class, Kat."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't sleep well."

It was true.

"You know what? I can understand why you're tired. This semester, the exams were a different level of intense. And, it took a toll on everybody even Gennifer DraMatiz.

Everybody was on edge during the exams. You could feel it as the teacher was talking, a weird atmosphere that felt unsettling and it was extra silent.

"Also, if you did not know, there is a race for who will be valedictorian, and in our class year, with the introduction of the Gifted Children's Program, it's a race between all of them to be number one. In fact, we have one of them in our class with us. I won't say of course. The exam results were quite disappointing and most students failed horribly, like the thing is, is teachers know that you kids have bad student habits that you can deny all you want but it will never happen because us teachers are as stupid as you think."

The race to becoming the school valedictorian. I hear that it has little purpose, other than going on your college applications, and you get to make a speech too. Not me being a bad speaker at times.

Last time I checked, I was number 6 in my grade out of 500 or so kids. I'm actually surprised myself that I'm in 6th place because sometimes I can be stupid.

"Even to all of you AP kids in here, what in the world were you doing on the day of exams? I can understand if you were mentally tired or you fell asleep early or something like that. But, some grades like these are bad. Like, you never knew this about me, but your AP Math teacher used to suck at school, until she was in 10th grade and then she started applying herself and crying during class."

I haven't checked my grades but I studied so hard for the exams, it's not funny.

"So, now, I will be handing out the exams. They were a wreck to grade."

Now this got me worried. What would mom and dad do if I failed these exams?

"I forgot to mention 1 thing, this period is when you will be getting ALL of your exams back and not just math."

Talk about confusing. But? It's just something that my school does. Maybe because instead of you having seven breakdowns during the day, just squeeze it into 1 period instead.

The math teacher calls the students one by one to the desks by their FULL NAME (middle name included).

"Aurora Monty-Xiao."

"David Galligan."

"Henry Theordore Kettline the third."

"Ariel Pearl Shinners."

"Katherine Ruby Richardsons."

I gulped and went up to the desk. The teacher handed me a heavy stack of papers and signaled me to look down. On a post it note, she wrote.

"Out of the hundred tests that I had to grade, you actually got a perfect score, Kat."

Well, at least I didn't fail Math. But, math is one of my strong points along with English. Science and History are ok but in no way can I do gym or swim. I have to be really lucky to pass those.

I went through each of the packets and looked through each of the scores.

Math, 100. English, 99. Science, 97, History, 95. P.E, 90. Gifted Children's Program, 98. And swim, 94.

WHAT THE FUDGE?

I'm actually the most surprised at gym because I thought that the teacher would've failed me  since I nearly broke at least 6 of my bones trying to hurdle then jog and then weights and oh lord. I get it, just because I'm a little taller than average or I'm average height doesn't mean I have actual (or average) athletic ability.

Meanwhile, everybody looked at me and they saw my grades and gasped.

"So, you're the one in the Gifted Children's Program."

Oh god, not again.