Nothing bothers me more than getting a few weeks into a quarter, or having a busy week of tests and graded assignments, and then going to check my grades and there’s nothing. Not knowing how I did on that many assignments is worrying and frustrating, especially when I have no idea when they’ll get posted. 

Tests where the grades aren’t automatically posted after are a world of stress. Not only did I just have to take the test, which is worrying enough in most cases, but now I have to worry about how I did on that test, my overall grade, and whether or not I might need a retake. The stress just builds and builds until it’s all I can think about, and all I can do is wait.  

That’s why sites like NoRedInk, which tell you your test scores immediately, are so comforting to me. Regardless of how I did on the test, I know exactly what I got, and can figure out how it might affect my grade. Getting a bad grade is never easy, and though the moment where I find out I did poorly on something is horrible, I still find it so much easier than having to wait and worry for a few days, and then find out I still did poorly, especially on major summatives, knowing quickly that I need to get the retake process started and processing what went wrong is important to me. 

The worst type of waiting for me is definitely after essays or big tests. Essays are especially stressful, because it obviously takes a while for the teacher to read through and grade the entire class’s essays. However, during the time that it takes for the teacher to grade them, I find myself getting more and more worried about tiny mistakes I could’ve made, or I start thinking of what I could’ve changed if I’d thought of it before the deadline. This was especially true on my research paper, where even though it was graded quickly, I was worried about it the entire time. 

Not only that, but sometimes when I’ve done a lot of assignments that are worth big parts of my grade, and none of them are put into StudentVue, I start to worry. I find myself checking my grades far more often, even on the weekends, trying to see if anything has been updated that I need to know about. 

In a best case scenario, my grade either goes up or stays the same, and I can start to relax some. In the worst case scenario though, logging in to check my grades and seeing large negative changes is terrifying. If that happens, I usually have to take a few minutes to calm myself down before I’m even ready to see what changed my grade so suddenly. 

The sudden drop that sometimes shows up at the end of the quarter is highly disorienting, and especially during that time, not knowing what could be messing up my grade is one of the parts of school I hate most. It never feels like there’s enough time to be able to bring my grade back up to where I would like it to be, and with the increase of work that usually comes at the end of the quarter, it makes it even harder to catch up. The relief of finally seeing the grades update is nice, but it doesn’t even come close to the amount of stress that not seeing my grades gives me.

Ever since the results of my 6th grade moon phases came out on TestNav, I have always hated immediately knowing my results. I studied for hours, making flash cards on the Waning and Waxing Gibbous, hoping I atleast pulled through with an 80, I got a 63. The moments leading up to getting the results are the worst; sweaty palms and panicked thoughts always occur. 

As my time in the public school system has progressed, I have moved from hating TestNav to hating every other website that automatically displays your score after you complete the assignment. What about the people who do not want to see the score? It stresses me knowing that as soon as I hit submit, the screen will flash with a score. For instance, after going through usually 20 mind-numbing sentences on NoRedink, I hit submit, and there it is, my score. 

Along with hating my grades immediately being shown, I hate having to grade my tests or other students grading my test, this usually occurs in my math and science classes, and I hate it. Seeing the person’s hand move, trying to guess if they are scribbling an x or check, is a game that I always play. I love the waiting period when the results come out, when everything is up in the air. I will admit, I probably do not check StudentVue as much as I should, most of the time my teachers are good at putting in grades, and I hate knowing whether I got a good or bad grade.

My ability of memorizing the moon phases will not change, but hopefully less teachers at Dominion will implement the websites that share your score immediately or make other students grade each other’s assignments.