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.