The release date looms in the near future; you cancel weekend plans in anticipation of being grounded. Regrets build—and build and build—you wish you had stopped watching Tik Toks and studied for that test, you wish you hadn’t played fetch with your dog’s new bone and had finished that homework, you wish you made yourself stop lifting weights to revise that paper. Now, finally, you wish your parents didn’t value grades. It is time to craft excuses, and your list is long. Will you claim you were graded unfairly? Will you argue that not all of your grades have been put in—that you’re missing the A you earned just last week? Will you complain about the horrid group you were assigned to for the project that amounts to 97% of your quarter grade?

Or will you take a deep breath, calm down, meditate (Mondays at 12:45 with Mr. Benson), and remember that these are just quarter grades and that they don’t really matter.