Friends and Grades

[Dedornan]

Okay, I'll admit it, my grades aren't the best, but my best friend has the best grades in the class, maybe even the school, and I'm fine with that. But today, when we got our math tests back, I has very unhappy with my score

(40%), but I kept my grade to myself. A few of my other friends also got scores like mine, but then my best friend went up to them and said

 

"Oh my gosh! I sucked at this test! I got the worst score in the world!" and shoved a big 90% right in our faces. I talked to her about it, but she just said, "I have really high expectations." What do I do? I want to keep her as my friend, but it feels bad when she does that because my grades aren't that great to begin with. What should I do?

[YabbaDabba]

I've been in this situation before, particularly in high school. I was like your friend in most of my classes, but especially in English, History and French. Without knowing your friend, I can only speculate that she didn't do this to make you feel bad; she was probably genuinely bummed about that A- and was upset with herself.

 

However, that doesn't mean that her comments didn't make you and your other friends feel bad. So, the best thing to do in this situation is to NOT SHARE YOUR GRADES.

 

Just don't do it. I never had a problem with sharing grades, test scores, etc (unless mine were really abysmal), but looking back, grades were never really a huge topic of discussion among myself and my friends. At most, we'd just say, "How'd you do?" and the other person would respond with, "Pretty good," or "Okay," or "Not great." Really, though, sharing grades is utterly pointless; it doesn't change your grade when you learn your friend's grade; yes, sometimes it makes you feel better to know that someone else did badly, too, but it can also backfire--like it did in your case--and just end with you feeling bad about it. From now on, just talk amongst your friends, let them know that you're more comfortable not sharing grades. Say it has nothing to do with them, but that you just think it'll save you all a lot of drama if you keep your grades to yourselves.

 

So, don't share grades. Or, if you absolutely have to check up on each other, don't be specific. After all, one person's "pretty good" could be a C+, while it's another person's A grade.

[geekgirl4]

I think you should tell her that it's kinda of rude to show your higher grade when you know everybody's else has lower ones, she's being pretty insensitive. And yeah, my friend and I do not share grades either, so we don't hurt anybody's feelings. We just say, we did ok, or we did alright.

[HouseKitten]

This is called - fishing for compliments.

 

She wants people to turn around and go 'don't be silly, you've got a great score! you're so clever!' which is very irritating and not half as subtle as people think.

 

Best advice I guess would be to just completely ignore her attempt. Nod and agree. If she says she's got a terrible score, tell her that's a shame, better luck next time. Do not feed her want for 'no that's really good!' comments. Hopefully she'll get the hint and stop doing it when she doesn't the appropriate reaction.