Ninth-grade
I failed. I keep failing one exam at the end of years. Like always, it was just one that was not important enough, so the school let me scrape by. Sometimes, it was geography, and other times, it was history. This time, I was unsuccessful in the history exam of my eighth grade and the school decided not to promote me.
My parents knew I was not as skilled as they wanted me to be, but they also knew that I was a hard worker. For this reason, they did not push me as much and were patient. But because my siblings were bright and scored well without much practice, they were not all that patient. They said, "Sierra, please study harder," and, "blah, blah, blah." I, most of the time, did not hear what they were saying, but when I did, it made me miserable.
I had two older siblings, Cameron and Jason, who were both in Medical school. Cameron was doing her fourth year and Jason, his second year. My dad was a doctor, in the same hospital they were studying at, so their fee was lessened. My dad always wanted to make us all doctors but I said my answer was a resolute 'no' to medical school, he stopped asking me, knowing that I would not change my mind about it. I respect him for that.
When I was not promoted, our family brainstormed on what to do about this problem. Later, Paul and I were enrolled in another school where I started performing better, but Paul was clearly out of their league. Soon after this, my mom found out that my old school was taking retakes, and somehow they skipped contacting us about this. My mom, infuriated, went to the old school, but they wanted the full admission fee for him, although he didn't even get his diploma. So after a long time of arguing to see the principal, my mom told Cameron to write an email to the principal, and she did.
Here are a few quotes from her email: "The other day, I came home to find my mother very upset. She had come to your school and tried to get my youngest brother admitted back in.", "your faculty had failed to accommodate my sister and had decided to hold her back a grade instead of offering the usual retakes or even summer classes that you apparently offer other students", "We decided to put him back in [school name cleared]. You decided to take full admission fees from us", and "Not only have we given you smart, genius children who have brought and will bring nothing but good news for your school, we even took the one problem child you weren't able to handle and put her in someone else's care. We have always supported you financially when you came to ask for it." (Fun Fact: She didn't get her answer from them so we stopped hoping)
Obviously, my family was disappointed but clearly, they couldn't drill something in their heads and we could do nothing further except for continuing with what we had. Well, everything happens for a reason, right?
My new school was located in a small house a ten-minute drive from home and Paul's school was like another ten minutes away from mine. This way, Cameron and Jason were constantly behind schedule because we were not on time. This was because of Paul, who profusely denied it.
The structure of the miniature house-sized house struck me after a while. The eighth and ninth-grade sections were on the first floor. The Cambridge classes were on the ground floor. Finally, the Metric classes and a teacher's lounge were in the basement. The evacuation system was pretty dull because the first floor had a single flight of stairs. If that didn't frighten you, then here's the Math: Each class has three sections, A, B, and C, and each classroom had twenty students. So the number of people on the first floor was twenty times six, which is about one-twenty people. There is one teacher in a classroom and about four more teachers as there was a small teacher lounge. So there were one-thirty people who would use one staircase to flee out of the building.
The first day of school was boring except I met these two girls, who were also new to the class Jade and Ava. Jade was a hard worker and was from a convent school. She was also a big fan of Taylor Swift. Ava was as hard-working as Jade but she was a big fan of BTS. But soon, I knew I was an extra person, the third wheel in their friendship so I just left them. Their friendship did benefit me though.
During ninth grade, I met another girl, Freya, who loved to do something for the trans. Now, I don't see anything bad with that, but this apparently required getting out of class very often. On occasions, we would never know if she made it to school or not. Once, someone pointed at her as she was chilling and bunking during English class, and the way that the teacher thundered at her is confined to memory. Another time, she was rude to the history teacher and never attended her class again. If I remember correctly, I never saw her face ever again.
The ninth-grade exam passed in a jiffy and the results were a bit shocking. I managed to pass my exams without failing a single exam, but I was in deep waters. For the summer, I was relaxing till tenth grade came around the corner.
