Mountains out of molehills?

Make a plan. Take some kind of concrete action to improve the situation. And look at it this way--at least now you know where your weakness is, and where you need to work. See if you can get some help with it over the summer, if possible. Do you think your parents would be able to get you a tutor? Do you have a friend who is strong in that subject--especially one who might be weak in a subject you are strong in, and you could help each other?

Once you have a plan for what you are going to do about it, when thoughts come up that are about it, you can just address the thought with, "yes, and I'm dealing with that in this way, so I don't have to worry about it now." When you have thoughts that you don't want, just acknowledge them and let them go.

 

This is good advice. I got a bad grade in my summer exams and got quite worried about final exams I'll be having next year. But what really helped me was to go back over the parts of the test I didn't do well on and essentially make sure that I knew them 100 per cent. The way I look at exams that are not final exams are just essentially guides for the actual exams. They let you see where your weaknesses are, as Ianthe said.

But once you have that done, I kind of disagree with what Ianthe said in that it's summer now. You don't need to get a tutor over the summer, and you don't need to be studying like mad either. It's the summer. You'll have enough stress next year preparing for your final exams, so you should take a break. Instead of over-thinking the result, just do things that you can enjoy. Lie in bed, go hiking, play video games, listen to music, watch movies... do anything but think about this grade that means little or nothing at the end of the day.

I find that totally tuning out from anything school-related is how I get over bad grades. As you said, you'll have plenty of time to study for the final exams that will be of similar difficulty to the ones you just did. It's fine to panic over something like this, but there comes a stage when you have to realise that you may be panicking over nothing because you haven't given yourself reason to think about something else. The exams are in a year's time, not next week. Relax!

 

Wow anything less than 70% is considered failing over here .

Sorry that probably didnt help.. Anyways, English Lit is a very broad study. If you could explain what you think your struggling with we could probably give you some advice on how to make improvements in that direction.

As far as it bringing you down, you have to let it go. And this means alot coming from me. From 1st grade to freshman year of high school I was top of my class. Freshman year I ended with rank 1 out of 405, already planning out my Valedictorian speech. My sophmore year I was struck with the most brutal teacher in school, known as the GPA Butcher lol. Top of her class ment a C, and thats exactly what she gave me. All who didnt have her retained higher gpas. I kinda lost it(history of perfectionism), and did even more poorly the second semester. I ended in rank 58/405. No chance of returning to my former spot of number 1. But one day I had to tell myself that it was fine if everything did go exactly as planned. I was still going to a good college, and truthfully once your in college these grades mean nothing.


You should always try you absolute hardest to excell. But there comes a time where you wont reach the glory you had previously planned. And when this happens instead of beating ourself up about, we can take steps to do every better next time. Cheer up .