"Phenomenal", one of the kids at the computer said.
"That's a pretty cool word Vaughn, I'm going to use that for my word of the week assignment", Miley started writing it down in her notebook.
Jeffrey felt it was a little bit vulgar to have kids waving money in front of a teacher so he decided it wouldn't be a good time to ask.
Then, while the leaders of the club finished up they started to announce the topics they wanted to go over for the week and prepare for their weekly broadcast on Thursday. Mrs. Benoit started handing out pink slips and signed them with a silver sharpie.
Liam walked toward Jeffrey, "If you have the time, could you ask Samantha and Preston to come to this room during lunch? I think our journalism club would like to interview you guys"
Jeffrey agreed, "I'll see what I can do. They might have a test or something, but I'll definitely do my best."
"Looking forward to it", Liam went back to his area and started talking to another group of kids in his section.
Jeffrey headed back to his first period class with his social studies teacher Mr. Co. He was not going to be happy having a student come in late.
After rushing up the flights of stairs, Jeffrey composed himself before walking in classroom 204.
Standing at the metal lectern he had prepared, Mr. Co was talking about a particular slide on his presentation. It was on ancient history and various facts on Homo Habilis.
"The Homo Habilis is one of the first species that we believe created stone tools. They lived between 1.4 million to 2.4 million years ago", Mr. Co pointed to a picture on the chart with a laser pointer.
Jeffrey as subtly as he could handed him a pink note and slid into his seat. Jeffrey's ears were red with embarrassment for coming in late. He could almost feel the sense of oppression and disapproval from the teacher.
Mr. Co quickly finished the slide.
"This period of time is called the Quaternary period. Why do you think we started discovering stone tools from this period?", Mr. Co read out the question from their class workbooks.
While everyone was taking notes and writing down the question. He stared at the slip that Jeffrey had presented him.
Jeffrey was sweating nervously as he tried as quietly as possible to pull out his notebook and stationary box. His backpack was a mess and the sound of him rummaging through his backpack loudly rung through his ears.
Eventually Jeffrey started to copy the notes and answer the critical thinking question on the screen.
Mr. Co nodded a sign of approval, but Jeffrey took it as a sign of death for his academic career.
"There goes his E for Excellent on his report card for my academic behavior", Jeffrey pessimistically thought to himself.
Then it came time to turn in homework, row by row everyone pulled out their Pearson Learning Unit 3 Social Studies Textbook. The paper was all a similar shade of pale gray paper. Everyone slowly tore out homework page 53 along the perforated edges.
Mr. Co first required students to have it already torn out, however the amount of crumbled and lost homework papers made him ease his restrictions so that students would do it all it once. However this didn't stop students from forgetting to bring the whole work book entirely.
Samantha as always sat in the front row, confident that she had filled her homework answers correctly and receive full points.
Jeffrey's stomach sank thinking about the score he would receive as it probably would miss 1 or 2 points because one of his answers wasn't complete enough or he was missing some information.
Jeffrey particularly hated when he forgot to write his name as Mr. Co would put it on the board with a magnet and write the words "No Name?"
Students would then have to go up and grab their paper so that he would add their grade online.
Their homework papers were out of 5, so every missed point meant getting an 80% on their assignment. It also didn't help that homework was a whole 25% of their final grade. So Jeffrey at best averaged around an 88%, since he very rarely received a full score.
The few times he did get 100% was when he talked with the teacher to ask what he was missing.
Even some of the highest achievers usually only received 96-98% a near perfect score. However there were always one or two assignments where even they didn't get a full score.
Mr. Co did say that he graded the assignments and tests on a curve, but it didn't help when you were in the middle of the curve and the smartest kids in class got 4 or 5 more problems correct then everyone else.
"Haah", Jeffrey was more than a little frustrated recalling all the times he squirmed trying to justify and defend his grades to his supportive, but also sometimes very disapproving parents.
Jeffrey tried reading the corrections Mr. Co wrote with red ink and took some make-up tests and assignments during lunch, however the standards always seemed a little high for 2-4% (percentage points). The effort to grade ratio just took up so much free time.
However this was one of many classes that Jeffrey used to develop various min-maxing methods and strategies to get the highest grade rather than though sheer intellect and brute force studying for tests.
Jeffrey particularly hated having to do rote memorization for history as he'd always miss some piece of information that was in the textbook.