I Just Got Mixed Up.
When the new semester started, Dylan did not start marching home from school like a soldier, backpack in hand, new phone app ready with a list of items to study that evening. He did not suddenly start talking to every teacher after class, making sure his assignments were turned in. And he did not have a complete list at the ready, covering what would be due for the week in every one of his seven classes.
Instead, he did what he always does.
He completely ignored the first day of class because, he said, he “didn’t do anything except go over class expectations.” On the second day, he didn’t see any reason to study anything since classes had “really just started.” And by Day 3, he came home with a zero – not for a missing assignment, but because the teacher couldn’t read Dylan’s handwriting on the assignment.
So it should have been no surprise on Day 4 when Dylan had a pop quiz. It was only two questions, but he got them both wrong. Surprise! He hadn’t studied one minute during the entire week, so I wasn’t all that surprised.
Oddly, it still stumped him. “I just got mixed up because really I knew both answers,” he said. In other words, it wasn’t because he didn’t study. It was because he randomly got confused about things he believed he knew.
Perhaps he can try that line on his college application. He could title his personal essay, How Confusion Caused my GPA to Plummet Without Displaying My True Intelligence.
That should work out well for him.