Nicole Story page 12

Over the next year she went through depression and she still had a lot of the anger. During the spring semester we had another crisis with her grades. She was so bright and I thought she should have straight As with maybe and occasional B. She tried to convince me that a C in honors was the same as an A in regular classes. That semester she had 3 As and 4 Fs. She had occasionally had a D, but never anything this bad. That evening when she got home from work I said, “I’m thinking of going out to the garage and getting a 2×4 and just beating you. I know it won’t help you any, but it’s going to make me feel so much better.” Her friend Emily’s eyes got very big. Nicole laughed. I gave her the list of missing assignments and grounded her until her teachers wrote in her agenda that they were complete. She started telling me that she had done some of them. I explained she was talking to the wrong person. She needed to convince her teacher and have them write in her agenda. I also explained that no matter how bright she was, anyone could flunk Functional Statistics and Trig. She signed up for summer school and paid for it herself.