posted
When I was a kid, if I came home with a 98% or something on a test (I was a good test taker), my father would say that I left some change on the counter. His father used to say that to him, too.
My question is, has anyone here ever heard that expression? My brother sent me an e-mail asking me if I had any idea where it came from, and I realized that it had never occurred to me.
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posted
Well, it sounds like it's a little more specific than that, meaning that you made a small easily fixable oversight that caused you to do something less than perfectly.
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posted
I'm glad my parents never said that kind of thing to me. (Unless it was a playful way of saying "good job"; it sounds more like "you could've done better" to me.)
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Freshman years I got straight As, but one A-. When my report card came back, the first thing my mother said was that I should have done better. I got horrible grades from then on. Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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My daughter got her report card yesterday, and got straight Es (excellents) for all the areas (she's in 1st grade). However, the teacher wrote down a few things she could improve on. Those are hard not to take personally. It is tempting to forget to tell her what a good job she did and jump right into what she didn't do so well on. I'm glad I resisted that urge.
I was always very happy with a score above 93% or so. It meant I did very well, but that the test wasn't so easy that I aced it. I'm glad my parents never got after me for not getting 100% on everything. They were OK even when I got Cs in math.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Freshman years I got straight As, but one A-. When my report card came back, the first thing my mother said was that I should have done better. I got horrible grades from then on.
When my dad said something like that, I didn't get upset, because I we both knew he was right. The reason why I never got excellent grades is that I never tried to get excellent grades.
Getting the good grades that I did get wasn't something to be proud of, because it wasn't something that I had to put any effort toward. It would have been like being proud of me for the color of my eyes.
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posted
Exactly, mph. Grades seemed so meaningless before college, and I think they generally are. I didn't get good grades until I thought they mattered.
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posted
Same here. My grades in college were excellent. My grades in high school, where it would have taken a tiny fraction of the effort, were not.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Same here. My grades in college were excellent. My grades in high school, where it would have taken a tiny fraction of the effort, were not.
That was the case for me as well, but it still rankled to have the highest grade in a class and still have it be not enough for my mother.
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With my father, that was it -- he knew that I wasn't putting any effort into my grades, so what was there to be proud of?
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: Exactly, mph. Grades seemed so meaningless before college, and I think they generally are. I didn't get good grades until I thought they mattered.
They will matter to my kids because their father doesn't believe in paying for college. Why did they suddenly start mattering in college? I mean, I was as big a screw up in high school as anyone, but I knew that I was trifling with my chances to choose or even attend college. The idea that high school grades don't matter is baffling.
Of course, my sixth grader has teachers who are trying to play the "your chances for college are riding on this!" card already, and I agree that is ridiculous. They are justifying it because of the requirements to get into IB.
Anyone into IB? My school didn't have it.
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posted
Not always, but some of the time... certainly when I was getting 98 or 99. I wouldn't have even mentioned it to her if I hadn't felt like I'd done well. I certainly never mentioned when I got an A-.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I worked extremely hard for my grades up until my junior year of high school, when I stopped caring because it felt like my parents would never, ever be satisfied with me. My mother was definitely the type who looks at a straight-A report card and finds something to criticize anyway. I can't remember a time before I was 17 when she looked at something academic I'd brought home and said "Good job!" or the equivilant. I tried repeatedly to explain why this was a problem, but nothing changed.
So I stopped trying to please them. My grades dropped from a ~3.9 average to a ~3.2 average. My quality of life improved dramatically. When my report card came, my mother was furious, and we had a huge fight, and she finally started listening to what I was saying about their never seeming satisfied with my performance. They started listening, but things didn't really change much, and I was already way burned out on academia.
I'm also a college drop-out. Draw what conclusions you will.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I'd tell my parents how I did on a test, and they'd ask me if that was a grade I was happy with. If I said yes, they'd say "good job". If I said no, they'd ask how I could have done better. I thought it worked pretty well--especially because when I got into higher level math, my standards changed--I was happy, often enough, just to be passing.
Sounds like underachiever logic. But a lot of it was based on my personal goals--if I achieved them, then that was a good work.
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I'm 40 years old, my half-brother is 22 and still in college. At Christmas Dinner while sitting at the table, my mother made a big deal about his having made the Dean's List for the first time and how it was " wonderful to finally have someone smart in college and doing well."
The facts that I made the Dean's List half a dozen times and graduated with two degrees must mean I am stupid.
Parents tend to over-emphasize the accomplishments of their less able kids and under-emphasize the accomplishments of their more abled kids. Anecdotal from personal experience but it is what I have seen enough times to suspect its possibly true.
As to "leaving change on the counter" I was always under the impression that it meant you were being generous or not trying to show off by being perfect. I never thought it was said to imply that a person didn't try hard or succeed.
Posts: 110 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
My interpretation of the phrase "You left some change on the counter" to mean something closer of "There is still room for improvement". Which depending on the tone and the rest of what was said between parent and child could be either a good thing or a bad thing.
Even when children are doing very well, I think its good for parents to encourage them to do even better. The challenge is to do that with out making the child feel like they can never satisfy their parents.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:I'm also a college drop-out. Draw what conclusions you will.
My conclusion is that you are not doing your duty towards lining the textbook writers and professors pockets with your cash. I have others but that's the first I could think of.
My grades in High School were either stellar or terrible depending on subject. I had no motivation to work hard on subjects I found difficult and instead focused on classes I found interesting. It definately cost me going to a college of my choice.
After my mission I worked quite hard at college and I've always had good grades. Two semesters ago I had a meltdown unrelated to school, and I procured two Fs for classes. One of the classes I had done all the work he needed me to do, I just did not spend 30 minutes assembling it all together in an organized fashion, then hand that huge chunk of papers in.
Last semester I got straight As and I'm taking harder classes then any I have ever taken in the past, and I don't know how I am going to recover from such a critical drop in my GPA. Where once I had a 3.4 that could have been a 3.65 by now, instead I have a 3.0 that won't budge because of those Fs.
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quote:Why did they suddenly start mattering in college?
I had a full scholarship that I would have lost if my GPA dropped below 3.5.
Incidentally, I would not be eligible to compete for that scholarship if I were a freshman. I suppose there were too many slackers like me who did great on standardized tests that got it.
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Even when children are doing very well, I think its good for parents to encourage them to do even better. The challenge is to do that with out making the child feel like they can never satisfy their parents.
I think the trick here is to emphasize "there's always room for improvement" over "you're not reaching your true potential." Set expectations lower, then praise for accomplishments, and emphasize what the next goals should be. Don't set sky-high expectations, criticize for failures to reach them, then emphasize the expectations will not change.
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quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: I worked extremely hard for my grades up until my junior year of high school, when I stopped caring because it felt like my parents would never, ever be satisfied with me. My mother was definitely the type who looks at a straight-A report card and finds something to criticize anyway. I can't remember a time before I was 17 when she looked at something academic I'd brought home and said "Good job!" or the equivilant. I tried repeatedly to explain why this was a problem, but nothing changed.
So I stopped trying to please them. My grades dropped from a ~3.9 average to a ~3.2 average.
<snip>
I'm also a college drop-out. Draw what conclusions you will.
This is pretty much me. Grade 10 math, I had 100% for the first three report cards and 99% on the final. The reason? I made one mistake on the final exam, resulting in a grade of 99.75% on the exam. The teacher refused to give me 100% (rounding properly) on the report card. My parents yelled at me for getting such a lousy grade. That went on for days.
Granted, my parents are wackjobs anyway. That was pretty much the last straw for me.
I'm also a university dropout.
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