I really got overconfident last year as a freshman and signed up for a bunch of ‘hard’ classes for sophomore year. I screwed up real bad with grades
Honors Precalc - B
Spanish 3 - A
English 10 - A
Honors Physics - B
Honors Chemistry - A-
AP Euro History - B+
Sports Conditioning - A
The thing is… I’ve never gotten even an A- in the past before, and this year my self-confidence is destroyed. With these grades in the math & science routes, I feel like I can’t possibly reach my dream of pursuing a STEM route to life. All my parents and their kids got straight A’s during their high school years and got into Stanford and MIT and crap, and I’m left with these grades in a non-competitive school and my disappointed parents. Still, after uninstalling all my computer and mobile games that I loved, and still making little progress, my mom and dad began to give up on me. I think that too, and I really don’t think I can get into my dream school, Cal. Every time this semester, I’ve always thought that I’d improve the next time, yet was always met with B’s. This really hurts me, and I feel like I can’t do anything but blend in with the other average kids at our school. I don’t really know what to do with my life anymore.
With an increase in course rigor, one should expect a reasonable drop in grades, which you seem to have experienced.
You have taken on a lot of responsibility; you are in two of the three main sciences, a demanding AP history course, upper level foreign language, and a math course typically taken by upperclassmen. Your junior/senior year schedules will likely be dramatically more rigorous if you follow the path you are on. That being said, your grades are still okay. All I would suggest is to make sure you attain a strong grasp of the concepts you are currently learning in your math/science courses, as lower level courses like these form essentially all of the foundation that upper-level, advanced STEM classes build upon. If you’re looking to take all 3 of the main sciences as APs/Dual Enrollment courses later in high school, particularly Biology and Chemistry, having taken both AP Biology and AP Chemistry, I can say that strong knowledge of chemistry is completely non-negotiable.
As for your emotional struggles, you have nothing to be ashamed of. These grades and courses are NOT average; most kids would kill to be in your position, and most parents would be proud of a child who consistently maintained A/B honor roll. I believe that the world of 4.3-4.5+ GPA/1400+ SAT kids here might distort reality a bit.
I think punishing yourself via unnecessary asceticism (like deleting your computer games) is only going to worsen matters and might sour you on learning and school, which likely will cause your performance to decrease. Please put aside time for recreation. I had very similar problems last year where I would devote ridiculous amounts of time to studying and homework and it usually lead to nowhere good.
Kid, you’re doing fine. I know kids who have never got below an A- and once they take an AP class, they get a B- or even worse. I would say that you should be deleting games, as that really helped me improve sophomore year. I would say get into study groups, as you can learn a lot of the material.
Good luck kid.