<p>With Sophomore year almost over, I feel like I've made an observation. [If you don't feel like reading the backstory, skip to the last paragraph, but I recommend reading it just for a little background]</p>
<p>Throughout the marking periods, I've maintained an average in almost all of my classes of somewhere inbetween an 85-95. I'm not taking any difficult courses (All honors except for Math & History), and I don't study for hours before tests, but I usually feel that I understand the material pretty well and usually do well on the tests/assignments.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, I feel that every now and then I get screwed by something so hard that it knocks my grade from an A+ to my usual 85-95 score. In Chemistry it'll be a lab report that I forgot something in, or in English it'll be a new teacher that graded my essay really harsh, but no matter what I do, something always seems to knock my average down to that 85-95 trench.</p>
<p>There are kids I know that barely try in school, doing all their homework during study hall, and play iPod games during class, and manage to maintain a 4.0 GPA, with the same difficulty level of classes that I'm taking, and it seems that they just passively get good grades without putting too much effort into it.</p>
<p>I can cope with the fact that maybe they're just smart, but some of them have even come up to ME for help on lab reports or tests and I've been able to explain things perfectly, but they still end up getting better grades than me in the class, and it can be just a bit disheartening sometimes. I don't consider myself a poor test-taker, and I find that I don't have a problem understanding the material if I just put enough effort into it, but it just seems that every time I think I can pull a 96 or a 97 in the marking period, some BS assignment knocks me down to an 84. </p>
<p>Lots of you guys seem to be those people who have no problem getting A+ in your courses, personally, what tricks do you employ to get good grades? (Other than study, do your homework, etc.) I'll start: I feel that staying after school with teachers (especially in classes like English) helps a lot because in classes that are so subjective like that, it's a good idea to know what the teacher himself/herself wants to hear.</p>