why we are all "under-achieving"

It's been a while since I've been actually bothered to do some typing up. Seeing as how it's Friday and I won't be doing any work and am currently laid back, why not blog? Anyway, I was talking to Melvin, Mango and Revathy after school while we were waiting for our parents. Being the usual intrusive Hurlstonians we were, we asked each other what marks we had gotten for various exams. Then, the topic that often follows: how all of our parents are not very appreciative of our marks for exams throughout our time here at Hurlstone. I don't know about you, because it could be different, but the four of us found that our parents weren't ever HUGELY thrilleed about our results. I recall once telling my mum 'Hey, I got 97 for my math exam!!" In response, she replied with something along the lines of, "Good. Keep it up for next time." ...

It's moments like these that, as Hurlstonians, we feel we do as best as we can in our exams which are more often than not quite hard, and our parents do not seem to appreciate that an under-90 mark is actually a quite good one. It's quite a travesty.

Case in point, actually. I told my dad I got 88 for my English + History trials both, and he just tells me to aim for 95. Seriously, he doesn't even say 'that's really good!' or the like. It doesn't seem to register to him that what I got was a really good mark, which I'm sure all of us have experienced many times.

I mean, you see those teenagers on TV (even though it's fiction) who have parents that are like, "If you get passing grades, I'll get you a computer for Christmas." ... It's reward inequalities like that that makes the under-appreciation of our parents stand out so much. It makes you wonder if you need to fail a grade before your parents actually appreciate the work you do and try to reward you to get better marks from your previous fail.

But then again, as the four of us furthered argued, our parents 'want what's best for us' and it's all just a case of tough love. Be that as it may, I still feel that our parents should give us little rewards at the very least. I'm not expecting a PS3 or XBOX-360 reward, unlike some families do, but just something that let's me know that they are giving me some sort of reward, you know? Nothing ironic or satirical; I wouldn't like that. More like a slap in the face.