At least when I was in public school, I was the chiller- type of girl, I would panic about how I did in school because I have some anxiety issues, but that did not really come into play until my junior year when I was determined to get amazing grades in order to be accepted into a bais yaakov the next year. Over all, I was an A, B, occasional student (except for junior year/ grade 11, I didn’t get any C’s…) but since some of my courses were not exactly college preperatory (they were all mainstream classes but in my district, there was so much funding available that they had so many levels, so I was in a level with kids who never really tried because math is harder for me than other subjects, same with science), I would get A’s and B’s in them, but I still did somewhat poorly on my ACT tests (my highest score was a 21, and I got extended time…).
I would say that you do need to work very hard in your classes, but try not to get so stressed out, most people in real life don’t go to Harvard, even if they are straight A students. The things that stick out on applications to post high school programs are standardized tests, overall gpa, the fact that Jewish schools have a dual curriculum stands out because that looks challenging (and it is!), your extra curriculars (were you on mishmeres, G.O, what did you do in your production, what chessed did you do, did you do more than the required chessed hours?) and the way you act during an interview (if applicable) along with admissions essays stand out as well.
I am not from New York, so I don’t know what it is like to have to take regents, but the reality is that most people in middle school don’t take high school math (my brother was taking a high school level math course in seventh grade because he is gifted, but he had to drop out of it because it was to difficult, and then he ended up taking honors geometry his freshman year of high school). The people who do and end up passing the courses at that age are typically in MENSA (society for people with extremely high IQ’s like 150 points at their age – you have to take an IQ test and get that score to join and you have to pay membership fees…).
The point is that it is good to care about your grades- but to a point. Sometimes, people are getting all the help that they can possibly get, but that particular course just is not so easy for them no matter how much help they are getting, I took algebra one four times, passed it the first three and audited it the fourth time because I was only taking it because my geometry teacher wanted a nice student in her summer school class. When I got to advanced algebra, I went to my teacher two- three times a week outside of class for help, and that is how I got an A that year in that level, but that is because I was finally ready to take algebra (brain wise), the first three times I took algebra one, I was in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, and it was really hard because I was just being diagnosed with a learning difference, but at the end of the day, when I was told that I was going to geometry in tenth grade, I was jumping for joy and my mom took me out for ice cream, because all that mattered was that I was going to the next level, not the grade in the current level.
My bracha to you Torah613Torah, is that you should be able to relax, and that you should be able to do well in your math course, and in all of your classes without having to worry about what the future wil bring as a result of any mistakes you feel you have made.