preview

My Reaction Was A Sick Feeling Of Shock Essay

Better Essays

Sadie got an “F”. My reaction was a sick feeling of shock. “What?!, . . . Wait, what?!” I kept repeating the phrase into the phone as if I had never heard of the sixth letter of the alphabet before. Like it was a concoction of my wife 's imagination. Once home, she showed me the proof; a half-sheet of college-ruled, spiral-bound, white paper with numbering down the left side of a red margin followed by a series of answers neatly written on the right. Four of the answers were marked with a large "X" and a red number 60 circled at the top. If I don’t write about my other daughter Ella much, it’s because she takes to Decatur like a duck to water. She’s made more friends easier, finishes homework faster and is further along in the school scene than Sadie ever was at the same age. Which is surprising, because Sadie is that focused kid you’ll likely find in a quiet place reading a book. Ella, on the other hand, is likely to be swinging from the chandelier, screaming wildly and naked as a newborn. But Ella had a head start. She walked Decatur halls for three years before she took a class. Ella knows every teacher by sight. She knew our "Zero Excuse tolerance" policy regarding homework years before it mattered for her. Sadie was her vanguard. If this were NASCAR race, Ella would be drafting. But there’s something else. We’ve always wrestled with whether Decatur was appropriate for Sadie. We never thought of it, or any school, as our manifest destiny. We found Decatur as a

Get Access