[ WP ] In an alternate reality , a student 's GPA value floats on top of their head as a large number . All your professors , fellow students , friends , and parents can see it . How does this affect on campus relationships and day to day interactions ?

`` 2.1'' 
 
 I sighed. 
 
 2.1 was better. It was n't good enough. 
 
 But it was a start. 
 
 I hated this system. Everyone could tell I was smart. Everyone always asked me `` Why do n't you try harder. You know more about this subject than any of the other students.'' 
 
 I wanted to punch every last one of them. 
 
 I wanted to say `` If you want me to succeed, you'll have to change the system! I am not failing because I am not trying. I am failing because I am at a significant disadvantage. My classmates have the precision to write by hand. I do not. 
 
 My disadvantages are not sufficiently addressed. Because I am'smart', no one believes that I need as much help to get where I should be as I do. Moreover, because systems to help those who need it are almost always set up to allow students to produce *average* results, they do n't do me any good.'' 
 
 But I never did. 
 
 I just apologized. I could n't fight every person I ever met. I pretended that I *just. did n't. care. * And in that sense, I fit into their preconceptions. A student that did n't care. 
 
 That was a thing they understood. So they thought they understood me, and they did n't spend time focusing on the thing that was my greatest shame. 
 
 Perhaps they would have done something if I'd let them in. 
 
 But... when it began, I was afraid. 
 
 Somewhere along the line, I'd lost my ability to pretend not to care. 
 
 I'd started taking online classes. 
 
 And today, I'd seen the first results. 
 
 A little, tiny uptick in my GPA. 
 
 I could feel the noose of being without a future loosing a little as I saw the number change. 
 
 But for the first time in my life, I did n't feel ashamed of that number. 
 
 I was angry. Because I knew now that it was truly never my fault at all. 
 
 ( For anyone wondering, this is n't *entirely* fiction. My own person experiences with junior high school were largely those of struggling with my ADHD and inability to write by hand, which, together, meant that I almost never turned in homework, even though I probably did enough that I could do decently in the classes, I always lost all of it, or had to maintain incredibly complicated systems of organization to do basically a thing another student would only need a notebook to do, which caused me to fail throughout junior high. 
 
 My failures in college, however, I place squarely on my own shoulders, largely on my expectation that I would fail. )
