Given Scenario: John and Emily are high school students who want to get good grades, maintain active social lives, and participate in sports. John is a linebacker on the football team, and Emily is a defender on the soccer team. Their busy lives prevent them from spending much time on their homework, and they both have been averaging Cs with an occasional D on their work in English class. The end of the semester is drawing near, and a major final project and test are looming. They both think they will pull off at least a B in the course by doing well on these final activities. However, both the football and soccer teams have qualified for post-season games, and both John and Emily are on the decorating committee for a major end-of-year dance which they will attend. Secretly they both want to be selected as King and Queen for the dance, so they have been spending extra time socializing with other students after practice in the evenings.
Questions for response:
1. Do you think that John and Emily are deceiving themselves about being able to do well in their English class?
I think that they are deceiving themselves because they are trying to keep up with all these other things as well as school work when school work seems to be the thing that they want to focus on the least. They could potentially do as well in their English class as they want to if they work hard for it and if they put in the time and effort, but it seems like they want to uphold their social status and they do not have a lot of time to complete this task.
2. What do you think might be the result of the schedule they are following?
I think that they will might focus on their social status, other commitments, and sports before their homework and their grades, but it all depends on their priorities. If they want to focus on school work, they might be able to achieve that, but they most likely will focus on the other things, so they probably won’t end English with a B.
3. If they don’t do well on their English work, will they blame others or themselves?
Hopefully they won’t blame others for their busy live and their priorities. I think they might be mad at the teacher for not giving them better marks on the projects/activities if they try hard on them, but they should also realize that they didn’t make time to put in a good effort for those activities/projects if they didn’t put the time and effort into them.
4. What, if anything, might you do differently if you were in their place?
I would use my spare time to work on the English assignments. I feel like I wouldn’t really worry to much about the decorating of the year-end dance because there are a lot of people to help you out. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t work on it at all, it just wouldn’t be one of my priorities. Getting a good grade in English would mean using all the spare time I have to work on it even if it means not spending as much time socializing with others, which I would be ok with because if you are running for prom Queen or King, you would probably already have a high social status and wouldn’t have to put a lot of time into keeping it that way as long as you don’t just disappear completely.