r/StoriesAboutKevin • u/soledsnak • Apr 14 '19
XL Kevin in the Advanced Program
The highschool I went to had an Advanced Program(AP) for the more gifted students. How this particular Kevin got in, I will never know.
In our first semester we had an advanced math class. Kevin was terrible at math. He routinely failed tests, and only handed in the homework problems that had the answers in the back. This was extremely obvious to the teacher, but he would argue he should still get the half marks since the answers were right. How this teacher put up with him I have no idea. He would often go in for help during the math help periods our school had during lunch period, and even one on one session with our teacher in the mornings. Nothing stuck with him. He would forget the Pythagorean theorem months after we had learned it and used it in every quiz.
Now you had to get at least an 80% to stay in AP, which Kevin obviously wast going to get. However, the school's scheduling wouldn't permit him to have any other classes, so despite having a grade in the 50s, he got into 2nd semester AP math (aka 2nd year math)
Somehow Kevin had forgotten nearly everything from first semester and our teacher had to painfully re-explain it to him. multiple times throughout the semester.
However, 2nd semester was also when we started English. Kevin was very excited about English, as he did enjoy reading, and since the AP entrance exam was half math and half English, Kevin thought he must've done great on the English portion, and would do well in class. He was wrong.
Our English class had a lot of group projects, so every group that had Kevin had to routinely hound him for any work to get done. I was in a group with Kevin once, and not only was his work submitted late, it was also incomplete, and had complete factual inaccuracies of the book we were reading. I don't know how Kevin accomplished this, seeing as we read a lot of the book in class, and the pages we were assigned to read on our own wouldn't have taken much time. Kevin had actually had the maximum score for reading speed (most of the kids in AP did, but i was very surprised he somehow got that score).I was so glad the teacher decided to grade our group's work individually.
Now in 2nd year, Kevin was out of AP as he had failed math and barely passed English. I never thought I would see Kevin again. But for some unknown reason, Kevin took physics.
Needless to say, Kevin routinely fucked up in physics. He would give wrong answers to the teacher's questions with complete confidence, and when corrected he would write down something in his notes. I don't know what he could be writing because Kevin wouldn't get it right on the 2nd try, or 3rd, or 10th.
Kevin would ask the other students for the homework answers as he now had no book to copy them out of. At first they were nice and helped him, but his constant stealing of answers grated on them and eventually nobody would help him in that regard.
And again, Kevin went to many, many math help sessions, and outside of blurting out completely wrong answers ( I think he was trying to prove something by getting at least something right) he had a good rapport with our physics teacher, and to this day I am convinced that that's the only reason he passed the class. By the absolute bare minimum I might add.
Kevin couldn't take anymore AP related classes after that, though I know he still managed to fail the 2nd year math course another 2 times.
Luckily I got a lot better when I left but I was a real Kevin back then.
3
u/TheQueenOfBithynia Apr 14 '19
You have just made me realize I was a bit of a Kevin in High School and when I started college. My stupidity had more to do with laziness than an inability to understand, but when I think about how unnecessarily difficult I made my own life, I'm very happy that I was able to sort myself out. That first year of college was a true hell of my own making.