She knows what she wants as far as a career goes, and that's a good thing. She has long planned to attend university and knows that she needs good high-school credentials to permit her to attend the university of her choice. She has always been fairly self-motivated. No need to remind her, ever, to ensure her homework is done. She is mindfully fastidious about her homework, settling down to tend to it immediately upon her return from school.

She is rather less meticulous about focusing on studying for tests. She will study, but half-heartedly. She was given her science mark for this term in grade 9, circulated individually to all students in her class preparatory to inclusion in their term report card. Her mark was 72%. Not a bad mark, but not outstandingly good, either. Something she is well aware of.

She is annoyed with her science teacher, a woman whom she greatly admires and with whom she has had very good relations. Her standards for a teacher's quality of performance as an educator and as someone who is capable of motivating her students are quite high, and this teacher passes the mark with room to spare. Usually.

Her science teacher, she said, informed her that she had higher expectations of her than what that mark illustrates to be her capability in the subject. She knows she can do better, her teacher stressed, and she expects her to make more an effort in the coming term to eclipse by far the mark she received this time around.

I tell her I'm fully supportive of her teacher. She is capable of doing better. She hasn't the will. She has convinced herself that science is beyond her, that the topic in its various manifestations is a mystery to her, that she just doesn't 'get it'. I tell her that her teacher has recognized the depth of her intelligence and her lack of interest in the subject, evidenced by her unwillingness to work a little harder at 'getting it'.

Both a good, caring teacher and a grandmother are permitted this expression of their expectations of a student's abilities. She would far prefer to be congratulated on the basis of having received a passing grade. Sometimes that just isn't enough. Even though she argues that science is not a requirement for her chosen field; law.