Most everyone knows the feeling: sitting at home, waiting with knots in your stomach for your parents to call and demand to know why you don’t have an A in Spanish 3 or why your 1st hour teacher is mad because you keep falling asleep in class.

It’s not a good feeling. The anxiety of parent-teacher conferences is something that eats away at nearly every student at least once during their school career and the students at Fenton are no exception.

“I get so anxious during conference time,” sophomore Kallie Glasgow-Letourneau said, “Especially if I know I’m not doing good in a class.”

The main source of panic and anxiety during conference time mostly comes from the high grade expectations parents have for their children.

“I’m most afraid of my parents finding out my grades,” junior Mark Vuillemot said, “I come from a family where anything under an A is unacceptable and I usually get Bs. I remember one time I came home to my older sister crying because she had an A- in a class.”

Even more stress-inducing that your parents finding out about “bad grades” is the conversation that follows their discovery of that B or C+.

“I try to calm my parents down as best as I can,” sophomore Megan Pohl said, “Usually I try to say something like, ‘I’m sorry. This quarter just hasn’t been the best for me. I promise I’ll try again next quarter.’”

Another popular excuse children like to use to “decrease the beast” and soothe their parents is to try to negotiate grades with teachers.

“Despite me stressing about grades,” Glasgow-Letourneau said, “My mom usually doesn’t care. There are those occurrences when she does get mad though and I usually try to tell her that I’ll talk to the teacher about it.”