The Rodriguez siblings were walking home from school on a cool spring day. Nori was the oldest of the three, with Noah being the youngest. Tammy was the middle sibling.

Nori was good at everything. She had good grades and never had homework. Nori even played volleyball! Tammy, however, didn't have very good grades, and she wasn't very athletic. It was the middle of the school year, and Tammy was very discouraged. Report cards were supposed to come in two weeks, and Amy had two weeks to get her grades up.

Tammy had stayed up late looking at her grades and thinking. Would she ever get them up enough to make her parents proud?

Tammy thought about it on the way to school. She  would have to work hard to get them up before report cards came, but there was a problem. Tammy wasn't a hard worker, because a lot of things didn't come naturally to her. 

So, one day after school, Tammy brought a list home. It was a list of her current grade, and a list of the grade that she wanted. Tammy was determined to get at least two grades up, so she chose two grades that were the hardest to work the most on.

            Class                   Current %                Target  %

             Science                 75                               89

             Math                     73                                90

             History                  72                               95

             English                  84                                94

Tammy sat on her bed a few minutes later, just thinking about the work that was going to be put into her grades. The work felt like a mountain that was standing in her way. 

Tammy was really dreading working on Science. Science was one of the hardest subjects for Tammy to understand. Although Nori, Tammy's older sister was really smart, Tammy didn't want her sister to think that she was dumb if she asked for help. She just couldn't understand Science.