About
“Trying to Get My Grades Up” is a catchphrase used by high school and college students to grieve about the helpless state of their academic grades, especially towards the end of each academic semester. On Twitter, the phrase is usually accompanied by photographs or animated GIFs depicting a variety of futile or ineffective attempts at accomplishing an infeasible goal.
Origin
The earliest known pairing of the phrase “me trying to get my grades up” and an image of a comically hopeless situation was shared on Twitter by @Raul____[3] on October 26th, 2013. The attached image shows Fez (portrayed by Wilmer Valderrama) of That ’70s Show attempting to seduce Jackie’s mom. In the following months, a number of variations on the same theme began to surface on Twitter as the end of the semester approached.
Spread
In 2014, the humorous tweets continued to grow in volume and became widely adopted by high school and college students on Twitter[5], Vine[9] and Tumblr[2] as a way to commiserate over their poor academic performance. The “me trying to get my grades up” jokes saw a significant spike between May and June as the end of the academic year approached in schools across the United States. In addition, a few, particularly well-received instances on Twitter were subsequently posted on 9gag[8] and Memes.com.[1]
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]Memes.com – trying to keep my grades up like
[2]Tumblr – trying to get my grades up
[3]Twitter – Beefsqautch’s tweet
[4]Twitter – @Wallerene’s tweet
[5]Twitter – Search results for ‘me trying to get my grades up’
[6]Tumblr – Infeliciti0us’ post
[7]Topsy – Tweets per day: me trying to get my grades up