US schools definitely mess with your head the higher of an achiever you are.
In remedial classes, in most places, 60 is passing.
In normal classes, in most places, 70 is passing.
In advanced classes, you may be kicked out for scoring under 80.
The intuitive concept of "barely good enough" keeps getting higher as you perform better, plus of course each of these types of classes are progressively more difficult by their nature. It really fucks with people who are excellent in some subjects but average in others.
Culture plays into it too. For example here in Finland, school grades are from 4 (failed) to 10, and that ends up skewing how you see any scale from 1 to 10.
As a bit of trivia, originally there were grades lower than 4, but at some point it was decided it wasn't necessary to determine just how badly you failed. Knowing that you did should be enough. So all the failing grades were bundled up into one, which ended up being the previously highest failing grade.
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