Sam and his clubs

As I continued to dig into Samuel’s scholastic life, however, all was not quite as it seemed. Despite Samuel’s straight A’s in German class, the rest of his report cards were not as much of a success story. Others seemed to view him as scholarly and high achieving, perhaps influenced by the fact that he was Asian and, in their minds, therefore must be pulling good grades. In fact, much to my surprise, it turned out that in many of his classes he was flunking out, or nearly so. Also, he was a member of almost every club available, much like a memorable indie film character: the chess club, the computer club, the choir, and a member of the student council. For some reason, everyone in these clubs, and on student council, seemed to hate him. When I inquired why, many of his fellow students cited feeling rubbed the wrong way, and that he had poor social skills. He often spoke out of turn and wasn’t good at cooperating and working with others. He sometimes became bossy and arrogant. In fact, I was hard pressed to find anyone amongst the student body that actually seemed to like Samuel.