The traumas of Grade Cards

Having just received my half termly grade card, there was a bit of a shock in store. My German teacher had given me a "satisfactory" for effort. Because we receive them just before we break up for half term, I have been spending the last half week racking my brains, trying to think of anything I could have done wrong. I have never handed in any homework late, or not done any class work. Could it, then, be that I have not been helping with "tutoring" (for which, read sitting in front of a class of twenty year 9s who are on detention), because I have taken up an extra library shift? Or, perhaps, that I am not going on an (apparently optional) trip on my birthday, which involves spending 6 hours on a bus to listen to a two hour lecture in german on the European Union? What I can't help but wonder is why neither of my teachers could have told me to my face that I need to be working harder? Because that, after all is what satisfactory means in this world of inflated grades. Sometimes, I wonder why I bother..