English is an area of relative weakness compared to math and science, although that's unrelated to the situation here. I had an A in the class up until failing to complete the final paper. This happened not owing to an inability to write altogether, but instead to general apathy regarding my academic future. In some sense I wanted to force myself to drop out rather than to go to a mediocre university far too late.
I have never failed a class that I actually put effort into. My unweighted GPA was 3.973 when I applied to college. A similar situation occurred in 8th grade. I was promoted into precalculus after a great deal of pleading with the district, though they were entirely unwilling to let a middle-schooler take calculus since the only version available was AP. I had already taught myself calculus and was dreadfully bored, so I stopped doing work for the class and attending school in general. Credit wasn't ever actually awarded for that course.
I did find that my scores on essay portions of standardized tests were generally much worse than on multiple-choice English or reading sections (36 on both on the ACT as a soph), though they were still above average.
My parents have historically either been not in my corner whatsoever or in my corner entirely too much with no in-between. Despite having test results in elementary school they didn't think I was gifted or talented because the results were uneven and the district indicated I was not. The result can only be described as a "weaknesses-based" approach where I was constantly reminded of being a subhuman autistic freak forever separated from the rest of humanity. More recently they've been pushy in trying to help me reach my goals, not knowing that it's impossible for me to ever reach them at this point.
