Cimorene

I have two distinct memories of hitting that wall. The first time it ever happened to me was 7th grade math, after my mom talked the (female) principal into placing me into the experimental advanced course with the wonderful line "But you wouldn't want to be seen as discouraging girls from going into math and science, would you?" (I'm currently most of the way to a PhD in genetics, so I guess she had a point.) It was the first class where no matter how hard I worked, I couldn't do better than a B. It drove me NUTS at the time but in retrospect, it was probably very, very good for me.

That experience probably saved my bacon in 9th grade IB English, which was the second wall. For the first assignment, I did my usual quicky work which was, historically, good enough to get an easy A. When it got handed back with a B on it, my brain immediately went "OH, I get it - this is going to be a REAL class!" I now knew what to do with one of those and stepped up my game, which turned out to be necessary for most of the IB program coursework. Hooray for walls, and hitting them early enough!