Hiding the bad grade doesn’t change the grade. It just adds a second problem.

Concealment never touches the original fact, it only creates a new one, which is the concealment itself. Now there are two things to deal with, and the second usually turns out to be the one people mind more. What started as a number becomes a question about whether you can be told things.

Say it early and plainly: here is the grade, here is what I am doing about it. Early news is almost always received better than discovered news. The conversation you are dreading is shorter than the month of hiding it.