You're all special! The grades you earned these past 4 years meant nothing.
There’s some good advice for recent high school graduates on the website CollegeCandy.com that many, unfortunately, didn’t hear on graduation day last month. Blogger “Alex” from the University of South Carolina reminds college-bound teens, “It’s a fact that one day you’ll have to break out on your own and fight your own fights. Might as well start sooner rather than later.”
Alex is ticked-off that the current trend at high school graduation ceremonies these days seeks to honor every student as the class valedictorian, thereby eliminating any bad feelings about one student being smarter than the rest, and everyone gets to head-off in to the sunset feeling like their last four years made them no better or worse than their peers.
“Attend the commencement ceremonies at some of our country’s high schools today and you’ll get an extra special treat when you realize your little cousin David isn’t the only valedictorian…he’s got the company of twelve other kids who were high rankers as well,” opines Alex. ”Just what exactly has given this trend steam? Is it pushy parents all wanting their precious babies featured on stage? Or are the students not wanting to admit defeat when a teeny fraction of a grade point stands in their way of glory? Most importantly, why are school officials caving to this kind of obscene, irrational pressure?”
High school grads are old enough to appreciate a healthy dose of reality upon graduation. The world they are about to enter in August on college campuses across the nation will test their academic skills and rank each of them accordingly.
Some college freshmen will fail during their first semester and pick themselves up, realizing that their best efforts might need adjustments while others will cling to the belief that they were shining stars in high school because their teachers told them so, and their current professors must be idiots if they don’t think their current academic efforts are up to par for their courses.
“With all the recent heavy-handedness going on when it comes to academic recognition [in high school these days], what are these students going to do when they hit college and become (for better or worse) just a number? Or how about when they’re looking for their first job post-grad,” Alex writes. “Typically businesses aren’t looking to fill one position by hiring twenty employees. Isn’t it just better to give teens a healthy dose of reality early on so they can adjust to the not-always-fair ways of the real world? Placation can only send our generation so far, beyond that we need to [wo]man-up and quit whining.”
Alex is a wise young man whose advice might benefit your college-bound child whose sense of reality has been distorted by high school teachers that prefer to blow smoke up their students’ butts as opposed to inspiring them to achieve personal greatness that merits recognition, appreciation and the admiration of their classmates. This is especially true upon graduation when top students deserve the opportunity to be singled-out and saluted as opposed to being dismissed one last time among the many who simply earned their diplomas by meeting minimum graduation requirements.
Wow. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who sees this as a bad trend. Same as “social promotion” in school. If you didn’t pass, you didn’t pass. How is it good for anyone to pass on a student who DID NOT PASS?
There is a veritable epidemic of sheltering young people from the realities of life – this is just one more example of it. If they have no exposure to reality, how will they ever learn to cope with it?