I feel bad for the girl since her name is now out on the internet with this article. Anyone she dates is likely to Google her name and guess what comes up at the top, a story about her parents will be the in-laws from hell.

Secondly, your high school grades exist solely to get your ass into college. The girl's work wasn't for nothing as she got into Stanford and a JPL gig. Whenever I see a resume that lists an entire half page of high school honors, it heads for the circle file next to my desk. A hangup on shiat you accomplish between ages 14 and 18 is a warning sign. I want to know what you did in college, not the fact you're still hung up on what you did between 14 and 18. Unless you did something really impressive like curing cancer.

/most of the high school honors are only a sign your parental units had money anyways
//as in they could afford to get you into the camps, pick you and drop you off at various activities, etc
/what you did in college and your internships where mom and dad couldn't speed dial the principal is what gets you hired

Okay, in high school I had a weighted gpa of %106.86; many sleepless nights, and an average of 14 hour school days because of the extracurriculars (Not counting homework). I graduated salutatorian. The girl who graduated valedictorian had similar helicopter parents to the girl in the story, who raised hell when they found out she might be behind me and threatened legal action against our central administration or something (Actually held up the transcripts for the entire farking school and caused some students to submit to colleges without them). So I graduated second (with full rides to my top 2 schools) and she graduated number 1 to an Ivy League... and I didn't farking care! I got what I needed out of my high school and didn't require some pissant number ranking to validate my effort.

Bonus info: It is now 6 years after HS graduation. I am living in Manhattan, debt free and working in my field at a level unusual for most 23 year-olds. She is a college dropout who couldn't handle Ivy League life, tried a state school and still couldn't cope. Mommy and Daddy didn't hold sway outside of our little burb and she couldn't perform on her own.

GA's thing----First it was like THIS
But then---The other kid was like nah you can have it
There grades were exactly alike. EXACTLY.
ANYWAY.

"You don't want your kid to be a loser. That's what they're basically saying. Be a loser."

What a tool

FrancoFile: Enormous-Schwanstucker: Helicopter + open fire =

[kubrickfilms.tripod.com image 640x416]


first thing I thought of.

In a thread a few months ago about mom & dad *actually* opening fire on someone (the Facebook defriending neighbor?), another Farker coined the term "Apache helicopter parent". I have used that shamelessly on many an occasion.

Good call. Never let an opportunity pass you by :)

My school was in a small town that had a very stark divide between the rich and the poor. The children of rich parents in the school were almost invariably insufferable overachievers.

One year we had the parents of a girl sue the school because she dropped to third after having been in the number one spot. She dropped to third because she opted to take choir instead of honors psychology her senior year. Since choir wasn't an honors course, it was worth less to her GPA. Her parents, who had money, sued the school. The parents of the new valedictorian were much poorer. The new valedictorian wasn't going to be able to afford much higher education on her own, so the number one spot would really help her out, whereas the old valedictorian's family had more than enough money to send her to college. They even tried to get the trial in federal court for "civil rights violations". It was disgusting. She ended up either winning the case or the school settled or something, because she was valedictorian the year I graduated.

A weirder case happened the next year. There was a set of twins at my school whose parents were members of some weird religious sect. They had never been separated - they took the same classes every year, wore the same clothes every day, ended up being roommates in college, etc, etc. Their GPAs were within some small fraction of a point of each other, but one was ever so slightly higher than the other. The higher one ended up be salutatorian. The parents and the twins freaked out that one was going to be speaking at graduation and the other wasn't. Rather than, I don't know, opting not to speak or realizing that they weren't freaking the same person and letting the one speak, they sued the school to have the other twin named "co-salutatorian". Once again, the school either lost or settled, because they both got up to speak at graduation - and they alternated sentences throughout the whole speech. It was bizarre.

Bunnyhat: darwinpolice: BarkingUnicorn: Imagine busting your ass to get straight A's for four years and then learning that your parents think you're a "loser."

Exactly what I was thinking. Holy crap, these people have a hard-working, smart, successful kid, and I'll bet anything that she has no self-confidence whatsoever.

It does seem very sad.

I would be thrilled, absolutely thrilled, if my child came out of high school even close to what this young lady has accomplished.
Yet the parents are acting like she failed because she wasn't granted a meaningless title for what amounts to a meaningless graduation.

Holy fark man. I wonder what would happen to her if she came back home her first semester of college with a god damned B in one of her classes.

A B in one of her classes? These parents will be beyond lucky if this poor girl doesn't come home after her freshman year with a coke habit and a baby.

MODified:

So she's an invaledictorian?

Coco LaFemme: I graduated HS with a 4.45 GPA. Do you know who cares about that? Absolutely no one. I was valedictorian of my 8th grade class, with a perfect 4.0 GPA. Do you know who cares about that? Absolutely no one. I graduated from 8th grade 16 years ago and HS 12 years ago. Those nuggets of information don't help you get a job, or a higher credit rating, or secure a loan, or get a date, or whatever else it is you're trying to accomplish in life. It means you're good at memorizing shiat and then spitting it back verbatim in either essay form or on a multiple-choice test.

/QFMFT!!!!

Math. How does it farking work?

Good to see that being accepted to Stanford and receiving a scholarship or two means you're "a loser." English. How does that farking work?

scottydoesntknow: But according to Eagle Rock Patch, she had only a 4.50 weighted GPA after the first semester of her senior year, one notch below Eagle Rock High's Jasmine Fernandez, who managed a 4.55.

"It's flawed. It's wrong," Carol told The Times. "All her hard work is not being recognized. All she had was straight A's. Not a B, ever."

If you can't do simple math, you shouldn't be a parent. This is a non-story and the parents should be fired out of a cannon into the sun.

Agreed.

Hated that 5.0 scale classes adding the .** to the 4.0, and I took most of them in High School.

Just rate every class off a 4.0 scale. The smart kids will still take them, honest!

.05 matters. Especially when you work for NASA.

Nelson concedes that graduation has passed and the situation "is what it is." But he dismissed the notion that other parents might find their family's complaint excessive.

"They're not in the situation," he said. "You don't want your kid to be a loser. That's what they're basically saying. Be a loser.

Wow. So because his daughter came in second by five hundredths of a point, she's a loser?

I think this speaks more to the Dad's mindset, than the daughter. I feel sorry for her.

FTA: "And to Elisha's mother, Carol, the second-place finish means that her daughter's "sleepless nights" were essentially "for nothing.""

Even though she has "already nabbed an engineering internship at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and earned a scholarship through the Gates Millennium Scholars program"

.....because a high school title is paramount to her future. People will one day google her, and find out she's a whiny biatch, with sue happy parents.... good luck getting a job.

larrycot: I have a B to an 8th grade honors student a while back. Let me clarify--the student earned her B. Very smart kid, who got a little lazy at the end of the first semester.

The parents went ballistic and we had no less than three meetings with all manner of administrators present. I asked the dad why he was so upset about it. He said, "She's never had a B in her life. You've ruined a perfect record and this will likely cost her a college scholarship."

My boss didn't appreciate me laughing at the parent.


My wife had something similar happen, though she teaches 6th grade. Parents blamed herand the school for the kid getting an 89. My wife told them that the kid would have had a 90 if they had turned in all the work that was due even after multiple chances to turn it in. Then got even pissier when she refused to round it up to a 90.

/I don't know how you all do it. I wouldn't last a a teacher

But according to Eagle Rock Patch, she had only a 4.50 weighted GPA after the first semester of her senior year, one notch below Eagle Rock High's Jasmine Fernandez, who managed a 4.55.

1. Your kid isn't the valedictorian because she did not have the highest GPA. These parents need a goddamned dictionary or something?

2. "Had a 4.50 weighted GPA" is the most succinct way I've seen to describe the fact that this entire school district is astonishingly incompetent and can't even hide their incompetence properly. There should never be any such thing as a GPA higher than 4.0 in a grading system that's literally called the four-point grading system.

If they're making a 4.0 in honors classes, you put the word "honors" or "AP" or whatever next to each class that fits the description, and add up the number of occurrences of those words/acronyms as a tie-breaker or rank-shifter in determining class rank. Or, y'know, flat-out rank people with no honors classes under those with in the ranking without farking with the scores. GPAs are supposed to be one of the ways colleges evaluate applicants, rendering them completely farking meaningless and doing the same to class ranks does your students a huge disservice when they're doing their undergrad apps.

Or do you think that this actually fools admissions officials? Seriously?

foo monkey: She didn't have the highest gpa, but thinks she should be valedictorian? Give that Stanford scholarship and NASA internship to someone less whiny.

As is usual the girl's fine, the parents are just interfering little biatches. I'd wager that getting the hell out of that household is actually her primary motivation for keeping her grades as high as possible. She needs the school geographically farthest from and least conceivably accessible to that house to accept her, after all.

Rowena: I pity this girl's college roommate.

//Been there

At least if your roommate's parents are giving you shiat you can fairly easily have them literally banned from the dormitory or apartment building very, very easily. Some heliparents have to learn the hard way. There's a reason rental/dorm agents make sure it's the student's name on the contract and not the parent's (well, apart from guarantee for the debt).

She'll probably end up here......



/I feel really sorry for her.

Next year for LAUSD: 500 valedictorians in graduating class.

Dear parents: EABOD

If you took your SAT score, and divided it by your graduating GPA, I would have the highest ratio on Fark, I believe.

August11: .05 matters. Especially when you work for NASA.

Not really. NASA is happy as long as you can remember to do distance unit conversions.

Yes, because anyone who has been to college often reflects upon their hs experience.

california, figures. More liberals whining about not getting something they didn't earn

Lord Dimwit: A weirder case happened the next year. There was a set of twins at my school whose parents were members of some weird religious sect. They had never been separated - they took the same classes every year, wore the same clothes every day, ended up being roommates in college, etc, etc. Their GPAs were within some small fraction of a point of each other, but one was ever so slightly higher than the other. The higher one ended up be salutatorian. The parents and the twins freaked out that one was going to be speaking at graduation and the other wasn't. Rather than, I don't know, opting not to speak or realizing that they weren't freaking the same person and letting the one speak, they sued the school to have the other twin named "co-salutatorian". Once again, the school either lost or settled, because they both got up to speak at graduation - and they alternated sentences throughout the whole speech. It was bizarre.



The twins pictured.

victrin: Okay, in high school I had a weighted gpa of %106.86; many sleepless nights, and an average of 14 hour school days because of the extracurriculars (Not counting homework). I graduated salutatorian. The girl who graduated valedictorian had similar helicopter parents to the girl in the story, who raised hell when they found out she might be behind me and threatened legal action against our central administration or something (Actually held up the transcripts for the entire farking school and caused some students to submit to colleges without them). So I graduated second (with full rides to my top 2 schools) and she graduated number 1 to an Ivy League... and I didn't farking care! I got what I needed out of my high school and didn't require some pissant number ranking to validate my effort.

Bonus info: It is now 6 years after HS graduation. I am living in Manhattan, debt free and working in my field at a level unusual for most 23 year-olds. She is a college dropout who couldn't handle Ivy League life, tried a state school and still couldn't cope. Mommy and Daddy didn't hold sway outside of our little burb and she couldn't perform on her own.

I bet you didn't realize, until now, what a farking loser you are, huh?

\too bad your parents aren't giant douchebags - you could have been a winnar

Meh - second place is first loser.

_{I hate helicopter parents.}

LeroyBourne: Yes, because anyone who has been to college often reflects upon their hs experience.

I sometimes wonder how the hell the reunion committee manages to keep getting my address when I move. There must be some dedicated people on that committee.

This kid sounds like a loser.

Probably takes after her parents.

Kid's going to go crazy in college, maybe literally, and probably come out a better person for it (if she doesn't get pregnant or become an alcoholic). Then her parents will disown her, and she'll probably have a happier life after that, too.

DrewCurtisJr: I like how my hs did it. They didn't just pick the kid with the top GPA. They took the top 10 students and factored in extracurricular activities, community involvement, etc.

Which is stupid, just like the top 1%. Even having a valedictorian is kind of dumb, but not nearly as dumb has having many. We already have all kinds of honor and financial awards for high-ranking students, making valedictorian one of them is just silly, unless it comes with a cash gift.

barefoot in the head: BarkingUnicorn: Imagine busting your ass to get straight A's for four years and then learning that your parents think you're a "loser."

And done.

Yep. Am I the only one who thinks time away at college will be good for her? Sheesh.

I was in that situation.
Took all the AP I could and got all A's, but because I was in 8th at another district, was 1 yr behind since I didn't take freshman English in 8th, so I couldn't take AP English. Several others were in the same situation.

They used the SAT scores of all the straight A seniors to seed us. I got second.

/I'll look into getting this chick kicked out of the Salutatorian Socret Soci
[CARRIER LOST]

And to Elisha's mother, Carol, the second-place finish means that her daughter's "sleepless nights" were essentially "for nothing."

"It's flawed. It's wrong," Carol told The Times. "All her hard work is not being recognized. All she had was straight A's. Not a B, ever."

/ya..this is life...someone is always better than you or your snowflake. Get over it.

CSB:

Our Valedictorian had this speech, more or less:

"I think, therefore I am. If that we're true, 90% of you wouldn't be here. You did nothing, sacrificed nothing, achieved nothing to be sitting there. You will accomplish nothing and I will laugh."

Then just walked off stage and asked for security to escort him to his car. Don't know what he did after that, but it probably involved hiding in his house until college.

"All her hard work is not being recognized. All she had was straight A's. Not a B, ever."

And how many kids were in a similar situation with a 4.1 or 4.3 GPA? Where is their recognition? They didn't even get the title of salutatorian despite having all straight A's.

A girl at my high school lost out on being the valedictorian when the adviser for her ungraded teaching aide period "rewarded" her for doing such a good job by giving her an A. That unweighted A brought her down enough to be the salutatorian and she didn't biatch or sue the school because she knew it didn't matter.

/CSB

ha-ha-guy: LeroyBourne: Yes, because anyone who has been to college often reflects upon their hs experience.

I sometimes wonder how the hell the reunion committee manages to keep getting my address when I move. There must be some dedicated people on that committee.

Yeah, I wonder that too. Leave me the hell alone people. I did happen to bump into someone I graduated with and asked if he went to the 10 year. Out of a class of 800 only about 30 people went. I guess it was super awkward. I'm glad I didn't make the trip.

foxyshadis: Which is stupid, just like the top 1%. Even having a valedictorian is kind of dumb, but not nearly as dumb has having many.

They only had 1 valedictorian, selected from the top 10. You shouldn't punish a kid who wants to take Japanese but can't get the weighted GPA points because the school doesn't offer AP Japanese.

unicron702: CSB:

Our Valedictorian had this speech, more or less:

"I think, therefore I am. If that we're true, 90% of you wouldn't be here. You did nothing, sacrificed nothing, achieved nothing to be sitting there. You will accomplish nothing and I will laugh."

Then just walked off stage and asked for security to escort him to his car. Don't know what he did after that, but it probably involved hiding in his house until college.

Well he clearly made it out of high school with his virginity intact, so good on him.

I graduated as valedictorian of my 450-member high school graduating class.

On my first day at MIT, they sat all the freshmen down in Killian Court and had some guy give us a speech, the most memorable part of which went something like this:

Speaker: How many of you were valedictorian of your graduating class in high school? Raise your hands.

[probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the people there, including me, raised our hands]

Speaker: Get the idea? Valedictorians aren't that special.

/ouch
//welcome to MIT
///welcome to the world after high school

SlothB77: Lord Dimwit: My school was in a small town that had a very stark divide between the rich and the poor. The children of rich parents in the school were almost invariably insufferable overachievers.

One year we had the parents of a girl sue the school because she dropped to third after having been in the number one spot. She dropped to third because she opted to take choir instead of honors psychology her senior year. Since choir wasn't an honors course, it was worth less to her GPA. Her parents, who had money, sued the school. The parents of the new valedictorian were much poorer. The new valedictorian wasn't going to be able to afford much higher education on her own, so the number one spot would really help her out, whereas the old valedictorian's family had more than enough money to send her to college. They even tried to get the trial in federal court for "civil rights violations". It was disgusting. She ended up either winning the case or the school settled or something, because she was valedictorian the year I graduated.

A weirder case happened the next year. There was a set of twins at my school whose parents were members of some weird religious sect. They had never been separated - they took the same classes every year, wore the same clothes every day, ended up being roommates in college, etc, etc. Their GPAs were within some small fraction of a point of each other, but one was ever so slightly higher than the other. The higher one ended up be salutatorian. The parents and the twins freaked out that one was going to be speaking at graduation and the other wasn't. Rather than, I don't know, opting not to speak or realizing that they weren't freaking the same person and letting the one speak, they sued the school to have the other twin named "co-salutatorian". Once again, the school either lost or settled, because they both got up to speak at graduation - and they alternated sentences throughout the whole speech. It was bizarre.

remind me never to visit your crazy town

I moved out the day after I graduated. I go back now only for weddings and funerals.

I remember back when I graduated, there was a big stink around the school over who got picked as valedictorian. The student who was chosen had taken all vocational classes for 4 years and made straight As, but the student who was passed up and made salutatorian had taken all AP and Honors classes and made straight As. It was considered unfair by most people in the school to give someone who had done really well in typing, shop, and those sorts of classes valedictorian over someone who had done really well in calculus and physics and chemistry and such, but certainly not anything anyone considered suing over.