S19 has 5 more days of school…and he is so stressed out. AP exams, final projects, big soccer games, and prom. Prom is really stressful as he has no date. I told him it’s fine (which it is) but my words don’t help.
Our school might have an academic awards night, but if there is one it’s also shrouded in secrecy and they certainly aren’t inviting my kids!
S19 will have his pink cord for Tri-M lol and he might have his name in the graduation program as a “scholar” if he can raise his cumulative GPA by .06 (but I haven’t seen him do any homework since February so that might be a big “if”). And that’s If he goes to graduation at all. Apparently he missed the fact that he was supposed to order a cap and gown back in March (he had no idea) and the school didn’t bother giving parents this info. He’s been waiting for the cap and gown to just magically appear.
@eh1234 D19 missed the whole cap and gown thing too. S17 went to a different (also public, same county) high school where the cap and gown happened in English class and the high school owns the caps/gowns. This one I had to scramble to order (not sure how I found out about it in time) and pay for as each kid buys their own. Oy.
We ordered our cap and gown in October.
Ou school is usually pretty good about honoring kids with success at all sorts of activities, including academic, theatre, robotics, sports, volunteerism. etc. There is a school twitter account that handles a lot of that, a school newspaper, and the monthly Principal Report. I enjoy reading all about the great things the kids do.
Our school doesn’t have a seperate sports night to honor the athletes, those are done at individual sport banquets. The Academic Awards night should be announced better, but for some reason they keep it pretty hush hush. Maybe they don’t want the majority of the athletes mad about all of the great awards given away at that night, some good scholarships to be had!!
My son picked up his cap and gown recently, he is thinking about whether or not to decorate his cap. I hope he does, I think that’s fun. Son17 did not bother, and then he noticed a few cool and creative caps at graduation and regretted that he had not done something.
Hmm. I don’t know anything about cap and gown and S hasn’t mentioned it. I guess I’ll investigate.
The end of the year has been pretty low key here. S is not taking any APs so no big tests to study for and he doesn’t have any spring ECs so he’s not very busy. He’s just counting down the days until he’s done. He’s so ready for this to just be over.
My D was given an award in a smaller setting, and not only did they not announce it on any school outlet (FB, website, emails, etc), but they neglected to notify my D that she won the award, or that they were holding the ceremony. The first time she heard about it was when a teacher congratulated her. My D turns to her and asks “why?”, the teacher says “for the award”, to which my D responds “which award?” “the one that was just gave you at the ceremony”, “which ceremony?” I witnessed all of this since I was picking her up from school. They still haven’t sent her the certificate, and the HS never did announce it. The only reason we know that the prize actually exists and that it was awarded to my D, was that congratulations, and congratulations from two other teachers.
There is an honors convocation as well, where they hand out the academic awards. There are usually multiple awardees for most. They also announce the scholarship that were awarded by the village foundation, but not state or national ones or ones awarded by colleges. Those are posted on the graduation program, I think (I’ve never been to a graduation at the HS, so I do not know).
It’s going to be the HS’s first time with cap and gown. Since the HS was established, it was black suits for boys and white dresses for girls. Some years ago it was changed to solid white or black, and any formal wear is good, with no gendered requirements. Although similar considerations weighed in on moving to cap and gown, that was actually decided because of cost. About 20% of the HS are low income, and even renting formal wear is pricey, while cap and gown are not only a lot cheaper, but there are arrangements which allow them to be provided free of charge to families who need that.
@me29034 so is my DS19. He’s done. Ready for the next chapter.
@milgymfam Yes, our kids are bound to meet up. She’s excited as well and working to finish up high school in the next few weeks.
@Trixy34 Thanks for the kind offer of future help for my daughter.
Our HS has an awards ceremony where they announce scholarships awarded to students by their colleges (kinda silly but whatever) and also announce Val and Sal.
They give academic awards from the departments to the seniors as medals when all the seniors gather just before the graduation ceremony. No one can win more than one medal and I think they give two per department.
@liska21 I understand the stress of prom. My son opted to travel to CA (from MI) to compete with his financial analysis team in the National BPA (Business Professionals of America) competition, which means missing prom. Although I know he was excited to make it to Nationals with his team, I think he also found it was a convenient excuse for avoiding prom. Good news is that his team made it to the final round - I am really happy for them, but I also hope they don’t regret missing senior prom.
Doing my best to keep up with all the updates - but feel very behind on acknowledgements. I started to make a list to figure out who is going where and other accomplishments… too many to acknowledge … so Congrats to everyone.
We just had senior awards - a cord ceremony for scholars - 4.0 and greater weighted GPA . Each senior had a chosen teacher say a few words. New for me and unexpected. I had to control the choked up feeling while standing beside D.
This week has been interviews for selected local scholarships. Our awards ceremony is in a few weeks where the local scholarships are announced “Academy Awards” style. If you got any, you are invited. No one knows which scholarships ahead of time. With our last D this seemed like a great community builder where we get to cheer for all the money given to our students.
This time around, I’ve started to ponder “why” they do it this way. Personally, if I don’t win something, I prefer to find out in private where I can deal with my own disappointment. Most of these scholarships are $100 - $500 and generic - so not earth shattering. Many are targeted to audiences she isn’t competing with. But one in particular is an art scholarship for $2,000 (one of the interviews she had today). This feels more in the vein of an art competition, and I’d much rather find out whether she got this in private ahead of time. But she’s not phased by it - so I’ll let it go.
The biggest challenge on the horizon (for me) is getting her to take her graduation speech more seriously. She’s valedictorian and I am hoping for an inspiring address to the graduating class - but she’s not showing a lot of interest. It drives me a bit crazy. At least I got her to write a first draft and amazingly she was open to my edits. We’ve agreed to put it off until after the APs. I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on her. My older (procrastinating) daughter also gave a graduation address but we were still writing it in the car on the way to the ceremony lol.
D19’s school has a senior awards evening, which is “by invitation only”. Apparently part of it is recognizing the CSF life members, which she has attained (as I’m sure have many others at her school…), so I guess we’ll be getting an invitation…but we haven’t seen it yet. I’m thinking they still need to finalize subject prizes. Unlike some here, there’s still 5 weeks of school left. They tend to do finals for AP subjects this week, but non-AP finals are all in the last week of school.
S19 has his senior lax game today. I hope I make it without crying. Tearing up is probably a given. 2.5 weeks left of school and it’s full of AP tests, music nights, and senior events.
I will be so happy when grades are final, S has a major case of senioritis. It’s been a struggle between giving him pep talks and fussing at him to stay on top of his work. He’s usually self motivated and i stay out of his school stuff so I’m trying not to worry that’s he going to fall apart in college!
His school also has an awards breakfast by invite. We assume he was invited because the school has a 32 and above group. He says they keep dragging them out for recognition and giving them shirts. He is not into it at all and refuses to wear the shirt. I don’t blame him but I know the school just wants to look good.
Last Indiana State Music Championship Finals today. D19 and S19 both in full orchestra and band finals. Didn’t think we’ll be sentimental, but, I think we will miss this all next year.
Seven days of school left. School work is very not stressful, she barely has to do anything and has a few empty blocks in which she just has to entertain herself. There is soccer keeping her busy, and a music contest today, among other things. I figured out that she has not eaten a meal at home since last Saturday noon and she’s not eating at home today so it will be Sunday noon- over a week.
We have Senior Recognition Night a week from Tuesday. There will be a slide show with a baby, middle school, and senior picture of each student. They will present the local scholarships. I think some are known in advance and some are surprises that night. We already know of a couple for DD.
We’ve had the cap and gown for a while, the classes usually have enough money leftover from prom fundraising to provide them free. She has her cap decorating ideas narrowed down to two “Parks & Rec” quotes.
DD tells me her commencement speech is ready to go, other than running it by her sister. I have heard a few bits and pieces but not much as she tells me it runs about 5 minutes.
The thing I need to push her on right now is checking in on two summer job opportunities. I suggested she do it yesterday and I don’t think it happened. She needs to be proactive on these because they are jobs she wants and if she dawdles, she may end up having to take whatever she can get. Teen jobs are not abundant here.
Tomorrow we are going to Sam’s…her reception is a week from tomorrow!
Our awards night is the first Wednesday in May every year. It’s invitation only, so most people don’t even know it’s happening.
It is the top 10% of each class (though that is stopping this year as our county no longer ranks), and then perfect scores on ACT, SAT, NMF, and high placements in national competitions like AMC.
It is extremely impressive but so many brilliant kids are left out.
One of S19’s friends was chosen by a local organization as one of their scholar athletes of the year and when I read the article, I was surprised to see she had a 35 ACT and 4.7 GPA this year. She doesn’t get awards at awards night. There are so many brilliant kids waking our school who wil never realize how smart they are.
D20 made a 33 on the ACT this year and was so disappointed. The culture of their school is ridiculous, esp for a comprehensive public high school. We are considering sending our youngest somewhere else for high school.
@brentwoodmom that pressure is pretty scary. I thought D19’s school was pretty competitive (a B is the END OF THE WORLD for some people) but it’s not that crazy that a 33 ACT would be disappointing.
Did anyone see the news report of the girl who received 110 college acceptances and something like "3.5million in scholarships”. 110 schools LOL At some point something will be done to prevent a kid to applying to 110 schools. That seems just a tad excessive.
This better not be any of your daughters, or else!!
My son was supposed to go to a meet today, but woke up sick as a dog, probably from staying out super late on Senior Bash night and then having to practice in the rain in 45 degree temps. The weather around here has been miserable. Rain 29 out 37 days.
Wrench in the works. DS got an email from Vanderbilt . So now we have another decision to weigh. But we’re getting closer to finalizing this thing.
I can’t believe so many of you are so close to graduation. We still have about another month or so, but I know it’s going to fly by. Trying to figure out what to do for a graduation party, if anything. The kids are going away for a week the day after graduation, so we might just do a kid get-together after they get back.