<p>I think for most guys, yeah, having the hot wife is more important than the top-producer placard :-).</p>
<p>But you keep calling this an “injustice.” If these were awards that were given for strictly objective criteria, your D met the criteria and didn’t get it (everyone above a 4.0 gets XXX and she didn’t) - yes, that’s an injustice. However, these seem to be awards that are given for subjective criteria. In which case – in the absence of something that clearly stinks, such as obvious nepotism or bribery – there’s no “injustice,” since there is no entitlement.</p>
<p>Who is entitled to be homecoming queen? Or voted most likely to succeed?</p>
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<p>ROFL, certainly throughout the remaining days of high school. Freakin’ high school. Haven’t you figured out that there is no correlation between success in high school and success in the greater world? </p>
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<p>Nonsense. You choose to be so intertwined in that world. My kids’ accomplishments don’t take away from anyone else’s because there are different pizza pies for all. You choose to make it all one big pizza pie and my slice comes at the expense of yours. Maybe if you didn’t engage with these other parents, their “opinions” would roll right off you. For the life of me, why can’t your daughter just run her races and that’s that? Let other people’s “opinions” fall flat on the floor, where they belong. I have no idea what “opinions” other parents have of my kids. They are trees falling in the forest as far as I am concerned. Try that tack. Really, it works.</p>
<p>In my neck of the woods, the sun rises and sets on UIUC. Which is a perfectly fine state flagship, and excellent in some areas, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of colleges. But that’s ok. It’s of little importance to me that the teachers might have a special fondness for / interest in state schools over private schools, because I’m not raising my children to care what the teachers or the neighbors think or to seek their approval. This is a key distinction between you and me.</p>
<p>From your posts, I cannot help but conclude that school recognition is really important to you, other-parent recognition is really important to you, and peer recognition is really important to you. And to me, that speaks to needing a lot of validation to feel secure, and I don’t get why you just wouldn’t be delighted in your D’s choices and accomplishments (which are certainly substantial!) and why the approval and validation of others is so important. And I’m not the only one on this thread who thinks so.</p>
<p>Highly competitive communities (like mine and probably TheGFG’s) are a double-edged sword. The students (often via their parents) push each other to amazing accomplishments - not infrequently to national- or world-ranked standing. The flip side is that their peers have trouble supporting the winners, because they themselves were a contender, and face-it, “second place is the first loser” (a phrase I have heard around here several times).</p>
<p>Fairness in recognition is important. It is sad if high schoolers go off into the world with a cynical view.</p>
<p>PG,
I think you overstate the lack of importance of others’ opinions. That would be fine if we all lived in self-contained bubbles, but others’ opinions of us matter greatly in the working world and social world.</p>
<p>I agree that others’ opinions of us matter greatly in the working world and social world. I just don’t see the hs world as being either of those things.</p>
<p>For ex: Today, both of my kids headed off on the train for downtown. D is starting her first day of her summer job at an institute in Chicago that is related to the ultimate area she wants to study. S is heading off to an interview for a small newspaper that specializes in an area of interest to him. I think it’s of much importance that they learn how to impress and charm the pants off their coworkers, figuratively speaking, of course. But the other kids at their high school? Not that they should be social pariahs, but as long as they have friends and are reasonably well thought of and polite / courteous to all, why is it of importance that they care about the opinions of these other kids? And these other kids’ PARENTS? Of even LESS importance.</p>
<p>GFG, I finally get it, thank you for the Pizza analogy.</p>
<p>A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist tells me about his patients who are successful, affluent, well traveled and accomplished and yet they are miserable and depressed. Someone always has more; someone always gets the gold while they are stuck with the silver; life is a zero sum game and every winner means there are three or four or 12 losers depending on the rules of that game.</p>
<p>It is a choice to raise one’s kids with a sense of humility and gratitude. Food, clean water, access to health care, never mind the latest gadgets and computers… these are things to be grateful for, knowing that an equally “deserving” kid somewhere down the street or across town or across an ocean doesn’t have these things. Growing up in a democracy when people more award-worthy are willing to withstand a tank at Tianamen Square or a firing squad in Iran… that’s something to be grateful for. Being a descendant of the luckiest man on earth who managed to escape Nazi Germany when so many of his siblings, cousins, neighbors were gassed to death by allegedly cultured and refined SS officers- this is something to be thankful for every day. Sheer dumb blind luck. </p>
<p>So to answer your question- no, getting into Stamford will never be enough even if people try to tell you to let the little pettiness of HS go by the wayside now that your D has hit the jackpot. If you cultivate an attitude that every thing in life is or should be fair you will always be disappointed. If you believe that goodies rain down upon us based on merit, life will leave you exhausted and angry. I have no doubt that there’s a woman right now in Darfur who is every bit as smart and talented as I am- and I’m sitting in an air conditioned office with all the coffee I can drink, and she’s walking five miles to try and find water outside her refugee camp. This is not fair- and yet, my looking around corners to see who in my company got the promotion I deserved, or got an unfairly large bonus in a year of retrenchment doesn’t help my doppelganger in Darfur either. But getting aggravated that someone else is getting my piece of the pie when I already have so much more than I deserve… well that’s just a waste of time and psychic energy.</p>
<p>If you set your D up for a life where other people’s validation is what matters, you are setting her up for all the anxiety disorders my shrink friend tells me about. He sees people who are among the luckiest on earth… and they come to see him with a laundry list which is just as you describe- it’s not fair, it should have been me, I had the objectively best whatever and yet the prize went to someone else.</p>
<p>I’m glad I live where I live and my kids attend the school they do/did. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one snarky remark from the kids or their parents about people’s college choices or awards, like it’s a zero-sum game. I used to decry that ds1’s class was so indivdualistic and lacked a super-cohesion, but now I guess I’m just thankful that everyone just minded their own business.</p>
<p>If living in the “most competitive community” means developing an attitude that Stanford can never be enough because hs awards are important too - then boy am I glad I never jumped on that merry-go-round.</p>
<p>But I don’t fully believe it. It’s still your choice to let other people’s opinions serve as your source of validation, or get that validation internally. Even in the “best” communities.</p>
<p>What does make me sad is that D has become cynical about the importance of working hard and doing the right thing. It’s not that she doesn’t want to work hard or do what is right–she does! But in those moments when she’s down, or tired, or low on internal motivation, the thought that diligence and integrity will utlimately be rewarded, if not in this life then in the next, simply doesn’t carry the energizing force it does for me or for her brother. She’s not fullly convinced it’s true. It’s just that there’s no good alternative to behaving with responsibility and honesty.</p>
<p>And when I say this about her world view, I am not implying it has come about soley because of an injustice in senior award distribution. However, kids spend seven or more hours a day in the school environment. In D’s experience, I don’t think that environment strongly reinforced the ideals it should have and which it did more often in my S’s case and mine. D simply has seen too many examples of times when cheaters (though discovered) went unpunished, liars were believed, the bully triumphed, and things of that nature. I can’t quite explain it, but I think my upbringing had more of a Disney movie quality to it. I saw more happy endings, more poetic justice, more triumph of right. For example, after a while the kids in school would eventually catch on to what the mean girl was up to, and so she would be thwarted. For D, though, it seems the mean girl won and keeps winning still.</p>
<p>The mean girl will always win if you care enough to track who the winners and losers are. We’ve been trying to tell you that.</p>
<p>And who cares? She will win. She will be head cheerleader and have the hunkiest BF and the smallest waist and the nicest clothes and be the most popular. Who gives a rat’s %^&?</p>
<p>TheGFG, I think I get it. I think the qualitative criteria are almost always there in high school awards (at least, the ones I’m most familiar with), but the kids and parents don’t always know that. It would be helpful if that were clear, which I think has been one of your points all along.</p>
<p>At my kids’ school, there are academic awards and character awards. It became clear to us right away, in my older child’s freshman year at the school, that the academic awards are also character awards. In our first year at the school, the end-of-year award for best student in a particular subject went to a student who had told teachers at the beginning of the year that he hated the subject, and by the end of the year he felt it wasn’t so bad. The award marked the students’s improved attitude. There were quite a few students with real talent in this subject - students who were naturally gifted, but who had also plunged in, learned a lot, showed mastery, and helped others, but that wasn’t what the teachers wanted to recognize. Teachers explained their logic for their choice when they announced each award, so it was clear.</p>
<p>It still is a bit tricky for the kids who are academically excellent but don’t get academic awards, especially when the awards are labeled “best student in X”; I think the kids have to remind themselves that it’s just the way the system works. But it’s okay. They do feel happy when their friends get recognized for good attitudes, lots of improvement, etc. I think they also wish they could get recognized by their peers and teachers, but that will come in other settings and at other times.</p>
<p>For those of you whose kids hit the admissions jackpot and got into HYPS (or whatever you think is top), I hope that at some point there is a good time for a discussion of the fact that even getting perfect grades from the perfect school may not always get them the job. There are CEOs around here who are rabid supporters of UT or A&M, and I’m pretty sure that they’d choose a UT or A&M grad for a job over any Ivy grad.</p>
<p>Often, it isn’t there, but it doesn’t help to tell the victim:</p>
<ul>
<li>it was a petty issue, so justice doesn’t matter</li>
<li>your attitude was wrong so an injustice probably didn’t really occur</li>
<li>it could just be so mysterious that we can’t tell if there was any injustice </li>
<li>there’s so much injustice, you should just get used to it and stop letting it bother you</li>
<li>if you complain about it too much, or in the wrong way, there’s something wrong with you and that will overshadow the injustice and make it appear to have not happened.</li>
</ul>
<p>This is a rant thread, so it’s more productive to listen to the rant, offer sympathy, maybe suggest a way to move on and cope better, and then… move on. I feel like people are beating up the ranter a bit much.</p>
<p>But your daughter won a trophy that’s FAR MORE IMPORTANT than any of those hs awards - a spot in the freshman class at Stanford. It’s hard for me to garner a lot of sympathy that she didn’t win all these lesser awards when she won the biggest prize of all. OK, maybe it’s unfortunate and unfair, but her Stanford education is going to take her SO many wonderful places that “Best Chemistry Student in the Perfectville High School Class of 2010” won’t.</p>
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<p>Isn’t that even MORE reason to discount high school?</p>
<p>The mean girl’s wins are only meaningful if you choose to play on the same field as the mean girl. Play on a different field entirely, and her wins means nothing.</p>
<p>Thanks for your kindness, calreader and greenwitch. Yes, you get it, calreader. For the end-of-the-year subject award you mention in post #690, wouldn’t it have been better to call it "The Most Improved Student in Subject _________ " rather than “Best student in Subject X”? Making things clear won’t keep people from being disappointed, but it can keep them from feeling disliked or unvalued.</p>
<p>I believe we need to be particularly careful about what happens in school because kids can’t opt out if the environment is painful for them. They’re a vulnerable and captive audience. So much progress has been made from the days when children were made to stand in the corner, wear a dunce cap, or line up in order of their test grade. But there is still room for improvement.</p>
<p>GFG, yes, there is room for improvement. And yes, it is validating to a kid when their accomplishments are acknowledged.</p>
<p>We are all on your side. But surely there are other injustices in the world that can also grab your attention and tug at your heartstrings? If you could just once concede that in the grand scheme of things your D has won the lottery of life (she’s got you as a parent after all!) and is so much luckier than 99% of the humans who have ever walked the planet, and is off to a phenomenally bright future such that the petty slights of HS will long be past her… well, concede that and we’ll all stay friends.</p>
<p>No man is an island, pizzagirl, and you can’t just play on a completely different field from the mean girl if she goes to the same school and is on the same team as you are. If you really cared not at all what others think of you, you wouldn’t be posting so often on this thread in attempt to win an argument at the expense of someone who was hurting. Nor would you resort to attributing pettiness, small-mindedness, and various psychological hang-ups to that person in order to make your point. Why are you wasting your time attacking my posts, if my thoughts and feelings are so silly and beneath someone as high-minded as you? Based on what you profess, you should have left this thread in complete disgust long ago.</p>
<p>Agreed, blossom, if you promise that when someone else posts about a not-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things topic (like what’s a good restaurant near their child’s school, or where’s the best store to buy XL twin sheets) , you’ll also tell them the same story of some underprivileged person in a far-away land who can’t even go to a store or restaurant, and ask them why on earth they even spend time worrying about trivial things like that? LOL, peace!</p>
<p>So my son’s senior awards ceremony is tonight… After reading all of this, I’m not sure how to feel. I figure getting his plaque for Scholar of Scholars is more than enough for me. I’m just going to relax and enjoy the night. :-)</p>