Thursday, November 17, 2016
The True Meaning of Valedictorian?
After reading "Best in Class" by Margaret Talbot, I started to think of what it really means to be valedictorian and how the title should be earned. To be valedictorian is to be the top student academically among your peers, but, for me, this is a bad way to gauge who truly is the top student. Elective courses and sports are not weighted like a core class so someone may have a GPA lower than the valedictorian by a hundredth percent of a difference and some may consider that unfair. Colleges are always looking for the most rounded-out student yet the valedictorians seem to hold some leverage over student-athletes or students involved in clubs. Therefore, who really should be declared the valedictorian? The student who balances between class, sport and club or the student who sticks to classes only? Personally, I think the more rounded-out student should be declared valedictorian. A valedictorian based on who did more extra curricular activities - which is what colleges look for anyways, you challenging yourself to multiple tasks while maintaining a high GPA - is a better way to measure who really tried to be the best all around. What do you guys think? Who should be named valedictorian?
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Personally, I feel that the valedictorian should still be the student with the highest GPA, but here's my viewpoint on the situation. I feel that students should not get stressed out or depressed about not being valedictorian. It should really just be a healthy competition between the top students with no hard feelings. Sure, being valedictorian is a great honor, but how much will it truly help a student after high school. In Tablot's article, it is mentioned that people don't really mention it outside of high school and seem foolish if they do. Besides, those who balance many different activities and might have slightly lower GPAs than a 4.7 could still manage to do better in the outside world anyway if the valedictorian was someone that has very few or no extracurricular activities and only stresses academics. The students who balance many tasks could still do better in the areas of responsibility and time management in some cases. To summarize, I don't think students should worry about being valedictorian as much as they do.
ReplyDeleteI agree with James that it should be a healthy competition in which it helps promote hard work. Being valedictorian only matters in highschool anyways because no one really cares about it after the fact. How many times do you ever hear, "Hey you were valedictorian, ok no interview need, you got the job." Not to put being valedictorian down but it should not be the main focus of highschool.
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