I think I've mentioned this before, but I was salutatorian and also not in the top 10% of my class.
Over the past year, the Globe has tracked down 93 of the 113 valedictorians who appeared in the paper's first three "Faces of Excellence" features from 2005 to 2007. We wanted to know, more than a decade later, how the stories of Boston's best and brightest were turning out.
These were the kids who did everything asked of them and more. Some arrived as refugees, their childhoods abbreviated by war and poverty. Others navigated broken homes, foster care, and unspeakable street violence closer to home. Still others charted a clearer course, their academic rise fueled by family expectations and strong support.
These photo displays project an unspoken faith that the American dream is alive and well: Nearly 80 percent of the valedictorians we interviewed became the first in their families to go to college, an achievement often crowned by a generous scholarship.
But in an era when social mobility is in sharp decline, many of Boston's valedictorians struggled after high school, their vaulting ambitions running headlong into a thicket of real-world obstacles -- obstacles their wealthier, often white counterparts in the suburbs much more rarely encounter. Theirs are stories of inequality not just in income, but in opportunity.
I was also the first in my family to go to college, if you only count me and my siblings.
My younger brother was the last in my family to go to college. By the time my nephews are old enough the universities will have become Anathem-style fortified enclaves, defended by force against the howling orc-strewn wilderness beyond their walls.
Politics of disgust. Not a new area of research I think, but the synthesis gives the notion a potential preeminence that's new to me.
The research they start with is the usual "rope in a bunch of college kids and give them surveys" gabberdeloo, but it supposedly holds up tested many different ways.
More from the article:
1 in 4 didn't have a Bachelors degree with 6 years of graduating high school.
A quarter of them said the wanted to be doctors but none have a medical degree.
40% make less than $50,000 a year.
4 have been homeless.
The valedictorian of my high school class bought a house in San Francisco back in the 90s, so I assume she's rich now regardless of what else she's done.
But is she contented?
Depends on whether she lives in the city. My understanding is that everyone in SF these days is either miserable or a libertarian who works for google.
re: 5
I was the first, and will probably be the last. I'd like to think that xelA will go, when he is old enough, but, being frank, you are right.
re: 5
Unless we move to the Nordic style social democratic paradise post-Scottish independence. We'll need to get admittance through the 50ft tartan* walls manned by fierce ginger warriors, though.
* vitrified stone.
My understanding is that everyone in SF these days is either miserable or a libertarian who works for google.
Christ, which is worse? So glad I visited the place thirty years ago.
I notice a real trend of what sociologists would probably describe as downward mobility among my friends' children. Some went to university, others didn't, but a lot of them aren't doing traditional graduate jobs and, more to the point, don't much want to. They seem quite happy making a living as electricians or brewers or whatever. The doctors and academics among them are a distinct minority.
Could you tell the brewers to keep the coffee out of the beer. Really annoying. Also, there's such a thing as too much hops.
The valedictorian a year ahead of me now works for Google in SF. I don't know if it's made him libertarian.
They're UK brewers. They know about the over-hopping problem. I think they make a chocolate stout, but no coffee.
I don't like chocolate stout either, but at least there's a tradition of it.
Google the title and AMP will return a link you can read without going to the globe website.
This made me curious to look up my high school's valedictorian--who edged like 0.01 ahead of me in GPA by doing expensive summer study-abroad things that counted for course credit that I couldn't afford. He now lives in New York and does things like "ideation" and "digital enlightenment", whatever that means. Presumably it means he still has a lot more money than I do.
does things like "ideation" and "digital enlightenment"
That's just fancy talk for masturbating to sexual daydreams.
This made me curious to look up my high school's valedictorian
Ditto. Reader, I married her.
This is a really depressing set of stories.
Our valedictorian got a PhD, got bored with her post doc, and is now finishing med school.
Racist med school, or the regular kind?
They got rid of the yearbook so it's no longer racist.
THE RACIST ONES ARE THE REGULAR KIND.
21: Who says you have to stop ideating?
I believe I've mentioned previously that my high school held what I think was essentially an open call for the non-valedictorian role of graduate class speaker. I'm not sure what the selection process was, but the school definitely didn't have a valedictorian based strictly on academic rankings. Three speakers were selected, but the only thing I remember was that one of them announced at the end of his speech that he had decided to become a priest. If I could remember his name, I'd try to figure out if he actually did that.
At my school, there was no concept of a valedictorian, but there was a Dux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dux#Education), which is a thing in some Scottish schools. The school definitely fiddled who got it, though.
So, at our school, there was maybe three or four possible people who could have gotten awarded it (it was based on preliminary exam results, rather than actual exam results, as the actual exam results came out after we left school). The guy who did get it, definitely wasn't the person who did best in the preliminary exam results,* but maybe they justified it based on the expectation that they assumed he'd be the highest academic achiever come the actual exam results. I don't know what he did after school, but I think he went off and did a CS degree and went into industry.
The Dux medalist didn't give a speech, though, just a prize giving and their name added to a list of former Dux winners.
* I think that was, ahem, me, on literal exam results. Or maybe one other person, and she was arguably more deserving.** The person who _did_ get it, f'd up his English preliminary exam, whereas me and the other person both got very high marks.
** caring for a sick parent, while still being an academic high achiever.
29: same here. Except the guy who got Dux did deserve it over me; he was and is a good mate of mine, and definitely brighter than I was. But, yes, no speech or anything, which is probably a good thing from the school's point of view as he would have taken the opportunity to say what he thought about the school. He's now in Narnia doing advertising.
We don't have NEWTs or anything, so it's based an average of all your grades over, I think, all four years.
I don't remember who our class speaker was. It wasn't a job given to the valedictorian, because I thought I was a candidate for valedictorian but I was never worried about having to perform the awful ordeal of being class speaker. Maybe we didn't know who our valedictorian was. Instead of that, there was a big deal about being in the National Honor Society, which seemed to mean the top 6% of every graduating class.
Instead of that, there was a big deal about being in the National Honor Society
"National Honor Society" is the type specimen of "things that sound far more sinister translated into German".
"At my school everyone made a big deal about membership of the Reichsehregesellschaft".
Actually sounds pretty sinister in English too now I think about it. The kind of thing that would parade in the streets of Chinese cities screaming about Unequal Treaties or something,
We have that but it's the Society of National Honor.
The National Society of Honor was mostly about preserving virginity before marriage.
I'm just going to have to start accepting cookies again.
Keegan was valedictorian of his class. He's in his final semester at UNC now.
Fifty. I'm told doctors will want to put things in my butt.
The valedictorian of my college class set the standard for falling short of potential by dying two months before graduation. Vehicle collision, no drugs or alcohol, other guy 100% at fault. It was a political decision, since he had been first after seven semesters but hadn't taken the last exams,* but not very controversial. Except to the salutatorian, who was pissed.
Valedictorian now has his name on a building on campus, and on a public library in his home town. Salutatorian is a successful corporate lawyer, a grandfather, and alive.
*Apparently the university had a long-time policy of granting diplomas to those who died in good academic standing one semester short of graduation, invoked when significant numbers of the Class of '42 joined the military in the days after Pearl Harbor.
As long as you don't need one to take things out.
I should go get a doctor to check out my hip. I'm pretty sure I've got arthritis.
34, I never thought of it that way. "With Honors" is the standard way US high schools designate students who performed to a certain outstanding standard. "I graduated with honors". Or "I passed this semester with honors". I guess it should be the National Honors Society.
I never heard of "with honors" in a high school. Maybe because my involvement was with really small high schools.
Did you have an Honor Roll? (all the kids with good grades get their names in the local newspaper because they are on the Honor Roll)
I think we just had the National Honor Society.
Everybody in any high school activity was in the newspaper all the time because what else were they going to put in the newspaper.
My high school didn't have valedictorians, but somehow I remember knowing that 3 students had perfect 4.0 GPAs. One became a medical doctor, one appears to have become a tech bigshot, and the third one I can't find, but I'm confident he's also quite successful in the tech world (he went to MIT).
I wonder who would be considered the most successful person out of my class. The douchebag that's founded overstock.com might be the richest. And then there's the former Senator.
My best friend from the ages of 8-10 ended up running the private client side of I think UBS. I could not bear to meet him again after he made contact about 7 years ago I was so ashamed of my relative failure. He took me to a lunch I could not ever have afforded. A couple of months after that, he was sacked, but I doubt he starved.
I'm not sure on whom the story reflects worse.
I don't remember any National Honors Society, but I do recall that National Merit Scholars were supposed to be a big deal.
Although wikipedia informs me that the actual scholarship itself is only $2,500, which doesn't seem like much.
I think the big deal was that universities would give their own scholarships to National Merit Scholars.
I remember being very embarrassed when anyone I knew in high school would see me working the cash register at the drug store. That was when I was in my mid-20s after dropping out of graduate school. Thirty years later, I'm daily pained by the knowledge of my failure, but I don't feel the same embarrassment around my cohort that are more successful.
First you get the PSAT scores, then you get the SAT scores, then you get the women who are attracted to men who read too much.
I remember the National Merit Scholarship because like 90% of National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists go on to become National Merit Scholarship Finalists and I was in the 10% that didn't make the cut.
Still got scholarship offers because of being a semifinalist.
57: Is that the thing that you get for doing well on the PSAT? And then you have to write some kind of essay to get the honor.
That happened during the period in high school when I couldn't or wouldn't write anything. My mom begged me, the guidance counselor pestered me, but I could not be moved.
Yeah, you have to do well on the PSAT. I don't remember if there was an essay - I could have aced an essay. The problem was that they looked at my grades.
Maybe they changed it. It was just PSAT, stool sample, SAT that were required when I was in high school.
Do they also have the woodwork requirement in coastal states?
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Hi, have any of you seen They Shall Not Grow Old yet? I hate watching movies in 3D but I feel like maybe this is one where I should go for the fully-digitally-manipulated experience rather than the flat version.
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Nobody ever won with a plastic stool.
NMM to the Virginia Democratic Party.
I remember the National Merit Scholarship because like 90% of National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists go on to become National Merit Scholarship Finalists and I was in the 10% that didn't make the cut.
Oh man. There was a finalist at Heebieville High School this year, and they didn't tell the student. The student found out after a lot of scholarship deadlines had passed, when the school asked the parents for permission to use the student in some promotional materials.
I think I've previously mentioned our valedictorian, a conniving rascal who conceived an animus against me for scoring higher than him on the SAT (ugh, really) and channeled it into a campaign to get me blacklisted from the school honor society on the alleged grounds that I didn't take notes during class, which was not demeanor befitting a young scholar. The school administration ended up intervening in an awkward and depressing way. I still find it hard to believe this happened.
Anyway, for a while he was a conservative talking head on some network, and then he wrote the screenplay for that recent Jackie O movie.
57, 61: Yeah, that was me. Semifinalist with meh grades. Is this finally going to be the thread where we all give our SAT scores?
No, but it might be like the time we discovered half the commenters have been on Jeopardy, and a different half all cross their 7s and zs when they write on paper.
52 You've done and written some super cool shit. In no way should you look on yourself as a failure (though I do know the pull to do that all too well).
I am pretty sure there was no additional work other than taking the standardized tests. I did nothing more than that and got a stupid number of scholarship offers. My parents were hilariously unsavvy about college scholarships and applications. None of us had heard of National Merit Scholars, and I think they thought it was like Who's Who until they started hearing about it at college visits. I remember a friend's dad quizzing me about my scores (vs his son's), and I mentioned that the award committee weighted scores slightly towards verbal score to achieve parity on gender. The guy was so pissed (I think my friend maybe did better on math and I did better on verbal but got the same score?) at the unfairness of it all (NB, they were quite well off; I wasn't preventing his kid from going to college). I think he and his son are now estranged. I do not wonder why.
52/73: Seconded. If you're a failure, I hang my head in abject shame at whatever I am.
68 Jesus that's awful.
Somewhat tangentially, I'm reminded of when my ex was applying for a Fulbright, she had a great project and would have probably gotten one but the Fulbright advisor at our Uni advised her to write some deeply personal essay, like about how great her mom was (she wasn't to my ex, quite the opposite though she could be extremely charming). Of course she didn't get a Fulbright.
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Remember my dead Mini Cooper S that got flooded back in October? Fuck me? No, fuck you life! I just bought another one, this one a John Cooper Works with a manual transmission.
If bad luck strikes again I'll learn my lesson and go for the 4x4
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I'm a white person who went through the 80s going to parties without using blackface. Apparently, that's an accomplishment.
As best as I can tell by Googling, my class valedictorian went into social work, according to an article from 2013. As best as I can remember from the last time I looked her up on the other place 2-4 years ago, she was working in lower Manhattan. I can only assume she married someone in BigLaw, or went into that herself.
I was number 2-4 in my class, which isn't as impressive as it sounds considering there were only 25. I'm pretty sure I moved further than those who have their lives together enough to comment on it on the other place, and probably make more money than most, but that has more to do with living in a city than being smart or hard work.
72: I cross my 7s but not my Zs. What do I win? Crossing my 7s is a habit I picked up when living in France, because that's how they do it over there. No idea why I didn't pick up the habit of crossing my Zs except that they're used less, I guess. (There's a Z in my sister's name, so that's a minimum amount I'd use it... and she lived in France longer than I did, and yet I'm pretty sure she didn't pick up this habit... I'm so confused.)
78: Same here. On the list of "stupid things I did in my youth", it never occurred to me that blackface would be such a common item.
Ah, the French-style seven. Saved my life once.
I did not have great SAT/PSAT scores relative to grades. I didn't really care either as long as I was over a baseline for good enough. Verbal sections of standardized tests have always been a problem for me unless there's an actual writing component.
78, 81: I don't remember ever seeing anyone in blackface. It's not like people weren't racists. But blackface wasn't something that even occurred to anyone.
Maybe at frat parties? I don't go to those.
84 Same here though I recently heard my brother's best friend (about 2 years younger than I am) wore blackface at a college party.
87: These days Moby never misses a good frat party.
86: Don't think I've ever seen literal blackface in person, but I've probably seen or been near those parties with a "thug" or "gansta" theme. Stereotypical attire, acting like a clown in an at-least-somewhat-racist way, still pasty white. I also had a friend in high school who was really into Bob Marley, but that's not a rap thing so much as a weed thing.
I'm really not trying to say that racism is a North/South thing, there are plenty of racists up North. But is blackface maybe something that's regional in the South, and the people who've never encountered it went to college outside the region? (Although my 80-year-old father, talking about this, mentioned that he remembers his Cub Scout leaders -- the adults, not the kids -- putting on a blackface minstrel show in Queens. But given his age, that was literally in the 1940s.)
Standardized testing is perhaps the only thing in this world I have ever been truly good at. I'm fairly dumb in a lot of ways, but this very narrow skill served me so well for such a long time. Everyone made such a big deal about my standardized test scores in my kid-life that I thought perhaps I was destined for greatness, but to my regret it's been mostly irrelevant in adult-life. As it turns out I'm at best middlingly competent at any skill that actually counts.
I broke our school transcript system because they print the GPA decile ranges (to two decimals) for the whole class, so everyone knows the valedictorian's GPA because it's the top of the top decile. My older brother, when he graduated, challenged me to get a GPA over 100 to see if they would print it as my actual GPA or just cut it off at 100.00, and it turns out they do cut it off (I managed 100.02). Scores over 100 are possible because 5 points is added to the final class grade for any honors or AP classes.
In college I was in band and before a concert the 6 members of our instrument section were talking and we determined that we were all valedictorians.
. . . putting on a blackface minstrel show in Queens
Obligatory link to Bob Coltman's "Before They Close The Minstrel Show" about which he wrote:
In the four years since I wrote it, this song has put me through the most changes of any. I never expected it to do well; it's a risky song so that if you don't listen carefully it calls up a fringey set of reflexes having to do with the old blackface shows. But when you know your music and where it's been, you know what a debt we all owe to the old traveling shows which, even before the radio and phonograph, carried songs and ways of playing from place to place, setting up by kerosene light in schoolhouses and off of wagon gates in town squares. We move our music around differently today, which is both a gain and a loss, like any other change. There is something to mark in the passing of the old minstrel men, and no stereotypes are adequate to deal with their reality. And when did you last hear anybody play anything pretty out in front of your house?
I had the pleasure of sitting in with Ed Trickett when he made his beautiful, really definitive, version. Since then Ed and I have tried it another way, with guitar and piano, which you ought to hear sometime. But for this album I wanted to hear the lonesomeness come out front, and Jay's fiddle said it exactly right.
There were certainly racist college frat parties when I was in school. They made the campus paper because they couldn't get drunk without making t-shirts.
Blackface definitely seems like the kind of thing that would have persisted in white Southern circles much longer than anywhere else. I think what's going on with these Virginia politicians is that they're from a generation that grew up when casual racism was much more of an omnipresent thing in the white South, very much including Virginia, but Virginia specifically has shifted a lot politically so that stuff is now broadly considered shocking in a way it wasn't at the time, and probably still isn't in other Southern states. The generation of politicians currently in these high-powered positions comes from that old, super-racist context, but because of the political shift they're Democrats and are being held to a higher standard.
Although you all are fascinating, I think the real story in that article was the importance of social economic class and the availability of money. The kids who went to schools that were college prep did do well. It was the kids from the other schools who struggled with resources couldn't make it.
Zb is the valedictorian of this thread.
It's not blackface, but I loathe, loathe, loathe when white people adopt a black accent in order to make a joke, and that is still very common in 2019.
Particularly I'm picturing when people adopt a 70s black pimp stereotype voice.
VA LG Justin Fairfax's accuser has gone public, and AG Mark Herring has confessed to his own blackface history.
Fourth in line is the House of Delegates speaker - who's Republican.
YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM UP, CAUSE THEY'RE BIGGER THAN YOU
YOU CAN'T LIVE WITH 'EM AND YOU JUST CAN'T SHOOT 'EM
MEN
I'M TALKING 'BOUT MEN
The speaker is a Republican literally because of the flip of a coin. Plus a bunch of racist gerrymandering. I wonder what minority voters think of booting two people with racist incidents in their past plus one with a sexual assault allegation in favor of a current racist. (Not that I'm defending them, but something like a Roman "pick random people from the phone book to govern" seems like it might be a better solution.)
It does seem like a suitable use of "does it make the worse off better off?" as a test for accepting an unfairness.
There is a picture of me from a Halloween party when I dressed as a Blue Man which, if you scanned it and adjusted the contrast, I suppose could look like I was in blackface.
Don't make me be "Opinionated Smurf."
So what's the process for replacing Fairfax or Herring if they resign before Northam does? That seems like the best way to salvage this mess.
I don't think there is any process that doesn't go through the Republican legislature.
Retaining Northram may be the best of bad options. His strategy of not resigning is starting to look like maybe the Democrats dodged a bullet.
I don't think there is any process that doesn't go through the Republican legislature.
This seems to be correct. The President pro tem of the Senate is next in line if the LG resigns, and the General Assembly elects a new AG if there's a vacancy there.
This whole thing is such a mess that I want to call Ed Gillespie's op-research staff and mock them in an attempt to make myself feel better.
"Gillespie vs O.J. Simpson. What have you got for me?"
"He wrote a book that sold very poorly."
something like a Roman "pick random people from the phone book to govern" seems like it might be a better solution.
Since it would be another nineteen centuries before the invention of the phone, selecting government officials through sortition was actually the only function of the Roman phone book.
"Telephone" originally just meant leaning out the window and yelling.
I CAN'T COME TO THE WINDOW RIGHT NOW! TATTOO YOUR MESSAGE ON THE SHAVED HEAD OF A SLAVE AND SEND HIM OVER ONCE HIS HAIR'S GROWN BACK! IT'S SECURE! AND IT CAN BE UP TO 280 CHARACTERS IF YOU HAVE A SLAVE WITH A PARTICULARLY LARGE HEAD!
Second woman accuses Fairfax of sexual assault. There will be others.
https://twitter.com/cam_joseph/status/1093990994507431936
There was a prize at my school for best GPA - awarded annually so 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th formers (9,th,10th, 11th, 12th). Seniors didn't have to take spring finals other than AP exams. Finals were after graduation.
Class speaker was voted on by the members of the class. I did not win the prize my first year but did all the other 3 years. I don't think we were a strong year, because I had, I think, a slightly lower GPA than a couple of the people a coupe of years ahead of me who were ranked 2nd and 3rd.
I have not turned out particularly well, but I think that there's a confluence of factors related to my family that made my life pretty difficult despite having grown up with some kinds of privilege, so I don't hold myself up as representative of much.
Which is just to say that economic difficulties are a major adversity but severe parental mental illness is too.