Narrative Essay On High School Becoming Valedictorian

High school was an especially stressful time in both my academic life and personal life. For almost the entirety of my high school career, I was in a constant battle for the top spot of the class with one of my closest friends. Both him and I were able to maintain a consistent 4.0 GPA throughout our freshmen to junior years and due to this, grades were an emotionally taxing subject for both of us. For most people, an A-minus is a fantastic grade and would be enthusiastically accepted, however, for us, it was the difference between a 4.0 to a 3.92. It felt almost as if we were both stranded on top of a precarious skyscraper with only enough space to fit one of us (barely holding on and praying for the other to fall).
The trepidation of the situation wasn’t helped by the incessant nagging of my family. Relentlessly I was bombarded by statements of how important becoming valedictorian was. Any hint of anything less than an absolute perfection was met with stringent vigilance and guilt trips. The significance of grades wasn’t only stamped into my brain; it was etched in stone. In my eyes, A’s were the only acceptable grade; B’s were considered inferior and the indication of a C was completely unacceptable. It felt as though a grading guillotine was permanently wrapped around
my head, voraciously waiting for me to make an error.
In the end, I became valedictorian only by the difference of one A-minus.
That modicum of difference was what separated valedictorian from the salutatorian. In retrospect, the impact of being valedictorian has been so minimal in my life, it’s laughable. It didn’t help me in applying to college, it didn’t help me with financial aid, and it didn’t help me prepare for college. I was so fixated on making exemplary grades and becoming valedictorian that the line between my academic worth and my self-worth became blurred and amalgamated. I felt if I didn’t achieve absolute flawlessness, that I was a failure. I was so blinded by my self-effacing perfectionism that I lost what a grade truly
represented.
That’s why students are so desperate for A’s. Not necessarily due to a feeling of entitlement (though there are definitely some who do feel that), but due to a feeling of necessity. To a student, the importance and meaning of a grade has become skewed from being a representation of their academic merit, to an embodiment of their value. After years of dealing with demanding parents who expect perfection, anything short of an A feels like utter catastrophe.
When a student is saying, “Why don’t I have an A?” Often, what they actually mean is, “Why am I not valuable?”