HoustonChronicle.com - Is high school quest for top GPA out of control?

Oh god.

Why do these kids care so much?

Look, school has always been easy for me. Very easy. It's one of the few things in my life that is easy.

In highschool I never wanted to be valedictorian or even salutorian. I didn't want to play that game. I wanted to be third.

HA!

The true position of power. Good enough to be good enough, but not so good that everyone gets all freaky about competing with you.

I was third in my class with little to no effort on my part.

Yes, because school was a walk in the park for me. A lark. A laugh. An experiment in killing time.

No, I'm not saying it only because I'm an egotistical asshole (although, we both know I am). I know I'm smart, but so what? There are tons of smart people, much smarter than me. Most of them care about shit more than me too.

(God, I know. Look at the bad grammar! Look at the simplistic sentence structure. Look at the typos. Listen to me, I don't care. Just because I'm smart doesn't mean I'm not one of the laziest, non-detail oriented people I know. )

(Remember, first law of moi: I don't care.)

But, I figured out what I needed to do to get to the next step....ie. high enough SATs (yes, I took them only once, and got a bit higher than the score I aimed for, which means, frankly, I worked too hard at it), a filled out extra-curricular schedule (again, activities chosen carefully for most impact with least effort), and a reasonable GPA (les third!).

But, really, it wasn't like I came up with some plan. I just decided what I wanted and then got it.

For me, that's the hardest part...deciding what I want. Once I do, I'm a woman of action....and things happen. Woe be to you that stand in my way.

Which is good, sometimes. But, when, in retrospect I realise that I wanted the wrong thing to begin with...it kills me....kills me that I put effort and made things happen only to get something I didn't actually want after all. And then I'm stuck with it.