LilacRose v1.0: Revenge of the Nerd

Revenge of the Nerd

A rather strange story from Canada:

National Post: Truth about high school - Unpopular boy makes valedictory speech: 'A lot of you were jerks'

"A lot of people in our grade, the grade that elected me, do not know my name," wrote Mr. Ironside, 18. "They just know me as that blond kid with the freaky eyes."
Mr. Ironside, who had his own page in the yearbook, had been elected valedictorian in a vote carefully orchestrated by his peers and designed to embarrass him.

But when graduation night arrived, he gave a speech that transformed a malicious high school joke into an ad libbed sequel to Revenge of the Nerds.

Good for him! (Via E-Pression.)

One thing, though -- I didn't know valedictorians were "elected". I thought it was just whoever had the highest GPA in the class. That's the way it worked when I was in high school. It seems that electing someone to that position leaves things wide open for abuse, such as what happened to this kid.

Posted by Susan B. at 8:38 PM to Bizarre

Comments

Bene Diction

We don't have GPA's.
I don't know if all Canadian high schools elect or not.
I think in this case, his class made a good choice. Blog on!

Posted on January 2, 2004 at 2:50 PM

susan b.

Hi Bene,

I was hoping a Canadian would chime in on this -- I wondered if maybe high schools in Canada did things differently. And I agree that they did make the right choice. :-)

Posted on January 2, 2004 at 9:37 PM

smockmomma

we used gpa's, too.

Posted on January 3, 2004 at 11:53 AM

Alex

I know Andrew, and I go to OTHS. I think this guy is hilarious! The fact of the matter is that he didn't deserve the valedictorian honour, because he is not as academiocally successful as others nominated. But this was simply a popularity contest. Certain others thought they had it all wrapped up when they were nominated because they were the popular kids. Lets get it straight, the thruth is, Andrew isn't a geek, he just isn't cool. He got along alot better with people then the "Heavy Favourites", who were no more than cheerleading, big breasted, gold diggers. The voters saw that, and decideed to vote for the guy that was likeable, but not really cool, and really smart.

Posted on January 9, 2004 at 3:57 PM

susan b.

Hi Alex,

Thanks for commenting on this. I wondered if there might be more to this story. The idea of the valedictorian honor being based on popularity is really strange to me...I believe it should be based solely on academic achievement. But since, in this case, it's an elected position, I'd rather see someone like Andrew get it than "cheerleading, big breasted, gold diggers".

The valedictorian of my high school class was a Vietnamese kid who had come to America with his parents at the end of the Vietnam War. He was neither popular nor unpopular. He seemed to be just a shy, gentle guy who was extremely intelligent and a hard worker. And, even though English was his second language, he had the highest GPA of our class.

Posted on January 9, 2004 at 7:41 PM