“I’d probably look at them the same as if they told me that they’d won the most gold stars in Miss Maple’s kindergarten class.” OMG I really started laughing over this one!!!
I’m glad my kid took a class he was interested in freshman year, which turned out to be the difference between him being #1 and #2. One semester was unweighted, the second semester was honors and weighted. Yep, that was the only difference in four years. If he’d waited to try out this interest area until junior or senior year, he probably would have gone with a full-year honors or AP class to stay in the ranking race. At that point, I think it would have been hard to choose the interest area over the rank. But, even though he was a straight A student in grade school and middle school, it never occurred to him or to us to strategize his courses for freshman year of high school, in case he would eventually be in a rank race.
Honestly, I don’t know why kids put all this pressure on themselves. Life is very long and plenty stressful! I remember in grade school and middle school at conferences, the teachers would ask what we wanted the kids to get out of school that year. My answer was always for them to still like school and to still enjoy learning.