I’d seriously try to make up with your counselor. I was in a similar situation. When I started my Governor’s School program, my school’s counseling department messed up terribly. The program was going on for like 5 years, yet it was like they had never seen it before. They called me like a week before school starts and told me that there was a conflict with some of my periods. With the way my program works, I wasn’t even going to be at that school for those periods (I basically attend two schools every day in my program). Anyways, I don’t want to get into the little details about how my school system’s confusing transfer process works. Long-story-short the situation somehow escalated to counselors insisting that I transfer schools. I was afraid to get my parents involved because they would go ballistic, but the talk of switching schools for no reason forced me to. My parents were not pleased at all. They met with my counselor and someone else from the guidance department the day after I told them. From what I heard (did not go to that meeting) my mom nearly put the poor woman in tears. Even though things are really frustrating sometimes, your counselors really are human. At my school we have like 2500 kids, a bunch of specialty programs where kids bounce in and out of different schools in the county, and admin that just love to change things up. Turns out that our new principal wanted to implement dual enrollment for certain classes like 2 weeks before school. The counselors had 2 weeks to change everything they took months to do right before school. Whether your counselor is reasonable or not, I’d be nice to them. I still have a great relationship with my counselor, even though she hates my parents. May be too late to try and smooth things out right now, but maybe a gift for thanksgiving or something? I don’t know. But, yeah, I would hope that your counselor is professional enough to put all that behind her. But, storming out of the room crying will never make a good impression on anyone.Though, despite what most other people here are saying, I don’t think you storming out is what would make her think poorly of you. I think calling your principal probably made her dislike you (if she does) most. And I don’t see anything wrong with asking your principal for advice in that situation.
My kids went to public high schools. It is obviously hard for a GC to know all the kids, especially if she’s new. At this point you probably are not on the list of her favorite students, but if you’re applying to colleges you’re not on her problem list either. I’d recommend making an appointment, bring in a resume and tell her your college choices and quickly provide resume highlights. Make her last impression of you a positive one where you took initiative and acted mature. As long as there are a few things on your resume that offset her previous impression I would think you’d be fine. If she writes anything it will probably be about something you highlighted on your resume. Remember it doesn’t matter if she was right, wrong, helpful or unhelpful in the past. What you want is hopefully a good recommendation. Not to mention GCs want their students to get into good schools, it helps the school too.
I don’t think the crying or going to the Principal were wrong. It was important to you to take the class with an appropriate level of challenge and just saying No was not a reasonable response. You stood up for yourself when many students would have just let it go and then would be faced with not taking the most rigorous schedule. Our school assigns counselors alphabetically but they do switch a few students here and there for various reasons. Is there some type of admin you can ask about a change? You didn’t do anything wrong, if you did the Principal would not have allowed the change of class. I would think the counselor will just give you a basic letter nothing good or bad if you are stuck with them but those forms usually ask how long they have known you and it’s clear a few months isn’t much. I’d be sure to pick teachers who have known you a long time.
Some teachers/counselors just don’t do a good job and when that happens you should stand up for yourself. Both my kids had the same AP World teacher and she was about to retire and didn’t understand the online grade book. She made tons of mistakes on my son’s grade but he didn’t go to her about all of them because she got irritated by it and he thought he was going to get a B for the year either way but last quarter he realized he would have been able to get an A for the year if he had everything fixed that should have been and was sad he just let it go. My daughter had her the year she was retiring and she basically stopped entering grades mid-quarter even though she gave the graded papers back. My daughter was going to get an A- for the year instead of an A because of the zeroes. She emailed the teacher nicely the day final grades posted (after having asked the teacher in class about the grades daily for weeks with no change) and teacher basically said she was taking all the planning days off and was retired and didn’t care about anyone’s grades. Luckily we have good admins and my daughter was able to forward that email, a screenshot of the gradebook, and photos of the graded papers and they fixed the grade. But there are times teachers are wrong and/or unfair and that’s the point where you should go to admin and that should not be held against you.
Im pretty late to the party, but I just want to say that if I were incorrectly placed into a class, and it was not fixable, then I too would have been pretty upset. I haven’t read beyond the first page, but many are basically referring to you as some spoiled, entitled person, when in reality, all you wanted was to be placed in a class that you signed up for in the first place. You did nothing wrong.
Regarding the rec letter, you should be fine. The advice to not apply to schools that require it is… Not the best advice. Apply to where you want. You can also go into her office and leave a better impression; for example, you could even go to her and apologize for the situation, i.e. crying in front of her and the principal. (I understand why you were frustrated to the point of tears, by the way. Yes, at public universities class schedules are hell, but hey, you’re already at the university. Being placed in the correct rigor of classes that you desire is likely crucial to your path to getting into your dream college. It makes sense to be upset that your plans were screwed with) I would honestly do anything to try and leave a good impression on her.
And if not, it really doesn’t matter anyway. She is NOT going to personally sabotage you. But it just might not be the BEST rec letter ever written. It probably will be generic.
The GC sounds like a jerk to me. Yeah, the class was full, but she should have at least apologized or tried to make amends somehow. Instead, according to you, she just sat there and rejected all your suggestions. Then she was upset that you went over her head to fix her mistake? Yikes.
I went to an HS where disorganization and complacency like this was the norm, so I might be more sympathetic (or biased!) than others. But I totally understand where you’re coming from, and the parents in here saying like “oh my daughter would never do that” are just funny. Everyone has tantrums. I’d be mad too if my counselor was screwing me over like that.
As to your question, I don’t know the ins and outs of LORs so I can’t answer it. Most likely, it won’t matter at all. A year or two from now when you’re at college you’ll think back on this story and realize how silly the whole thing was.