Any you’re willing to admit to - from high school or college?
In high school I was voted, “Most Intellectual” and suspect I’ve lived up to my peers’ vote.
In college H was voted, “Most Likely to be Shot by Your Own Troops,” and he definitely was that way in college (Type A to a fault), but he’s changed a ton since then. My Type B personality has corrupted him considerably - now he’s loved by pretty much everyone he comes in contact with - a fantastic guy. He does a great job (on anything), but he’s not a prick about it or others “not” doing it “correctly.”
One might wonder how we married… I despised him at first, but he had enough money that we didn’t have to eat in the dining hall so I’d go out with him. As we got to know each other the corruption began. Plus, I rarely put up with anyone’s BS - not then, and not now. I guess he was so twitterpated I didn’t drive him off.
Twitterpated:
colloquial (originally and chiefly North American).
1942 P. Pearce et al. Bambi (transcribed from film) [Thumper] Why are they [sc. the birds] acting that way?.. [Friend Owl] They’re twitterpated… Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime.
My friend was voted Most Likely To Succeed and Most Likely to Have Straight A’s – and chose the latter (you could,only be one) so my chance to be superlative was gone as I was #2 for that.
They are a horrible tradition, especially in small town schools. Glad they are not as widespread as before.
In my school days, only the popular kids were Most anything, except for Most Studious, who would always be a nerd and the obvious class SMAK. (I guess smak was an abbreviation for Smart Kid?)
Even in my kids’ yearbooks, nothing has really changed. Popular kids have lots of photos in the book (my son) and kids who are uncool, quiet, unnoticed, unpopular, etc…have no pics in the yearbook, apart from their school pic and maybe the club or two they are in.
Guess who had only one pic a year in the yearbook? Me!
I would have been most overlooked, if only they hadn’t overlooked that award. I made the mistake of attending a reunion gathering a few years ago, and the guy who had been voted friendliest made it clear that he had no idea who I was (even though he dated my high school best friend for months and interacted with me a lot).
I went to a relatively small catholic high school (graduating class of about 110), and about 30 of those kids were given superlatives in the yearbook. I was not one of them, even though I felt like I was well liked and middle of the pack in terms of popularity. I remember feeling a little hurt by it at the time.
My daughter goes to a large public school (graduating class of about 400). Her school does not award superlatives, and for that I am thankful. No one needs to be reminded that they are not the MOST (fill-in-the-blank). High school is hard enough!
Interesting that so many schools didn’t do them. At least most of us thought they were fun - and I was definitely not among the “cool kids.” I spent most of my extra time at the barn riding and showing horses. I don’t think I was disliked either, except by a couple - to this date I still don’t know what I did to offend them(!).
I possibly got my reward from being on our school’s Quiz Bowl team senior year or maybe it was sheer grades and being willing to speak up in class.
My hs graduating class had 10 - we all were labeled “the one with the highest intellect in the room but doesn’t know it” -
We were all academic nerds who read Shakespeare and Russian literature for fun. We were able to create our own classes and Woody Allen’s Love and Death was newly out, which we all loved, so we created a Russian literature class. We also created a Sunday Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle class, where we would work on the Sunday puzzles on Monday.
I loved my senior year, it made up for the dismal 3 years prior at “traditional” school. I own being an intellectual nerd.
In my first college, I was pretty miserable but was in a friendly dorm of sporty-nerdy girls who talked me into joining rec teams like volleyball and something called, I think, fistball which was volleyball with weird rules. Anyhow, I was a very non-team sports, uncoordinated person, but this was my only social life, so I got into it.
At the rec league banquet, I was awarded “Most Improved Athlete.” SOO PROUD!
My graduating class had 555 students. We had them but they were called something else. I didn’t receive one. But my best friend and I were budding journalists with wickedly sarcastic humor and SOMEHOW we got our advisor to let us out out a couple page spread in the school newspaper of fake ones making fun of the process (but not of any particular student). Because it was true that the ones chosen were either for the most smart or popular or were kind of insulting. I still have it somewhere…
I found the page in my yearbook and edited my post above to include it. I think the body caricature is hilarious as I was probably included for MC-ing our senior variety show where I also told a children’s story—in my granny nightgown.
My high school didn’t have awards official or unofficial. While not as cool as JustaMom’s school, I was part of a group that lobbied to have a course in British history. Most of that group went on to take the first AP Euro class our school offered. Our school did a lot of experimental things even though on the surface it appeared quite stodgy.
My oldest was voted “Most likely to be a rocket scientist”. I was amazed that in a class of 600+ he was actually well known enough to have been noticed.
