Senior Awards Ceremony

I am really behind journaling the past few weeks because I have been very busy. Here is a start - but there is lots more coming until I am caught up. It's that busy time of year as I work in the yard, graduation and parties -- it's been crazy. I am pausing to get a few words down in my journal.

On Thursday May 17th, I received a call from the school inviting me to an awards ceremony on Friday, May 18th. They indicated that Brady was going to receive an award and that I should come.

I had to cancel my work schedule so that I could attend. My customers were great and let me have a day off so that I could attend.

I found out that only 15 parents were invited to the Senior assembly on the last day of school.

 Brady and 14 other students were awarded their gold and blue cords and a certificate for the "Highest Honors G.P.A.". This was given to the students who had a 4.1 GPA or higher.

Brady was able to wear the gold and blue cord over his robe during graduation.

MHS senior class is amazing. 135 students out of 340 total had a 3.5 or more GPA. Woo Hoo!

Meridian High School is a great school!!

 They didn't give out awards to the remaining students who received cords - they had to pick them up at the office and their parents were not invited to the assembly ceremony:

The 4.0 to 4.09 students received 2 Gold cords to wear during graduation on their robes.

3.5 to 3.9 GPA received 2 Blue cords to wear on their robes.

Here is a look at Brady's high school transcript - All "A". Yes, I am one proud Mom!

 Brady ranked 10th out of 340 students.

 This is the grades from the last semester that is missing from the transcript above.

I also wanted to share Brady's Senior Project Oral Presentation grade. Perfect score! Only 4 people from the senior class received a perfect score!

Brady's senior project was about Internet copy right. He came up with his own way to fix this issue. Normally the student would give detail on how the law / process was fixed - but this issue is still a growing problem on the Internet.

When Brady told the judges that the solution was "His" idea they were amazed and impressed. One judge wrote down his name to remember him when Brady becomes famous and rich. The other judge shook his hand a couple of times - to say that they once shook his hand when he was in school. Another judge gave him a website address and recommended that Brady take his presentation to a national level.

I am so proud of Brady and am hopeful of a wonderful future for this young man.

Also during the assembly their Principal, Mr. Stands did a skit dressed up like Nacho Libre a Jack Black character: He was in total character, dressed in a wresling suit with boxers, a cape, and big hair.

Oh my goodness! It was so funny! I was laughing so hard that tears were leaking from my eyes. Mr. Stands is quite a character and the kids love him. At the end of the skit he sang them a song - in the Nacho Libre accent. It was great! I wish I had a picture of him as Nacho Libre (hopefully I can snag it from one of Brady's friends who took it with his phone).

Also during the assembly they showed a senior slide show. It was awful for Brady.

A few weeks earlier Brady told me to put together some pictures of his life to give to the group of people who were putting together the senior slide show. I put together around 10 and showed him.

It wasn't what he wanted - he wanted all the pictures I have taken during his high school years of everyone. I put together 4 CD's of pictures - around 400 pictures that Brady took to the team putting together the slide show.

The problem was that they used A BUNCH OF my pictures and a BUNCH of Brady. More then they should have used. It was embarrassing and bad. I felt sick to my stomach about the whole thing. I didn't understand why they did that. There weren't pictures of the cheerleaders, dance team, football team, basket ball team - none of the popular kids. I saw a post on Facebook about the slide show "apparently our senior class only has 20 people in it". It was a sad slide show and the people who put it together should be fired - so sad!

Here is what Brady said about the slide show:

Quick rant on the most embarrassing moment of my life

So, it’s the last day of high school, and it all starts with the senior video.

So, this guy named Evan (who I just happily unfriended on my Facebook this morning) was in charge of making the senior video. He was promoting a) turn in pictures to the broadcasting teachers box, or b) like the facebook page he made and he would go through all your pictures.

I don’t know if any of you remember my epic failure with Facebook; how I managed to get myself locked out through a series of unfortunate events because the universe hates me, but I had to create a new Facebook Account, and I have no pictures on it. So, I told my mom (because she keeps a very extensive blog about us) to go through and make a collection of anything and everything of me from elementary to high school since that is what Evan wanted. So, I ended up with a collection of around 400 pictures to give him.

Now, I heard that there were close to 1000 of them turned in, and 400 of them were mine. So, when I gave him all those pictures, in my mind, the common sense was “You have permission to use these pictures” not “Use all of these pictures”.

So, I’m sitting here, watching a bunch of pictures of me at the start… then a bunch more… then a bunch more… then a bunch more… It was a nightmare. Not only was I tired of looking at me, but the whole senior class of 2012 was as well. It was so bad that I believe people were cheering when I wasn’t on. Actually, it was Me, a guy named Cody, then my best friend Danielle, then people in the group I hang out with were probably aired the most. I even heard some people complain behind me saying it was an ode to Brady. I complained with them that Evan should not have used remotely close to the pictures he used. I was so frustrated that I drank my whole water bottle because I was so nerve wrecked.

We came up with a few conclusions. The people who made the senior video did not like popular kids and didn’t want to put a lot of them on. Evan was mad that people didn’t turn in pictures and were using us to punish them by sending a public message of, “look you should have turned in your pictures if you wanted to see other people.” And lastly, he was just to lazy to go and actually take 5-10 pictures out of the ones I gave him and just put them all on.

I also heard that the Broadcasting Teacher said to use ALL the pictures that were turned in, which she needs to be shot if she did because that is not why I gave them all those pictures. Then it was also dumb because there were 3 or 4 full songs worth of wrestling pictures, which all looked the same, and featured juniors around a third of the time. When a song ended, people were thinking that the montage was over, then another song would start up with another 200 pictures of wrestling and you could hear the loudest moan through the congregation. When it was over, our class was actually cheering and clapping to not have to suffer through that anymore.

Afterwards, we had a senior picnic, and I did not want to be there. They were also selling the senior video there. I think only my friend Kara bout one. She thinks that if you take out all the wrestling, it would pretty much just be high school memories centered around us. No one wanted one, not even me. I was ashamed to show my face, so I just laid there with my face planted into the ground saying, “Burn them!"