My son was just announced as a semi-finalist for the National Merit Scholorship.
Of the 1.5 million entrants representing 21,000 high schools in this academic competition, these two distinguished individuals are among approximately 16,000 students nationwide to achieve this honor. They entered the competition as high school juniors by taking the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen for program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. They are now qualified to compete for a share of 7,250 National Merit Scholarships, collectively worth more than $28 million, and advance to the Finalist standing. The Finalists will be announced in the spring.
"For the first time in school history, multiple students were named National Merit Semi-Finalists in the same year:
The first time in school history they had more than one.
I have some news about my own son, could start a thread but may as well hijack this one. He’s on his first ‘trip’ as an airline pilot, he’s completed 4 flights over two days so far. He did his first take off out of LAX climbing west into the sunset and realized he wants to do this as long as they’ll let him. 22 years old and an airline pilot, I still cannot believe it.
He’s smart but not Parrot level smart, he averaged a C grade in any class that wasn’t flying or math.
A lot of the people I know that I would consider “rich”, never really excelled at school, but were motivated and focused. Different paths for different people.
And it is obvious you did a good job raising him with good habits.
Several years ago we were driving through KC and saw a homeless camp. We had a discussion about it when the kids asked (I also worked in addiction at the time and helped with homelessness). Later that week my son and I went to a store with a Salvation Army bell ringer and he always liked to put money in the bucket. He asked me about where the money went and I told him it was for the homeless people we saw. He then told me to remind him next time we went to the store to get some of his own money out to give to them. I damn near busted out crying right there.
