When it comes to ups and downs of her high school experience, Brittany Tipton knows where to lay both credit and blame.
“Perfectionism … the toll it took on me,” Tipton lamented, shaking a head of red curls as she walked with her parents to the Knoxville Convention Center for a banquet where she was to be honored with other top achievers from across the region. “I’ve always been the sort of person who has to give 120 percent — if I don’t, I feel like I’ve failed myself.”
For all the mental anguish, Tipton feels good about the benefits perfectionism has brought her, like being a valedictorian of her Gibbs High School class and getting an early start at the University of Tennessee, where she is already enrolled this semester.
To celebrate, she and her parents made a point of attending the News Sentinel’s Academic Achievers banquet Thursday evening, an event held every year since 1985.
This year she and 313 other students from 63 public and private schools across East Tennessee earned the right to be recognized by being in the top five for grades in their school classes.
Close to 1,000 people attended Thursday’s event, which was sponsored by Edamerica and featured keynote speaker Thom Mason, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and president and CEO of UT-Battelle LLC.
Mason urged the students to take up the challenge of reducing the U.S. dependence on nonrenewable or foreign-produced energy sources. Failing that, he suggested the students put their efforts into some other comparably complex problem.
“If it’s sufficiently complicated, I can guarantee it will be interesting and you will learn from it,” Mason said, adding that he couldn’t guarantee the same for trivial or easy pursuits.
Besides perfectionism, students at the banquet shared stories of other motivators and obstacles in their quest for good grades in high school.
Brittany Kirkland of Tellico Plains High decided she wanted to be one of the top in her high school class back in middle school, when her parents tantalized her with the promise of buying her a new car if she made straight A’s from seventh grade through her junior year of high school.
Kirkland threw herself into making that goal a reality and developed a taste for making good grades in the process, studying late at night and on Sundays, as she tried to work around her schedule of playing three varsity sports, being editor of the yearbook and attending church with her family. She didn’t quite make it — she made a B in one biology class — but her parents decided that a close-enough achievement deserved a close-enough present.
“They got me a used car … a Mustang,” Kirkland said, smiling. “I didn’t complain.”
Jessie Pounds is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.
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