Ah, competitive high schools. People at my school were pretty intense about grades, and some people in my graduating class got really pissed that the salutatorian was someone who had transferred to our school as a sophomore and had lots of 99s on his transcript from the much easier school he attended as a freshman. There wasn't much separating the top students in terms of averages - I had a 97 average and finished 5th in my class, and one of my friends had a 93.6 (I think) and was outside of the top 25 (they only ranked the top 10%)- and I think the median average was 90. Even though all of our classes showed up on our transcripts as honors-level courses, there wasn't any numerical weighting - I think they started multiplying grades in AP classes by 1.1 the year after I graduated, and even though there was no rational reason for that to bother me, I was upset that I didn't get that.
"It's so competitive that when my brother was a senior (he's a freshman in college now), he saw students wearing shirts from colleges they weren't interested in to throw people off."
That's scary, yet absurdly brilliant at the same time.
"Be prepared, because we'll probably pause every few seconds if Adam and/or Anthony make really cute faces."
Heh, I can totally see myself doing that when I get the DVD. "Ooh, gotta pause for a second to admire Adam's eyelashes! Oh, wait, they look pretty in this shot, too. Hey, how come it took me 5 hours to watch a 135-minute movie?"
I don't think I ever really finish unpacking. When I moved out of my dorm at the end of last year, a couple of things were still in the boxes I brought them in on move-in day.
"There was this one time an alarm went off - it was in the middle of '24.' That's just wrong. Everyone knows everyone was watching '24' at that time."
--NYU student quoted in the Washington Square News about students ignoring the frequent fire alarms in dorms