A question of honor

I've always been kind of annoyed by honors societies. I know I shouldn't complain that someone thinks I am worth honoring, but it really is quite silly. It's like, you do all this hard work throughout the school year (or years, as it may be), and someone thinks that's great, so they put you on some special list based on a numerical representation of your achievements, and then...

Then they start asking for stuff.

Money, usually. You're so darn special they want to take even more moolah from you before they can tell everyone else how special you are. The honors society I was just inducted into said it was for a certificate and that little yellow tassel you get to wear at graduation. Those are durn expensive pieces of paper and string if you ask me. In high school, we also had to do community service and go to all sorts of boring honors students meetings and events that took all the "fun" out of "function."

I say it's a conspiracy! It's really not about you at all. They just call it an honor society so prestigious students will be sucked into it thinking "finally, some reward for the blood sweat and tears that went into my education!" Oh no no no. If they really wanted to honor you, THEY'D be giving YOU money. They would leave you to your studies rather than demanding your presence at those truly awful functions (but then, I just hate that sort of thing - more on that soon when I rant about becoming a recluse).

One of my professors pointed out that the honor of honors societies is being selected as a role model. This makes some sense to me and explains the community service requirement we had in high school. Yet I LOL inside thinking of what the next crop of freshies will look like if they truly follow my lead.

They will paint their nails neon and wear jewelry made of zippers. They will wage Nerf warfare in footie pajamas and wear Pikachu slippers to work. They will stay up all night drinking coffee and watching Disney movies. They will climb buildings. They will occasionally get drunk in the shadow of the castle, and they will find this funny. They will fall asleep in places the administration does not want them to fall asleep. They will befriend kids who put toilets on roofs, or worse yet (in the administration's eyes), they will put toilets on roofs themselves. They will have no idea how to dance but they will do it anyway, and they will do so to songs like "Miami Trick" because they think it's funny.

In short, they'll be pretty much like any normal college student should be, and I have no problem setting that standard for them. There's more to life than sitting in the library all day. In the end it's not a grade point average that makes people valuable; it's the collection of experiences that comprise their lives and the relationships through which they change others and are changed. Those are things you can't quantify, and to reward them with a yellow tassel would be to belittle something grand.