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Best In Class By Margaret Talbot

723 Words3 Pages

In today’s modern world, many students in high school are striving to be the best, and sometimes to get there, students compete against each other which than of course brings on the pressure and stress of not only keeping up with classes but making it to the top of the class and becoming valedictorian. They will do anything to reach the top, sometimes even cheating to surpass fellow students. Although Margaret Talbot acknowledges the other arguments that becoming a valedictorian is great and should not be gotten rid of in her article “Best in Class”, she conveys the message that competition for valedictorian is unnecessary through her use of diction and testimonies. Talbot uses strong diction to show the reader that the competition for valedictorian …show more content…

By interviewing many past students, Talbot adds to her credibility because the testimonies of these people shows that she did her research before writing this article. For example, she interviewed Brian Delekta who “...narrowly missed having the highest GPA in his class…” to which he “... sued his school district” (226). Many of the students that Talbot interviewed like Delekta also sued their schools and the district all because they did not become valedictorian or the sole valedictorian. What the students do not realize that while becoming valedictorian in high school is a huge deal, once in college and even past that when working at a job, no one else cares if you were or were not valedictorian. Talbot also uses testimonies to appeal to the reader especially those about to go into college in a year or two. Many students who were close to becoming valedictorian, or those who were valedictorian like Wu go on to prestigious schools like Harvard. In her interview with Talbot, Wu said, “Nobody in college cares about your having been valedictorian” which goes to show that all this competition for valedictorian is really all for nothing (227). All of these testimonies from former high school students appeals to students in high school right now because some of them are also competing for valedictorian and understand the amount of pressure these previous students have

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