Our counselor was a jerk, moron, etc...the word I chose got censored. He threatened to break my brother's nose and tried to keep me from getting scholarships, and I'm pretty sure he and the principal fixed the grades to keep me from getting salutatorian. Our administration was a joke. We were a town of about 1200 people, and the next town over (40 miles away) was the only other one in our district, but their population was more like 10-15 thousand. MUCH bigger. They tended to send any good teachers to the bigger town and give us the awful ones.
When I was going into 7th grade, my brother took me to the school to get our schedules and our lockers a couple of weeks before school started. He was going to show me where all of my classes were. But the schedules weren't completely ready yet...they had them, but they were subject to change. And my brother was looking at the 8th grade schedules, and the counselor told him those weren't done yet, so he'd better keep everything to himself because if he heard anyone say he told them this class was offered at this time, he'd break his nose. Then he tried to play it off as a joke when my mom went to the school and confronted him about it.
My senior year, he gave me the wrong dates to turn in a few scholarship applications so I'd miss the deadline. His secretary was a good friend of ours, and she called me, wondering where my Walmart application was, because the deadline was that day, and mine wasn't in there. We ended up running to walmart that afternoon to turn in my application...the counselor made everyone turn the forms into him and HE'D turn them in for us. Then when Walmart called to ask about me for their scholarship, he told them I didn't deserve it, because I hadn't gone through his special selection process. He wasn't turning in all the applications. He was only turning in the ones he wanted. (He did the same thing with an academic summer program for my brother a few years before, but in that case, he was out for a few weeks and the substitute sent in all the applications and my brother ended up getting in, and the counselor was livid because he hadn't intended to send in my brother's application.) He also told the D.A.R.E. officers that they couldn't award me their scholarship because I had enough. They gave it to me anyway. But he was actively trying to keep me from getting scholarships.
Then with the grades...sorry, this will be long. The University has always offered the top two kids in the senior class at each school a tuition and fees scholarship for 4 years as a recruitment technique. It works....a lot of kids end up going there just because of that scholarship. So I was number two for a long time. The top three of us were all in physics and advanced math, and the number 3 and I both had advanced languages as well. I was 3rd year German, he was 3rd year Spanish. Those grades were weighted. BUT, he had fewer classes. He took FTA (Future teachers of America) which was basically him being a helper for a teacher for one hour each day. You didn't actually get a grade for that...or it didn't count towards your GPA anyway. The scholarship was always awarded at the Semester break. Report card day came, and there was all this gossip about there being a computer glitch that messed up some of the grades and switched some GPAs around. I was panicking, because I couldn't afford to lose that scholarship. I went in to talk to the counselor's secretary. It turned out this "computer glitch" had only affected two students. Me, and #3...it switched our GPAs, but they got it fixed. I don't know who noticed it...probably one of the secretaries. My mom cleaned for the Principal's secretary, and the counselor's had been a family friend since before I was born. But they fixed it. And the family friend told me in confidence that my GPA was high enough that unless I really screwed up, Sean couldn't pass me. Fast forward to 3rd quarter. That's when the Valedictorian and Salutatorian are named. We get our report cards, and suddenly I'm ranked #3. But I had 3 A+s and 4 As...I hadn't screwed up, so how was I now number 3? My locker was next to Sean's...same last initial. No one ever locked their lockers because there wasn't enough time to do the combination and get to your next class on time. So I saw Sean put his report card in his locker, and I waited until he left, and looked at it. He had the exact same grades that I did, but one less A+ because his FTA grade didn't count. I looked at his GPA....we had 2 GPA scales, both listed on the report card. The standard 4.0 scale and also a 5.0 scale. My 4.0 GPA went up, but the 5.0 went down somehow, which how can it with straight As?? And Sean's had both gone up. My mom went in to question my GPA going down, and that's when the secretary discovered that my advanced classes had not been weighted, and Sean's had. Also, while my mom was in the office, she overheard a teacher (not my teacher) saying "I don't KNOW why. I was told to give her a C, so that's what I gave her." so we KNOW grades were being fixed, and we could see my GPA wasn't correct, but it never got corrected. Then last quarter, I was back at #2, but Sean had already been named Salutatorian. So we're pretty sure they rigged it so I wouldn't get that honor at least. It hadn't worked to keep me from getting the scholarship, but the year before, my brother had been Salutatorian of HIS class, and the counselor and principal had decided that since there were several kids in his class with a high GPA, they wanted to have co-salutatorians. Everyone with a GPA of like 3.85 or higher would be salutatorian. My mom fought it, because she said my brother had worked hard and had earned that honor. They had never done Co-salutatorians before....why now. Why specifically this class? So they ended up not doing it. So we think that them keeping me from Salutatorian was their way of revenge for that. And then Sean and Johan (pronounced John) went to them and asked if I could be a Co-salutatorian because I had worked hard, and they thought I had earned it. The principal and counselor refused. So instead, they both mentioned me in their speeches so people would know I was up there and I was being honored, even if the school wouldn't give me the honor I was supposed to have. I don't think that Sean and Johan knew that they had fixed the grades, as it was never "proven" and never corrected. But they knew I worked hard, and I HAD ended up passing Sean back in the last quarter, so SHOULD have been Salutatorian. There was also some controversy in town because a week before graduation, the valedictorian was arrested for selling pot....to the salutatorian. And there were people who felt Sean and Johan should be stripped of the titles and I should be Valedictorian, but there was no way the school was going to let that happen when they had worked so hard to keep me from getting an honor. But I thought it was sweet that they mentioned me in their speeches.
I think these dresses are too mature for Plato's Closet, so I guess I am left with Mercari and Poshmark. I don't know much about them. Poshmark takes 20% commission and they encourage haggling. I might just donate them. 
