Don't keep score everyone is a winner... what everyone is a whiner, yes everyone is a whiner! Stop it, if you try harder and work harder you should win!

So I went to my daughters science fair at her school last week. The whole 6th grade is required to participate, which means that no one, no one does it because they want to, they do it because they have to. Please excuse the following rant... You know when I was a kid you participated in things because you wanted to and for me I wanted to because I wanted to do a good job and try my best to win. Which brings me to my second point about just how ridiculous this science fair was, the following are all approximate numbers for the event; 150 entries, 40 first place ribbons, 50 second place ribbons, 40 third place ribbons, 20 participant ribbons. OK there are 6 classes in the sixth grade in this school, I could see if one were to insist breaking them into groups by class or by some scientific content category, neither of which was done, but yet there were 40 FIRST PLACE RIBBONS!!!??? What is that about, I think our teachers may need some more education, I think they don't understand the definition of "FIRST" place. By definition that is necessarily limited to ONE!

I feel bad for the 10 or so of the students who really put in a lot of work and effort and time. Their ribbons looked very much like the ones for the 'participant', who should have received an F, as they were terrible (sorry if that offends you). At some point you've got to start keeping score in Science fairs, soccer, etc. because they will in life!