I must be in a "Chatty" mood tonight...

As Sarah and I talked about going to a new school for high school, I would always tell her that these high school years will be some of the best years for her. She has so much potential...and it is up to her...the world is in her hands!

Well, my beautiful young daughter has quite a driven and perfectionist attitude...maybe a bit like me...and within the first week of school, she went through quite a Life lesson. Since my camera was not taking pictures of this incident, I thought about how I would put it on the blog. Yet this was a big enough incident to record as part of Sarah's life history.

Soooooooo....I'll try to write the short version since most of you reading this have already heard in detail :-)

Before Sarah even started her freshman year, she had an assignment. She had to read "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Pieces" After reading the books, she had to write a paper about what she thought was the three most important topics for each book to be turned in on her first day of school. (Sarah is in the IB program)

Sarah got the highest grade of all the incoming IB students...we were very proud of her!! Only to find out the next day that she was being called into the Director's office sometime over the next few days for cheating. Sarah was upset and so was I...and the rest of her family....

I had made several request from the school that Sarah not be spoken to until her father and I were present which was ignored....so Sarah had her conference and was told that when her paper was ran through a computer program that one paragraph came back as 3% similar to that of her very, very good girlfriend...she was on probation and was getting a Zero....(This happened on Friday before Labor Day)

Needless to say, I was furious about the handling of the situation....and by Tuesday morning (after Labor Day), her dad, Alisa's parent and myself were on our way to the school for a conference which was unscheduled but I managed to get the director to see the importance of it....

Soooo...long story short...the school doesn't think that she cheated and understands that the girls would have similar thoughts because of how close and all the talking that they do, but the school has to protect the ethics of IB to uphold original thinking....

Like I said, most of you know all the other things that took place and the attitude, but at the end of the day, Sarah had to learn that people do make mistakes that affect you...and she may never get an apology for the error, but she still has to keep her attitude in check because that person was one in authority...

(I haven't had my mama tiger claws come out in quite some time...but, boy, this was hard for me to swallow!!!!)

Soooo, Baby Girl, I hate that you had to learn this so early in your life and I wish that I could tell you that this won't happen again....but I'm afraid that it will. You are responsible for your actions....always choose to be the better person. Remember, you have to lay your head on your pillow at night, and be at peace with the decisions/actions that you made that day.