Showoff — Schoolgirl Goes 13 Years Without Missing a Day

Hawaii high school student Ciara Cetraro went all 13 years of school without missing a day. Obviously, this is rarer in Hawaii where skipping school means surfing or hanging out at the beach rather than standing knee-deep in snow.

Ciara wasn't going for some huge cash prize or national fame, she says "It's always been a personal choice", though I bet her parents wouldn't be too happy if she decided it wasn't her first choice. Apparently, her older brother did the exact same thing. That sounds more like parental expectations than personal willpower.

Apparently she was never sick either. I guess it isn't easy to get a cold when it's always hot outside, but she must have been badly sick at least a few times in her life. Imagine having the flu or a bad fever and being forced by a "hard habit to break" to continue going to school regardless. No family vacation overlapped her overly-important perfect attendance -- no doubt planned that way by her parents. Even if one of her family members died during that 13-year period, Ciara wasn't going to miss one minute of class. Not even kindergarten.

Even after all this hard work and sacrifice, did it actually matter that much? According to studies, missing over 10% of school days affects your grade. But can a few days a quarter really have an impact?

We're talking about the American public school system, where you read a short story in English class then spend the rest of the week watching the full-length movie based off of it. These are classes where when students don't pay attention to lessons (which is all the time), the teachers do the problems over and over in class, and if you did pay attention you just wasted another week. If Ciara was such an over-achiever, she could have easily missed much more school without a visible change in GPA.

Duh!