Honor roll

The white sash says Chris made the honor roll, but the slack-jawed stare says so much more.

“	No solamente con ellos, pero con mis puntos de HONOR ROLL. ¡Bueño!	”
Ricardo Weston Chandler

“	HONOR ROLL MY ASS	”
Vivian Gee, Audiobooks

Chris's presence on the honor roll in high school is something he often brings up as evidence of his intelligence. Despite his insistence to the contrary, Chris's past behavior and obvious gullibility, poor communication and self-delusion cast doubt on this claim.

Where Chris has claimed Honor Roll status

Chris has trumpeted his honor-roll status in a number of his documents and videos.

• In Sub-Episode 1, Chris drops the honor-roll line in a post-script to his unsolicited follow-up email to Hanna. Because the girl who just trolled your heart down to 15% will flip for you if you're on the honor roll.
• In his e-mails to Shigeru Miyamoto, he apparently thought making the honor roll would impress a world-renowned game designer.
• Likewise, he mentioned the honor roll early in his e-mail exchanges with Blanca.
• The honor roll gets a shout-out in the lyrics to "A-U-T-I-S-M" by Christian and the Hedgehog Boys.
• Chris's Wikipedia biography prominently mentioned the honor roll.
• In his Asperger's rant, Chris cited making the honor roll as one of many ways in which he overcame the obstacles presented by his autism.
• In his first public plea for understanding on YouTube, Chris mentioned the honor roll in passing.
• In CWC Update 29 July 2009, he bragged about his "honor roll points" as one of the many qualities that apparently set him apart from Liquid Chris.
• In response, Liquid Chris picked up the honor-roll catchphrase himself, using it in one of their arguments over the phone.

Chris made the honor roll?

In Chris's graduation pictures from both high school and college, he is wearing a sash that generally indicates graduating with honors. This only means so much without additional context, though. Depending on his school's standards for who winds up on the honor roll, it may not represent that impressive an achievement, especially if Chris was able to rack up the required grade point average with remedial course work instead of normal classes. In some schools, the only requirement is a minimum GPA, so anyone with a GPA of, say, 3.5, is on the honor roll, even if every single course was a remedial course.

On the other hand, it's not completely out of the question to consider that Chris might have been able to get decent grades in school. His emotional and social issues have always made judging his actual intelligence a little tricky.

Chris's basic cognitive functions work fine, as the 2004 psychiatric survey confirmed, and in some respects he seems to be no less intellectually capable than many ordinary people. He has a reasonable facility with computers and technology, for instance. At the same time, his laziness, naïveté, egotism and raging hormones have obviously led him to ever-increasing depths of self-destructively foolish behavior. The Miyamoto saga offers an interesting example of this contrast: Chris was bright enough to eventually work out that the e-mails he received from "Miyamoto" came from an easily-spoofed domain...but then if he weren't so blinded by his ego, he would never have believed that Nintendo was interested in his shitty knockoff character in the first place.

So, is Chris too stupid to have made the honor roll? Maybe. Is Chris too gullible, arrogant, and led about by his duck to function in real life? Definitely.

Sadly, according to Mailbag 19, Chris's report card papers are said to be locked away beyond his reach (which could mean a number of things - they could be locked away, buried under the piles of shit that litter his house or he doesn't have them anymore and he doesn't want to reveal that to others), we may never know the truth until something finally snaps and he's able to get them.

See also

• Manchester High School
• Slow-in-the-minds