By Min Park
News Reporter
The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents awarded Daniel Konviser the Blumer’s Book Award for academic excellence on Oct. 26.
Konviser received the award along with fellow senior David Chu. Both Chu and Konviser, who share the highest weighted grade point average (GPA) in the class of 2016, were selected by their teachers and guidance counselors for the award.
Konviser was pleasantly surprised when he was recognized for his outstanding academic excellence alongside Chu, his classmate and friend.
“I was really happy,” Konviser said. “David Chu and I are really good friends, and we’re kind of like friendly rivals, sort of competing, but we never thought that we had the highest GPAs in the senior class.”
Konviser feels that much of his academic success can be attributed to taking a rigorous course load beginning sophomore year, during which he took only honors classes.
“In the end of ninth grade, you get a choice of which honors classes to take, and the teachers are always telling you, ‘Don’t take all honors classes, don’t do it.’ But then I thought ‘Whatever, I’ll do all of them,’” he said.
Konviser advises underclassmen to prioritize academics above all else, including extracurricular activities like sports.
“I swim as well, but if I had a test on Friday that I haven’t studied for yet, and a ton of other homework due Friday, I’m not going to go to swim practice on Thursday,” he said.
Konviser believes that because he does not take his clubs or sports as seriously as school, he had an advantage over others in receiving this award.
“Our principal literally told us that it was based on weighted GPA, nothing else. Since I do those things [school clubs or sports] as hobbies, I do not put all my effort into them,” Konviser said.
Konviser’s father, Boris Konviser, is extremely proud of his son for being able to have this kind of achievement during his high school career.
“Daniel definitely deserved this award and I have no doubt about it,” Mr. Konviser said. “If he could receive this award combined with swimming, art, and piano, brazilian martial arts, and [with] all of this on top of academic studies at school and he could handle all of this, he definitely deserves it.”
Mr. Konviser explains that Konviser “didn’t want to be bored,” so he challenged himself by taking all honors and advanced placement courses from sophomore through senior year.
Mr. Konviser acknowledges that his son is happy about this achievement, although he always tries to be modest about all the academic work he does.
“I don’t think he worked specifically for this award, to be honest I think he didn’t even knew this award existed,” Mr. Konviser said. “He wasn’t working hard in school to achieve this, he was just doing whatever he enjoys doing and somehow in a lot of cases he got awarded for his hard work.
