I avoided my high school reunions until the 25-year reunion. Then, my BFF from 7th grade (to the present) wanted me to go and we’d hang out and spend time together.
I should have just gone to visit her instead.
I’d forgotten how few people I really liked and enjoyed being around. I was supremely uncomfortable. I was not interested in anyone’s approval of my life so far, nor was I terribly interested in anyone else’s life. These were not people I’d specifically chosen to surround myself with; they were just people I went to high school with.
I also have a ton more self-awareness and finally picked up on body language from other people and realized how many people dislike me as much as I dislike them. I found myself asking why the hell I’d gone to the trouble and expense to attend the thing when most of us weren’t really all that interested in each other anyway. It was still the exact same competition for coolness and nobody had really changed. We all fell straight back into the same social roles we’d all had in high school.
I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. There doesn’t seem to be much point. I *would *attend a reunion of a group of people I’d hand-picked to be in my life, if I’m still in touch with most of them and if I miss them and it seems we all still like each other. But a high school reunion? No.
I attended my 10 year hs reunion because I happened to be in town the weekend they held it. I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to cross the country to attend, but since I was there for a family wedding, I figured why not? It was ok. On balance, I enjoyed seeing a few of the people I’d lost touch with and it was nice to catch up with who everyone had become. But one was enough. I’ve not had any urge to attend subsequent reunions.
I’ve never gone to a college reunion, although I have gotten together with my sorority sisters a few times over the years in a sort of informal reunion.
The people I’ve seen the most over the years, though, were my elementary school classmates. We were a very close group and most of us still had family in the area, so we’d have a get together every Christmas when most of us were at home visiting family.
I went to my HS 9 anna half year reunion (really) and a combined reunion of about 5 classes - it was 41 years for me. Both times, the music was so gawd-awful loud, conversation was impossible. At the second one, hardly anyone was there from my year anyway, but the food was decent.
I’ll never bother again. I’m still in touch with 2 of my closest friends. No one else cared enough to write or call after I ran away and joined the navy, so no big loss. Now, I would go back to a reunion of my first squadron, but it’ll never happen. Oh well…
I’ve been to most of mine, although they’ve been spotty. Mostly enjoyed them, but could do without the loud music. I don’t have a lot of strong feelings positive or negative, but I understand why a lot of people don’t care for them.
One interesting thing about my high school’s reunions, though: There’s a stereotype that reunions are put together by the cool kids mainly for other cool kids so they can kick back and brag about how great their lives have been.
My high school reunions were planned by regular old *not-popular-at-all people, and it was the cool kids in general who opted not to come.
*Yes, I was one of that group, but I was not a planner.
I actually enjoyed high school (at least as much as people “enjoy” it) so I liked going to my 5,10 and 20 year reunions.
My college had reunions, but I was never the least bit interested in going to them. Although we did have a big football event in NYC a while back where alumni came in from all around. And I used to go to the annual “big game” alumni weekend. But my connection is more with my fraternity brothers. Probably because I thought most of my classmates were interchangeable douches.
I do find reunions unsettling though. That is to say, the fact that I don’t REALLY know the people at the reunions. The people I knew were teenagers, not middle-aged parents doing…whatever it is they do for a living.
Also, sometimes there’s a reason you haven’t talked to someone in ten years.
I do this all the time. I’d rather stay home than go to just about any social gathering, even though if I get there I’ll have a decent to great time. My initial reaction to any social event is always to not want to go. I think it’s because I don’t care for changes of plan. I like doing my own thing, so I plan on doing my own thing, and then other people ruin everything by putting their social events right in the middle of it!
I went to my 20 year high school reunion, mostly because I wanted to see where everyone ended up. I mean, I hadn’t interacted with any of them in 20 years. No one I stayed in contact with went. (It was a small town/school and most of us gtfo.) It was interesting. I spent more time talking to the people I rarely spoke to in school than I did to the people who used to be in my circle then.
Yes, and yes! I am a control freak and that comes to my free time especially. I don’t like the feeling of having to do anything I didn’t initiate. I like the sentiment behind a surprise but don’t like surprises and have this knee-jerk critical reaction to them. :o
I don’t know… I went to my 10th high school reunion and it was a surprising amount of fun. But we were all somewhere between 27-28 at the time, so none of us were particularly successful and we were all just barely out of being entry-level in our careers. My 25th is coming up fairly soon, and I’m really apprehensive. Mostly because I haven’t really kept up with any of them, save by Facebook, and I just have a feeling that it’ll be more awkward, because you’ll have the guys who were very ambitious, or whose family money eventually won out, vs. the guys who were less successful (who bothered to show up at all). I just have a feeling it’ll be more of a dick-measuring contest than the earlier reunion.
College ones seem idiotic to me, as I went to a school of 42,000 students when I was there, and I’ve kept up / renewed ties to the ones I cared about, and the ones I didn’t, I’m not interested in going 200 miles to see. With such a big class, there wasn’t any real class identity like there was in high school.
It wasn’t a reunion but I went to a gathering of people in Scotland who had gone to my school. And it was not a good experience. I didn’t know any of them. My time at the school didn’t cross with anyone else’s. I didn’t have anything in common - apart from the school - with any of them.
I haven’t been to any reunions.
Firstly, I live several states away from where I went to school and don’t think it is worth the travel.
Secondly and the main reason, I doubt anyone cares to know what happened to me. I am not hard to find on social media and no one has reached out to contact me. The few people I did friend from school was because I did the friend requesting, and none of them has resulted in any new bonds forming or even any lengthy catch-up conversations.
They used to, but then I went to my college 10 year and it was fun.
I guess I’ve seen too many movies and thought it was going to be a giant dick-measuring contest. Nope. Everybody had a good time, and I got to see people face-to-face who I’d only had phone and Facebook interactions with in a long time. I’m definitely going to the next one.
But that was college. I liked the people I went to school with and keep in touch with a lot of them. Since we all live around the country, it was basically an excuse to meet in the same place and drink together. High school doesn’t unsettle me; I just don’t want to go because I don’t care.
I like people, except the assholes. Funny how most people agree with me. When I went to my high school reunion only one of those types showed up. The rest of us who either never were jerks or grew out of it didn’t have much time for him, he obviously was uncomfortable, and left early.
Same thing happens when my college track team gets together. The mean and/or creepy people either don’t show up or are quietly made not to feel welcome because we’re too busy talking to the people who were nice.
As for the pissing contest on how our lives have turned out? Well, one of the nice things about coming from a modest background is we don’t get into that. Still alive? Still pleasant to be around? Good on ya.
While I’ve never had any interest in attending a high school reunion, a reunion of my ChemE college or grad school is different. Those schoolmates were (1) adults with personalities that weren’t still in flux as in high school, and (2) actually interested in the things I’m interested in. That’s why I went to those schools, after all.
Bumping into a classmate from college is always interesting, because I get to learn about interesting jobs that I didn’t end up doing. I’ve learned stuff about the chemistry of manufacturing semiconductors, patent law, and how dog food is formulated. It’d kinda be like networking at a professional meeting, but without the awkwardness of not knowing who people are.
Went to the 10 and 20 yr High School reunions, and don’t plan to go to any more. As mentioned upthread, the people I want to continue contact with, I am in contact with them, and the rest I have no reason to connect with them any more. We’ve all moved-on.
That said, with similar sentiment as expressed upthread, I can do without the social engagements, especially where the time will be dominated by small talk. I cannot stand small talk any more. Even if another reunion were on the horizon, my avoidance of small talk situations and social events would decide for me.
I went to my first HS reunion. It was okay. I would have liked to go to the 50th, but it was a closed affair. I made enough noise to get an invite and then discovered that it would cost $450 for my wife and me and I figured FTS.
Why did I want to go? Well, I would have liked to know what they did in life, but I think that deep down what I really wanted was to implicitly say to them, “You guys all thought I was a loser, but see how I turned out.” But it wasn’t worth $450 to say that.
The 90% of my classmates whose conversation bored me to tears 30 years ago… still bore me to tears.
The other 10%, if we run into each other and both have time, we go to a cafeteria and catch up. Or, in one memorable occasion, stand in a corner with snow up to our knees for three hours and catch up. What can I say, we were going in opposite directions.
I had a blast. I was a little concerned - and I had a lot of “why am I doing this”??? as I got ready, especially after I saw a list of the other attendees – no close friends and I only recognized the names of about 20% of the other attendees ( my HS class had a little over a 1000 people and about 100 went to this reunion.)
The people that held a lot of resentment, the people that had moved on and didn’t want to look back, and the people that just weren’t comfortable with that type of gathering are the ones that didn’t go. Everyone that was there really wanted to be there, you pretended to remember the 80% of the people you didn’t remember and the ones who you actually sort of remembered suddenly became your long lost best friends.
Naw. Because every time I’ve met someone who I thought was a bit of a jerk in high school, they’ve grown up to be quite nice. So a reunion sounds like it would be fun. I guess it would suck to tell them that I’m nowhere near the “most likely to succeed,” but I think I could manage it.
That said, I’ve not attended one for other reasons. Well, I’ve attended family reunions, where you don’t know the people there anyways.
That was one thing I was concerned about at my 10 year. I had just graduated business school and landed a high paying job with a prestigious management consultancy in Manhattan. But I didn’t want to come across as “I just graduated business school and landed a high paying job with a prestigious management consultancy in Manhattan” guy. But our class was diverse enough and close enough to NYC that it’s not that much of an oddity.