Do you remember high school fondly?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I remember high school fondly.

I transferred from one Catholic high school in the near north Chicago suburbs to another after two years (between soph and jr year) and, while things weren’t terrible at the first school, they were way better at the second, both academically and socially. I had summer school at three other local schools during this time and participated in the musicals at an all-girls high school during those last two years. So, in a way, I attended six high schools. I had very good friends from a lot of them. I also had a job from as early as I could and, because I was under 16 years old, I needed a work permit from school and my parents. This meant I always had some money in my pocket which gave me some freedom that I think was important. I was (and remain) a poor student and didn’t follow the majority of my classmates to college immediately after HS, though I did go on to get my degree in engineering after some work and community college.

I wasn’t what you’d call popular but I definitely had a very rich social life. I’d go back in an instant if I could. Please, can I?

I feel badly that a lot of people here had such a difficult time. I don’t recall seeing the levels of bullying that have been reported in this thread but that’s not to say it wasn’t there.

62

Another class of 80 here!

It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t that great either. I had a good few friends, and I’m in contact with them again via facebook. I wasn’t physically harassed, although I got some verbal harassment until I figured out how to deal with them. No love life though, which I wanted badly.

If I went back in time with what I know now, I probably would do a lot better both socially and scholastically. I didn’t know about adhd back then, and knowing how to manage that would have made my scholastic situation much easier. And I know a bit more about how to interact with people, so that would be better.

There was one person in my class that was right next to me alphabetically, which meant she was in my homeroom for 3 of my 4 years. For some reason, the very first day of school, she decided that I was somehow a pariah. If I went back to that time with what I know now, I would enter homeroom every single day and give her a cheerful hello. Just to fuck with her.

63

I loved high school. I went to a large school (around 500 in my graduating class). I was involved in the music and theater departments. In a switch of the normal social order, in my senior year (1972) the “hippies” were actually in charge of things like the Student Council and the Honor Society instead of the jocks and cheerleaders. We had a friendly rivalry with them. We even had a Freaks vs. Rednecks basketball game as a fundraiser. I was a Freaks cheerleader. I still remember this: “we love wine, we love beer, but most of all we love to cheer, we love wine, we love cold duck, but most of all we love to…cheer!” I can’t imagine what our parents were thinking. :grinning:

With all the plays, concerts and fundraisers we put on, we had a lot of awesome adventures. I also loved to learn and made excellent grades. I even liked all my teachers. I wouldn’t want to do it again but I also wouldn’t change a thing.

Several of those folks are still my good friends so that in itself makes high school a great thing for me.

64

High school was a relief after the horror of middle school, but I still wouldn’t want to go back. I was neither popular nor bullied. I hung with a nerdy group but had plenty of friends there. It wasn’t a bad life; I just wasn’t a happy person.

I felt things so intensely at that age. I’ve accomplished more significant things since, but nothing has matched the thrill of getting my driver’s license. I love my husband more deeply than any of the guys I dated as a teenager, but I just don’t feel that manic, giddy intoxication of a pubescent crush. I don’t really miss it; it was kinda too much. And I certainly don’t miss the lows, which felt like the literal end of my world. Some of my memories from back then are more painful than similar things that have happened to me recently. It was like an emotional sunburn that took over a decade to heal. I’ll gladly surrender the beauty and energy of youth to not have to feel so tender again.

65

In New Zealand back in the 70s and 80s, the education system was still very much based on the UK’s of the same era, so forgive me my use of different terminology you may not know. You may be as confused by it as I am of your system.

My High School was a regional country school, so it catered to farmer’s kids and fisherman’s kids, or the local hospital staff’s kids (me) from a wide coastal area, all within a good 20km radius of it. It included Intermediate years, so ages ranged from 11 to 17, and the student population was 350 pupils in total, a steady number throughout my years there (1981 to 1987) though now the school is way smaller, only catering to around 150 pupils.

Being small, the school itself had limited resources (no metalwork, no theatre class, etc), limited scope, and a high churn in teachers, which made the whole experience very patchy and inconsistent. None of my teachers particularly stand out to me as being good at their job, they all just bumbled along as best they could, desperate to get out of there and go to a better school that paid more. The Principal was a bit of an ineffectual dope (I actually ran into him last year and we spoke as adults for the first time. He’s still a dope.) and the education I got was fine but unremarkable.

In the first few weeks at the school I met a couple of other kids who became my closest friends throughout, and we stuck close together for the next few year until we inevitably drifted apart. Those times I think of fondly and would happily live a whole life feeling like that again. Someone who I could just have fun with. I’ve rarely had that experience long-term since those days.

Academically I was a mediocre student, generally okay at most subjects. Even the ones I was good at I wasn’t really all that good at, but because I had an enthusiasm for art and writing, and a natural skill at grasping maths, I did okay, and was occasionally singled out. I won a couple of class prizes here and there, and I gained a reputation for being a bit of a cartoonist. But I also lost my Dad while I was there (he died when I was 14) and it affected me more than I realised at the time, so at the tail end I lost a lot of my energy, and had very little support or understanding from anyone who could actually provide some direction. Leaving High School I felt lost and adrift.

I look back on those years with mixed emotions. There were some anchors I miss, and some stupid uselessness I am well rid of. If I could do it over again, I would demand resources and guidance with more focus, and try to articulate my desires better. They’re supposed to help me find myself, but instead they didn’t seem to care about anything beyond fulfilling the curriculum.

66

Maybe sports was one of the reasons I liked high school. I’m not into sports, neither was the school. We didn’t have a football team, and our basketball team was miserable. There was a golf team.
They thought about starting a football team, and took reservations for season tickets to gauge interest. They sold like 8.
My graduating class had 1500 people in it. So the football team idea went bust very quickly.

67

That probably is being a normal adolescent. Most likely a lot more of your classmates were also still virgins than you may think – depending on the year, statistics seem to run about half.

I was a socially clueless kid and both elementary school and high school were pretty awful, though I never got physically bullied. College was a little better, but still had a lot of bad spots.

68

Is 1500 a typo?

69

Glad you asked! I thought my graduating class was big (766)* but 1500 is stupefying.

*c. 1968, biggest HS in my state

70

My first reaction is yes, I remember it very fondly. I was bright enough that I didn’t have to work too hard, and I had friends. I lived in a deadly dull little town so school actually provided interaction, entertainment, etc. But on second thought…my mom and I were fighting constantly, there was drama among my circle, and money was in short supply.

Some of my older friends told me that high school was good but college would be better. You move away, you aren’t under a parental thumb, etc. For me, high school was as “right” as it got. I did enjoy college but it didn’t live up to the hype of, say, “Animal House.”

Carly Simon got it right, though: these are the good old days. For one thing, we don’t have any other choice but to be where we are right now. Some of the present is pretty good. Some of the present isn’t so much. But I can’t choose to wake up in 1979. Someday I’ll probably look back on this and wish I could live it again—if my memory is selective enough. Instead of pining for something I don’t have, I’ve tried to learn to appreciate more what I do have…I may not have it tomorrow.

71

I would do it again if I had my current knowledge. I know enough now to hit the aquarium store for antibiotics and the drug store for mass doses of pepto-bismol to knock out the H. Pylori infection that was slowly stealing my life away. I also understand my mother’s narcissism and jealousy and wouldn’t waste any time or energy trying to get love and approval from a person incapable of giving it.

But do it again without that knowledge? Not for less than $500 million. And the money goes in trust, so I get it when I turn 21 the second time.

72

No. Certainly not.

73

Hee. Reminds me of one of our football cheers: “Rah Rah Ree. Kick ‘em in the knee. Rah Rah Rass . Kick em’ in the other knee.” I like yours better though. :grinning: Oh, another one was: “Blood makes the grass grow. Defense! Defense!”

74

I thought high school was an absolute scam. Most of the classes were easy, and girls were even easier in the 70’s. Drinking age was 18 so it was always easy to get booze because some senior would get it for you even if you were just a freshmonk. I could legally drink during most of my senior year. It was super cool going to bars and discos back then.

I was more of a bully buster than a bully. I terrorized more than my share of actual bullies but left most of the dorks alone. Speaking of dorks, I always felt they were dorks because they wanted to be. Come out of your shell for gawds sake. But I always was outgoing and assertive.

I thought gym class was the easiest A in the world and couldn’t understand why some people loathed it. It was 60 minutes of running around, BFD.

About 80% of the kids I went to hs with I had known since grade school. So even if I wasn’t friends with them I had built an equal librium.

I went to an odd school system where there were 2 separate schools (East and West) Separate buildings, sport teams, principals, etc., but they were right next to each other. There was a central hallway that took you from one school to another. And you could get assigned to classes in the other school. I went to East but had some classes in West. Strange, huh?

75

Re Coming Out Of Your Shell

IME if they could, they would have. The shell was usually a defense mechanism in response to early experiences and/or they just lacked social skills.

Re Gym Class

We’ve had threads on this. Here’s the latest Was PE class in school good or bad?

76

My high school was kind of like that. It had about 4500 students, so it was kind of split up into three schools. Students were assigned to one of these “villas”, each of which had its own office, principal, truant officer, the whole bit. Then there was a sort of “overprincipal” of the whole school. Each villa consisted of a complex of buildings where all of the core classes were taught. Other stuff like the foreign language and art departments had their own sets of buildings, separate from all of the villas. And students might have core classes in any of the villas.

Anyway, I had a blast in high school. The school had a planetarium and a real theater, both of which I worked in. Most of us rocker types gravitated towards the theater, doing all the behind the scenes stuff. I had a dual rocker/geek thing going, I guess, what with working in the planetarium as well. In fact, it was around the time I started working in the planetarium that I discovered my love of progressive rock…

77

Yeah, I had a good time in high school. Would I do it again? Eeeeh, maybe. (I’d like to be able to see my grandparents again), and it’d be nice in a “if I had known then what I know now” type of thing.

78

I know. I posted there:

79

On the whole, no, I don’t remember it terribly fondly.

I went to a small, all-boys Catholic high school in a suburb of Green Bay. There were 75 guys in my class, and only 300 in the whole school (4 grades). About half of our teachers were priests.

I did well in school, but I was socially awkward as a teenager, and I had few friends. While I have some good memories of things that I did do with my friends, most of them were also friends with some of the more popular kids; particularly during our junior and senior years, my friends often went out on social activities with the cool kids, and then told me about those things later, making me feel even more like a social outcast.

I was terribly frustrated with girls, as well – I had a crush on a particular girl (who went to the nearby all-girls high school) all through our high school years, but she was unavailable, as she spent most of high school dating a guy who was a true jerk (and she only thought of me as a friend, anyway). I didn’t have an opportunity for even a single date until my senior year; after that date, the girl informed me (through intermediaries) that she didn’t want to see me again.

And, to add more insult to all of the above, I suffered from terrible acne as a teenager.

On the other hand, I did have some great teachers, who did inspire me to achieve academically, and whom I still remember fondly.

I managed to blossom socially once I got to college, where I made a bunch of friends with whom I’m still close, and spent most of my college years in two long-term romantic relationships. But, high school was four years of awkwardness and loneliness.

80

Every time I have tried to “come out of my shell” (and I still have the same anxiety issues to this day) is that I would be bullied back into submission, or rejected in an embarrassing or cruel way, or just overlooked and forgotten that I even exist. It’s easier and safer to stay away than to repeatedly subject myself to humiliation and pain.