I have less than 100 friends where a third to a half are from high school or earlier. There’s not really any suprises yet (I graduated high school in '90). Those who I expected to be successful are and those who I expected to flounder are, the same with married/families or staying single.
The biggest surprise is a good friend from University is apparantly a Scientologist now which I found out through his best friend from highschool who I looked up on facebook. He is on facebook but hasn’t accepted my friend request. Maybe he’s scared I’ll say something since I do list “atheist, secular humanist” in the religion field.
Maybe I’m a little surprised that there isn’t more successful folks and most people are still in the same hometown or at least still in Southern Ontario. I figure that’s just due to having better things to do with their time than join facebook. There is one highschool friend that is going to be running during the next federal election as the Liberal candidate but that’s not too much of a surprise. There’s also another that has his PhD in economics and is both teaching and working for the government in Ottawa and I didn’t expect that.
A fraternity brother in college used to spend some time around our house as he was buds with one of my roomates. Nice guy and quite a tennis player but unremarkable beyond that. The thing I remember most was he’d always call idiots “Yambos” and whenever he disproved of something, he’d say “Oh, that’s sharp!” That’s pretty much all I remember of him.
You’ve heard of HP… Hewlett Packard? He’s now their Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President. Heh, way to go, Mark.
I’m class of 2004, so tons of people from high school have Facebook. I went to a big high school, so I don’t know or care about a lot of the people.
But pretty much people in my class:
gained an unhealthy amount of weight
got pregnant (about 10% of the girls have in the last 3 years)
joined the armed forces
or stayed exactly the same - still stoners, still doing well in school, still being local bums, etc.
The only things that surprised me were the few people who are engaged or married, and that’s because even though I’ve been in a serious relationship for a year, I can’t imagine getting married anytime soon. Still feel too young I suppose.
I am not surprised at how my high school friends turned out; I am not surprised that the girl I found unbearably obnoxious has become a minor local celebrity that everyone now finds unbearably obnoxious; I am not surprised that the perky popular girls were married with kids by age 30, or that some of the perky popular girls married some of the handsome popular boys from the same school; I am not surprised that the interesting loner girls are either still single (at age 30 … like me … another failure?) or paired up in non-traditional relationships. I am not surprised that the guys with no social skills who flirted awkwardly in high school are still flirting awkwardly.
The thing that surprises me is actually my very favourite thing about Facebook. See, in high school I was always acutely aware that I was a big ugly loser and that nobody liked me, except for a few good friends. Facebook has taught me that this is not true. I have been repeatedly and pleasantly surprised at the number of people who I had never considered “friends” in high school (because they were pretty and popular and I was a big ugly loser) who were interested in contacting me now. (My favourite was the one who wrote to apologize for being such a bitch to me in high school, because she’d always regretted it, and I got to say “I never thought you were a bitch to me! Don’t worry about it!” and we both felt a lot better.)
It seems that, to some extent, almost everyone thought they were big ugly losers in high school, and Facebook is the first opportunity to prove to ourselves that it wasn’t the case. I have no interest in becoming friends with these people at this point but it’s really nice to know that we have mutually positive feelings towards each other, rather than the other way around.
Yes I have been pretty surprised… I graduated high school in 1993, and the first thing that struck me is that the vast majority of the girls - like 80% - have kids out of wedlock. Many of the guys too. And for those who have been married, the majority are divorced. I’m also surprised that many did not go to college and are just barely getting by with their out-of-wedlock kids. However, these people strongly promote their kids and how great they are on their profiles, like they’re trying to over-exaggerate how great their lives are to cover up the fact that they’re not so great - I actually think it’s all pretty sad…
Among all my high school friends, I’m one of the rare few who have not been married and don’t have kids.
Some interesting things: Two old friends who I have known since 6th grade are now married with kids. In fact, in 7th grade, they were each other’s first boyfriend/girlfriend, and they had their first kiss at my house.
I was very surprised at how many of the nerdy people, who never dated anyone in high school, ended up married with kids, at a very young age.
It appears not a single person from my high school is signed up for Facebook–and my high school isn’t even listed. Every once in a while I try to google-sniff around for some of them just to say “hi” or see what they’re up to, but I can’t find any of them–literally, not a single one. Some of them had very common first and last names so would be hard to find anyway, but even the ones with less common names don’t seem to exist on the internet. Kind of a bummer, actually, because I’d really like to know how some of them are doing.
I guess this is the downside to graduating 24 years ago. I can’t find anybody I went to school with on Facebook. I found a small handful on MySpace, but then I dropped off MySpace because it sucked so hard.
Outside of the social networking sites, I reconnected with a high school friend who spent a lot of time with me fooling around on the school’s Apple IIe computers. He’s gone on to be one of the lead developers at Real Networks (the RealPlayer company). There are some friends from high school who have surprised me simply by the fact that I can’t find any trace of them on the Internet. These are people who, from what I knew of them, should have been prime candidates to at least have a Web page. And the women … well, I assume most of them have married since I knew them, so there’s very little chance of me finding them without knowing their new last names. A couple of them have found me, though.
ETA: I should note that I attended two different high schools, with my class at each exceeding 300 students. You’d think I could find somebody.
No OMG-I-never-saw-that-coming discoveries when I found a few of my old classmates on Facebook, to be honest.
The most surprising this is the endless stream of weddings and babies and homebuying that has been going on for the past year. I guess it throws me for a loop because we’re all still 19 in my head (it’s even worse with grade school classmates, since I have trouble picturing them as anything besides 13 yr old twerps)… but given that we’re actually all hovering around 30, it makes perfect sense.
I have heard from a few people that they’re surprised that I’m not in a high-powered job doing Something Important. I guess I was a bit of an overachiever in school, but anyone who knows me well could have told you my intent was never to devote myself heart and soul to my career… I’m much too lazy for that.
