I was miserable in high school and I would kill myself before I went back for even a day. I cannot forget nor will I ever forgive the torment those people put me through.
I had fun.
Spent my days goofing off in class drawing comic books and writing angsty teenage poetry. Spent my afternoons reveling in the sexual tension of drama club. And I spent my nights out at the Cattle Club watching the punk rock shows. I was young and cute and my head was full of ideas and a-spin with the possibilities of life. It felt like I always had something going on, and I was always around people who wanted to be a part of it. Life felt exciting but safe at the same time.
There were the bad parts, too. I had a touch of depression. The “this will look good on your college application” grind was stressful. And I hated how far away my dreams seemed. But overall, it was a fun time.
Now middle school was a nightmare. Worst years ever. And college was just okay.
Mostly bad. Improved a little bit when I started going to college when I was 16 and got away from high school. Unfortunately, my first year of ACTUAL college was rock bottom.
I have a good friend who enjoyed junior high. I think she might be the only one.
It was freakin’ awful, was what it was.
For one thing, I was not only weird, I was fat too. And a sissy. And too goddamned smart for my own good. Any of those is enough to get a kid ostracized and fucked with by his or her alleged peers; holding all four aces like that, I won our school’s coveted Teenage Trashbag Trophy for four years running. And hardly anybody in school (a small, rural HS located in a particularly backasswards region of West Virginia) was interested in the stuiff i was interested in, in fact the other students looked upon my tastes and preferences with grave suspicion and disapproval. The teachers weren’t a freakin’ bit of help either – none of them seemed to like me any better than the kids did. And as for support from home, fergeddabouddit – my family mostly seemed baffled and embarassed by me; Ma’s refrain whenever I bitched about the latest bullshit I’d been subjected to was always “Well, you go out of your way to be strange, how do you expect people to treat you?”
In the 10th grade I tried to write record reviews and draw single-panel gag cartoons for the school paper but my reviews were too profane and smartassed (not to mention the fact that nobody liked the records I did anyway) and my 'toons too bizarre and druggy-looking. That was my stab at extracirricular activiiies.
It was all math and history and general science classes I hated, and gym, and the boring-ass books they made me read in English when I had way better stuff to read, and inedible lunches from the cafeteria and detention and getting told that the problem was my bad attitude. Plus, a week that I didn’t get my ass kicked more than twice was a good week. High school – feh.
Seriously, there were three things I discovered early, that probably were all that kept me from doing a mid-1970s Columbine scene: drugs, horror movies and beatnik poetry.
I’d call it a negative experience overall, as it was. But by the “would I go back and do it again” way of thinking, it’s hard to say.
I was fairly unpopular, and dating me would have been social poison, but knowing what I know now, I could go back and change a lot of that, just by changing my attitude. I’m sure that part of my problem was the fact that I simultaneously had terrible self-esteem and a proud streak a mile wide. I was smart but lazy and would be happy to see what I could have done if I’d applied myself more and learned out of curiosity instead of “to get by in school.” And I’d put my time and energy into things I’m good at instead of into things I just wanted to be good at.
Then again, there’s nothing I could do, even knowing what I do now, to change my shitty home/family situation, so nah, I wouldn’t go back and do it again.
Oh, and I enjoyed junior high. I had no idea what a geeky loser I was to everyone else, and I was cuter then than I was in high school. I also excelled academically, so I pretty much thought I was hot shit.
I actually DID try to kill myself due to my experience at secondary school - coming out in a school full of chavs was not a clever thing to do. Even if I was quantum leaped back in time to relive it equipped with the wisdom and coping skills of an adult I wouldn’t do it unless the alternative was death.
I barely finished out my freshman year, but the times I had were overall pretty good. I spent years of being the picked on kid until high school when I found my social niche. The culture of the area I went to HS in is, uh, at opposites to me, so I found myself as some sort of Queen of the Punks and Outcasts, which was fun. I had a spiffy mohawk.
As far as actual class, well, once my Latin teacher retired I saw no reason to keep showing up, so I didn’t.
Fifth grade was pretty bad, because I was still in a primary schooler’s mindset at age ten. The school system realized the same thing about most fifth graders, and has moved the grade back to the primary school where they belong. Grades six-eighth were fun though.
Loved it! I was a late bloomer, socially. Middle school was misery. I was the girl everyone picked on. But by high school, the light bulb finally went on and I developed much better social skills. I learned to feel comfortable being myself, and realized it’s a lot easier to make friends that way.
I had fantastic experiences in drama club, student government, and other activities. I made friends who are still close friends today. There were definitely some aspects of high school that weren’t that great. For example, at my school, it was cool to be smart … but to the extent that the culture of competition was unhealthy. It really crossed a line, and most teachers and parents encouraged it.
There are a few things that just kill me though when I think back on high school. After having been the outcast girl for so long in middle school, I was so thrilled with high school that it never occurred to me to go out of my way to reach out to kids who weren’t having such a good time of it in high school. I really regret that now, it would have taken so little effort. I wasn’t mean … more once I broke my own bonds of school loser-dom, that all just dropped off my radar.
Overall though, I remember my high school years with great fondness. I also like my life now, so I’m not exactly pining to go back. But, if you could offer me a two week time travel vacation to go back to high school, I wouldn’t hesitate to take you up on it.
High school was fine for me, and I appreciate my experience at that time more and more as I get older.
I went to a small, Catholic (Jesuit) all-male school in New York. Everyone there was smart (there was a battery of exams to qualify for admission). Between the lack of girls to impress, and the total absence of jock culture, much of the misery others experienced was absent from my high school experience.
I was unwise in my choice of friends. Too many of them used drugs and got into trouble. I managed to avoid serious trouble, but I haven’t retained any friends from high school because I eventually realized that I didn’t belong with that bunch. Still, I had a good time with them back then, and don’t regret much.
Years after high school, I realized that I learned more then than I did in college. It all seemed ordinary at the time, but eventually I discovered that a solid grounding in Latin and Greek, and the literature in those languages, along with philosophy and theology and history (in short, a good old-fashioned classical education), were not the norm for American secondary education.
I’m immensely grateful to the men, mostly Jesuit priests, who gave us such a good education, while receiving absolutely nothing in the way of material compensation.
My first reaction is that it was great. Well, getting picked on freshman year not so much. After that it was great.
I’m from a small town and there wasn’t much of anything to do there. Honestly, I was sad when the last school day of the year rolled around. I knew I’d be bored, wouldn’t see a lot of the people from my classes, etc. I was in band and had a lot of friends there, sometimes we took trips, and so on.
All that said, running in the background were some bad arguments with my mom, usually related to nothing more than her neurotic attitudes. So school was also an escape for me. I got along fine with most of the teachers and did well.
College was better in the sense that I was away from mom, living in another town. It was a lot more pressure, though, some of which I put on myself, to perform. Although I fought the idea of living in a dorm, it was great to be able to walk down the hall and knock on a friend’s door.
If I won the lottery, I would probably travel for awhile. Then I’d go back to college…not to get a degree, though. On a good campus, it seems like there’s usually something cultured going on, an intellectural buzz. It stimulated me.
Mostly bad.
I did get a basic grounding in a few academic subjects.
But the rest was all bad.
Appalling inefficiency. The parts of high school that were actually beneficial could be compressed into about two hours per week. The rest was time-wasting, demented teachers being their demented selves, and school as state-spoonsored child-minder for working parents.
Arbitrary demented behaviour from supposed role models. ‘It’s the rule because I say it’s a rule’. ‘You have to do it because I say you have to do it’. ‘It’s the system and you must conform to it or be punished’. Blatant self-contradiction, whimsical and arbitrary favouritism, irrational outbursts and emotionally unstable rule creationism are apparently valued qualities in teachers.
Daily state-sponsored mind rape. If you interfere with a young person’s body it is sexual abuse and there are serious penalties and punishments, which is as it should be. Do the same to a young person’s mind (without informed consent) and it’s apparently just fine. My high school education was under the auspices of what I came to regard, in my private and personal opinion based on direct personal experience, as a religious cult known as the Catholic Church, with some state collusion in the form of grants. It is difficult to look kindly on an institution that tried to infect me with ideas of hatred, contempt and vilification towards others (i.e. those not of the same faith). This happened on a more or less daily basis. Also, just for the record, in my biology classes we were taught about evolution but in other classes we were taught biblical-literal creationism.
I’d say 99% of the education I’ve had in life that I’d consider worth the name has come from the people I’ve met in adult life, from experience and from self-tuition. Not from the rubbish to which I was exposed in high school.
If you asked me at the time, I would have said it was a nightmare and life was hell. But then, I was pretty over-dramatic and self-absorbed at the time. You know, a teen.
I didn’t have a girlfriend, I didn’t go to parties, and I wasn’t cool.
On the other hand, I had friends. I did enough sports that I was seen as ok by the jocks, and had enough buddies among the stoners, the brains, the drama club, the class clowns and the punks that I could sit pretty much anywhere in the cafeteria. I wasn’t really on anyone’s A-list, but I wasn’t bullied or picked on.
Got good grades, got along great with the teachers (who, looking back, looked past my angsty bullshit), and now 20 years later I’m actually enjoying getting back in touch with people via Facebook.
mostly good.
I’m sorry to hear that. I went to Catholic school as well (see above). I never heard a word of hatred, contempt or vilification towards those of other faiths. Nor did I hear a word about creationism. For the record, the Catholic Church officially has no problem with evolution, and does not teach biblical literalism – your teachers were deviating from what the Church teaches.
Sometimes I think Catholic schools have done more to turn people away from Catholicism than anything else.
Me too. The old testament scared me but getting slapped around by angry nuns upset me more. They behaved so much worse than I was ever allowed to behave at home and my parents never hit me in anger beyond mild spankings when I was very young. None of it made any sense to me. If they hadn’t been so mean I would probably be more of a lapsed Catholic than an atheist because I wouldn’t have had so much cognitive dissonance that something had to go. I ditched the god idea and followed my own conscience since it seemed to have better results than whatever the hell it was that they were following that gave them the right and need to hit me if I asked uncomfortable questions.
I have mixed memories. Many, many good ones. But it was about the age of 14 or 15 -maybe a little earlier - that my chronic depression started. I had no idea it was treatable. Maybe back then it wouldn’t have been. Or the cure would have been worse than the illness. I was geeky and more of an outcast than I knew… but because I was clueless that didn’t bother me. Highschool wasn’t bad, but college treated me much better.
Yeah, I meant to add something to my post. As Carly Simon sang, “These are the good old days.” Had you asked me then, I would have had a litany of the stuff that was missing. Ditto college. Ditto first job. Ditto today.
Yet we look back and sometimes lament what we had at the time but didn’t appreciate. True we’ve gained some things, but we’ve lost some things as well. So what is it that I should be appreciating more about my life right now? What won’t I have ten years from now that I’m taking for granted?
At the time I was in high school, it seemed that the ratio of privileges (driving the family car) to responsibilities (don’t have to pay bills) was pretty sweet.
5th grade and 8th grade, respectively, were probably my worst school years, largely due to outside influences ( wrenching, in one case very sudden, geographic dislocations combined with family problems ). But oddly enough, while I have no nostalgia for High School, I do have some for 6th and 7th grades. There were certainly plenty of shitty moments, including my only very brief experience with bullying in 7th grade ( but at least it wasn’t limited to me, he preyed on everyone ). But overall that time in my life gets a little bit of a sepia tone treatment when I look back on it.
I’m not sure why, though I’m guessing that sudden 8th dislocation may have something to do with it. It’s one of those crossroads where my life might have been substantially different if I’d stayed where I was at the time.
Cattle Club in Sacramento?