It wasn’t amazingly good, but it wasn’t bad, either. I was never bullied or subjected to the horrible experiences other people report, but it was very boring. So I’d say it was neutral, or if I had to, mostly good.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: I had it 5th through 8th grade. I always liked that system of divisions better, mainly because of my love of evenness. 
I would tend to agree with you.
I spent most of Freshman year in a large high school, and I’m pretty sure that if I had remained there I probably would have killed myself. It was a hell-pit and there was only one person in the school worse off then me, and his name was
Brucy Winer.
Anyone who is different in any way is singled out. If you are different in multiple ways, you’re raw meat to predators. I was, and remain, introverted, and while I’ve learned to talk to people it’s not a real source of pleasure to me. Couple that with being too smart (hey, this is the Dope, most of us were too smart for our own good) and I was picked on relentlessly.
Luckily, my parents got me into an alternative school with a 5:1 student to teacher ratio. So I was mainly interacting with teachers and councilors instead of other students and was able to talk with intelligent, educated people five days a week.
But that year in hell left it’s mark. I firmly believe that anyone who had a positive high school experience was one of the oppressors. If you didn’t believe that there was an “in crowd”, then you were in the in crowd.
The whole thing was great. I loved learning, and I was at a very scholastic, Jesuit school.
Why does that other school not count as a high school, in your opinion?
As for my own school, it’s a K-12 private school with lower school, middle school, and upper school groupings, around 400 people total. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad experience, although I should hope that it won’t be the best time of my life. I’ve definitely never been picked on (and I’m not really one for social interaction, either), although I’m pretty far-and-away highest ranked in my grade. Some other people who go there hate it and say it’s cliquey, though, so I guess peoples’ mileage varies.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: Not that I’ve really wanted a ton of social interaction from it; rock all day and party all night would be a form of Hell for me.
I went to a math and science magnet program for all four years of high school. Being in classes with other geeks was probably the best situation for me. If I’d had to take classes with the rabble, I probably would have suffered.
Looking back, however, I can see that the situation lead to some problems. The students in the magnet program were taught to view ourselves as better than everyone else, in ways sometimes more direct and sometimes less. This certainly did not help any of us transition into a well-adjusted adult life.
It was only a half day and had no more than 150 students total in two shifts. You would learn at your own pace, receiving credit for work completed. And there weren’t enough students in any class for cliquishness to happen. I don’t remember much interaction with other students which seems to be the defining feature of other people’s “high school” experience. I went there in the morning, I learned, I left at noon and had lunch then walked to the place where my brother and mother both worked.
++
So much so, that I don’t think I can bear to talk about it now. Morbid curiousity lead me here, but I think I’m going to leave now.
Yo.
In the interest of preventing this post from turning into yet another 5,000-word screaming rant, I’ll keep it really simple. I’m going to list all the other massively horrible experiences of my life and note what they didn’t have that high school did. In chronological order:
Grade school: The utter lack of any fun, enjoyable, or even mildly pleasant moments, truly staggering ratio of dregs of humanity to good people, imbecilic tu quoque BS about how I’d get beaten to a pulp every single day if I were at this school or that.
Boy Scouts: Absolutely chaotic meetings with paper airplanes and garbage flying through the air, infantile sewer-mouthed ANIMALS who didn’t get the tiniest shred of discipline in their entire lives and were never, ever restrained at all ever. (Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss these guys, but they were jerks, not degenerate sociopaths.)
Piano practice: Being constantly insulted, patronized, dumped on, and in general treated like crap by the teacher, total structurelessness and chaos, infantile sewer-mouthed animals etc.
Yosemite National Park vacation: Hellish environment that made it absolutely impossible to learn anything, about 95% of the rules not being enforced at all, screams periodically filling the air, ISMA etc.
Ill-planned first semester of college: Living in a constant state of rage, terror, loathing, and paranoia, ISMA etc.
Unemployment: No fun activities whatsoever, a complete waste of time, ISMA etc.
Seriously. Back then I swore that it would never, ever get worse than high school, and now, a decade and a half after the fact (and dealing with a lot of jerks, clods, and no-accounts in my current job), I’ve yet to be proven wrong. And I don’t think I ever will be. If I ever contract a terminal disease shortly after having both legs amputated after being destroyed in a horrific car accident and spend the final days of my life in utter agony and hooked up to a forest of tubes, well, at least there won’t be a gang of 17-year-old babies in their room incessantly taunting me and throwing garbage all over the place for the duration.
From an academic standpoint, mostly good. My high school was blessed with a few extraordinarily dedicated and creative teachers who really tried to foster a sense of intellectual curiosity in their students. Yeah, there were a few clunkers - the obligatory super-patriot coach history teachers were there, and one English teacher who announced to the class that I had “no life” - but on the whole I had fun, worked hard, and learned some stuff. It was also helpful to develop a good rapport with adults, which was really just what I needed at the time.
Socially, high school was a whole 'nother story. It was a schizophrenic experience. Around the end of my freshman year I transformed from the quiet weirdo in the corner to the loud weirdo with the Cyndi Lauper hair and the technicolor miniskirts (this is 2002, mind you), and for that I got attention in spades. Turns out, being notorious is not the same as being respected or liked. I was elected homecoming princess as a dark horse candidate, but I couldn’t get a date to save my life. I knew and talked to a lot of people on a day-to-day basis, but my interactions with them were shallow and I couldn’t really count any of them as dependable friends. Add to that a few obsessive crushes on emotionally fragile boys, and you have an unfulfilled, unhappy, and emotionally drained teenager.
And then I went to college, and everything immediately changed for the better. Looking back, I realize that I was kind of a bitch back then and probably could’ve worked a little harder at maintaining fulfilling relationships, but even if I could do it “the right way” on the 2nd try I wouldn’t do it all over again.
(and thus ends my first SDMB post 
)
I hated high school with all my heart and soul. It being in West Texas no doubt had something to do with it. My experiences were so bad that it took several years for me finally to decide to go to university, which I ended up loving.
High school was filled with good & bad. I choose to remember the good parts. I am not sure if I would repeat it forever, but there are parts I would certainly like to visit when times are bad in the present.
It was bad. Horrible. It was hell.
It turned a shy, quiet but happy boy into a complete wreck ripe for psychiatry. I lived almost as a hikikomori in the years afterwards until my parents forced me to go to therapy. I’m doing much better now, but I don’t think I’m ever going to function as well as a normal person.
Nah, I went to two different high schools (we moved after my Freshman year), and neither one was a bad experience, and I wasn’t bullied or bullying anyone. Well there was one ox-like dude on the bus, he would pick but I’d pick back and we became about as good of friends as two people with little in common could.
Schools just have different “feels”, and from reading this thread I guess I was lucky. I didn’t like the classes, but the people were fine for the most part.
I mostly did not like HS. It seemed to me that most of my peers were very immature, and I didn’t behave that way. But mostly I remember the looooonnng dreary afternoons, that stretched off into infinity-and drifting off in French class, only to be awakened by the teacher screaming in my ear!
Freshman year in college was great-all of a sudden I was with people who wanted to learn, and was treated as an adult! It made the previous four years seem like a kiddy camp.
I didn’t have a bad time, but I wouldn’t go back.
I was very active: played a lot of sports, did the drama/music thing, enjoyed my studies. Still, I felt almost like high school was a dress rehearsal for the real thing (and it was… college was MUCH more fun). Likewise, I had a lot of friends (though we were more the “semi cool” group than the super popular group), but I didn’t keep in touch with them for very long. Not the way I’ve kept in touch with my college buddies.
I guess my college friends were more “soul mate” kind of friends, and my high school friends were more people I enjoyed spending time with but we weren’t as close. Similarly, I participated in activities that were fun at the time, but I didn’t find what I really enjoyed until college. So I was more or less going through the motions in high school.