High school is alternately described as both the best and worst time of a person’s life, depending on who you talk to or even by the same person. People seem to remember it with extreme fondness or dread or resentment. Whatever they feel, it seems like they have strong feelings about it. Even years or decades later, people’s high school experiences seem to affect their outlook on life or how they view themselves.
Why is this so?
Why do people have an interest in reconnecting with people they haven’t seen in 5, 10, 25 years at reunions or on Facebook?
Why do grown adults sometimes say things like “oh I bet he was a jock/nerd/stoner/etc in high school?”
Why is it so important to be accepted into a culture of sneaking alchohol from your parents, doing bong hits in some friend’s basement and smoking cigarettes in the school parking lot?
Why is it so upsetting to be oastracized by people who, quite honestly, you probably didn’t really have much in common with anyway?
Why is it so important to go to Prom?
How come whenever I run into someone from high school who I haven’t seen in 15 years, we are automatically “best friends” for the next ten minutes?
I hated high school passionately at the time, but rarely think about it at all now. No lingering feelings of lost or wasted opportunities (though goodness knows there were both), just a source of extreme indifference. I don’t really keep in touch with anyone from HS and am always a bit flabbergasted when someone ferrets me out (I’m easy to find off Google). Even then, it usually constitutes a couple of catch-up e-mails, and that’s it. I’ve never been to any of my reunions and never will.
I suppose some look back with nostalgia at the Glory Days, but I think those who were successful then managed not to make a total mess of their lives and most who weren’t “successful” found their footing later, with little residual damage. There are the exceptions of course, but since I don’t keep in touch with anyone from HS, I have to make this assumption with no anecdotal facts in evidence one way or the other.
There is no denying that those are formative years, though–legally, recreationally, emotionally, sexually. It’d be silly not to recognize that some people will have had experiences that left deep imprints on them, even if they’ve “moved on” or “grown up” or what-have-you. And since most of those experiences usually involved other people, there will be certain associations or memories that will be hard to shake–even if you and everyone else have changed since then (some for the better, some not so much).
I don’t think my outlook on life was informed by HS other than that it was in high school that I first came onto a true sense of self-realization. Things have evolved and matured since then, of course, but my first true sense of self independent of my parents occurred then (there were only hints or glimmers prior), and my first true desires in life–my priorities and values–were shaped by me more than my environment at that time. So even though I don’t look back with either a happy or sad face at those times, I think you’ll find a lot of people also came to a surer sense of self in those years. Why wouldn’t that seem somewhat important in retrospect?
I think one reason it is treated as such a big deal in adult social contexts is that it’s a shared experience that pretty much everyone can relate to (not everyone goes to college, but pretty much everyone goes to high school these days).
Like ArchiveGuy, I am pretty indifferent to high school myself. I didn’t go to prom or even my graduation ceremony. I don’t feel that who I am today has much to do with who I was back tehn (college and medical school were more formative experiences for me). I just left and never looked back.
But even I think it’s kind of fun to see whatever happened to some of the people I used to know back then, just out of normal human curiosity. Sometimes it’s funny how people have changed directions so radically!
I’ve encountered this too. I think it’s because of a shared history, something in common. The same thing happens with relatives I wasn’t particularly close to, or people I used to work with. There’s a connection, and people like connections, even when they’re fleeting.
Going back to high school as a teacher, it really strikes me what a small world high school is–post high school, everything opens up, there are thousands of choices and paths, but while you are in school your options are limited–your options for friends, your options for occupations, your options for hobbies, your options for recreattion. Even your geographical options are limited. You get to know that small space very, very well, and it creates a different sense of belonging than what you ever have again. Some people find that comforting, some constrictive, some just find it different.
I think it’s a big deal because it’s where you first interact with a large group of peers as a young adult - as you are coming into who you are.
Also, back in the day, it was the acme of a lot of Americans’ educational experience, and I think that essence still sticks with it today.
Because you were forced to be with them, day after day, year after year, in a setting where your social skills were minimal and you did not have much defense against the mob. Nowadays I can avoid people like that.
IME, this isn’t especially common. By the time many folks are 10 years past high school, it doesn’t seem especially important. Many have a circle of friends that has limited overlap with those of high school.
IMO, high school, unless you’re extroardinarily strong socially and psychologically, is where we learn the rules of friendship, popularity, and self-respect - or fail to learn them.
It’s not so much a sense of high school itself being important. It’s more a shared cultural value: you better have a lot of this stuff out fo the way by the age 18, or the rest of us are not going to have much time for you.
I think that might be a big part of it. When you are that age, your entire world pretty much consists of home, your high school and your home town (and maybe the mall).
It’s been 28 years since I left high school, so I never think about nowadays unless someone asks me about it. It certainly doesn’t affect my current life in any way at all.
And actually, in my real life, nobody ever asks me about high school. What, my coworker engineers are gonna start drilling me about what my social life was like almost thirty years ago?
I guess it helps that I no longer live in the city I went to school in.
Because during adolescence your brain is undergoing drastic changes* which, among other things, magnify all your emotions. Consequently, your recollection of highs and lows are correspondingly much more intense, and even a trivial thing at the time takes on greater significance.
Thins level out after 20-21 or so, which may be why college / university is not so prominent in many people’s remembered life story.
*according to research presented on CBS Radio’s science show “Quirks & Quarks” about 1 year ago.
I was homeschooled and I get adults asking me, “Don’t you feel as though you missed out?”
Not really. I look at it as a good thing. I was able to skip the drama and go to college at 16 instead. I wouldn’t have been happy in high school. I wouldn’t have had any friends (my best friend would have already graduated) and I would have been bored with the curriculum.
Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth. My two older brothers went all the way thru high school, and my older sister asked to be homeschooled after 9th grade, since it was such a bad experience (I’m 7 years younger than my sister, and I had been homeschooled for one year at that point). My wife had a terrible time in high school, and I can’t imagine I would have enjoyed it much at all.
College was great, though, and I feel that homeschooling prepared me better than most of my peers were prepared by the public school system.
In my experience, none of the things you mentioned are actually important to me or the people I interact with, whether friends or coworkers. I don`t mean to be unhelpfully contrary, but put me down for “importance isn’t placed on high school experience”.
I’m not kidding when I say it was the best decision I ever made. I wish I would have done it sooner.
High school sucks because you are an adult and everyone treats you like a child. You’re smart and everyone treats you like you’re an idiot. You’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself and everyone treats you like a fragile ornament that needs to be coddled and protected. Most of all, there is essentially zero freedom.
The people that enjoy that shit and soak it up are the people who grow up and vote for extra security cameras to be installed everywhere and dearly long for everyone to take their shoes off in the airport. These are the people that card you for lighters and vote for whichever candidate is the most popular.
It is a vicious cycle and a monstrous system and I’m ashamed to have ever been a part of it. My son might go to public grade school, but I’m not sending him to high school, even if I have to quit my job to home school him.
That makes a lot of sense, actually. I still have dreams about being back in high school, 25 years later (mostly of the, “I have an assignment due and I haven’t done any work!” variety).
I go with “hormones”. The importance of everything is magnified psychologically – every thing and every action is either the best experience ever or the worst experience ever.
For me, almost all of it was the worst. As desparately as others cling to old HS things and people, I shunned them. Other than my own family members, there is absolutely no one in my life from those years. I’ve never been to a reunion. I suppose I have it much easier – at least I imagine it is easier to put that aside rather than cling to it.
While 10 years after high school it probably doesn’t matter that you were the valedictorian, participated in the student government, or your team made it to state the lessons you learned while doing these things no doubt had an impact on your life. High school is important because it’s a pretty common experience almost all of us in the United States has gone through.
Hell, I’m sometimes curious about the people I went to elementary school with. I looked up one former classmate on MySpace and it turned out he was a gay flight attendant living in California. Didn’t see that one coming.
When you’re a young person it’s pretty important to be accepted by some sort of social group. It might be the kids who sneak alcohol out of their parent’s house or the kids who play D&D all night. The point is that humans are social animals and like to belong.
Seriously, as to the OP, it’s because… after high school, you go to college, overseas because of some god damn war, or straight to the work-force. Besides all of us being in the hopital on our birth-day, when is the next time “we’re all together” other than in high school? Think about it.