He’d kick your ass.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not that high school makes you who you are, it’s that in high school your life is a clean slate. You can be whoever you want to be at that point.
You can be whatever you want??? Not in this life.
High school was pretty wretched. I was sexually abused by a teacher for the first year and a half.
I go back to High School? It’s a bloodbath. A motherfucking bloodbath.
:mad:
I’d rather go back to 8th grade… just to see my math teacher, Mr. Delaney, again. I’d love to have gotten to know him better, as more than just my favorite teacher.
…
By the end of HS I had several different lockers - and kept forgetting where they were and what the combinations were - so it wouldn’t be that different! 
I’d do so much better with just minimal extra effort. (Woulda been SO easy to avoid that D in AP Trig!) I rarely did any homework, instead getting by on general knowledge - so that wouldn’t bee too different. I’d definitely get a better haircut and dress better - and forget any inhibitions against hitting on girls.
Also, I wouldn’t have quit playing piano after 8th grade, when my mom gave me the option. MAN, I wish I could play like I did back then…
Yeah, going into college, I’d do so much better with just minimal effort in certain places. Probably woulda studied - or hobbied - computers. Of course, I’m in a pretty decent place right now, so I’m not complaining. Hooking up w/ Gates or Jobs early on, or hiring into Intel, Cisco, etc seems a decent plan. And - yeah - invest in tech through 2000, then reinvest into Apple, Google, etc.
I just want to add to the others who have said they remember their high school locker combination. Mine was 19-21-1.
I remember distinctly the night before entering my freshman year and expressing some anxiety over whether I’d forget my locker combination. I told that to my dad and he said “That’s easy to remember! Just remember that Warren G. Harding took office in 1921!”
I said “Dad, how is THAT supposed to help me remember?? That’s the worst [mnemonic device] I’ve ever heard in my life!”
And yet that was over 20 years ago and I still remember. Turns out it was a sensational mnemonic device.
I realized, at my 25-year high school reunion, that I really only have miserable memories of pretty much all of high school. Nobody at school knew or realized that I was living through a horribly abusive situation. My parents would have Baker Acted me if I tried to convince them about time travel. Knowing what I know now, though, I’d probably just pack a bag, withdraw all of my babysitting money and take off. While the foster care system likely would have been marginally worse, I did seriously consider calling CPS for myself at the time. I had a classmate who was in the foster system because her stepdad had molested her and she gave me a vivid, eye-opening picture of what it was like. I should have enlisted my older sister’s help – she could have helped me get a place, sign a lease, find a job, etc. So my answer is: I’d come up with an Escape from Alcatraz/Shawshank Redemption escape plan and then started over fresh somewhere else. I’m assuming I’m more like 16-18 than 14-16. At 14, I couldn’t have pulled that off, but 16 or 17? Hell yeah.
I’m pretty much with you, with one exception I’ll get to in another post.
But yeah, how hard could it be? I’ve got a doctorate in math, I think much more clearly and write much better than I did in high school, I know a lot more history than I did then, and I’ve read a good bit more literature too, from Dostoevsky to Samuel Beckett.
I’d have no trouble getting A’s in high-school classes. If I went back to, say, October of my senior year, I’d want to sign up for every AP test I could take outside the physical sciences. I’d want to go to college at a big university where I’d have the opportunity to take grad-level math courses quickly.
Having been there before, I’d be more skilled at getting somewhere with the girls who were interested in me in high school - except with maybe one exception, I doubt I’d be interested. In general, I doubt I’d want to hang out with high school kids if I woke up in the body of my 17 year old self any more than I would right now. I’ve long since passed that stage of life; I’d feel quite avuncular around them. No, I’d finish high school, get into U.Va. and Virginia Tech, and decide which one made more sense, go there with a bunch of AP credits in hand, and take it from there.
After passing a bunch of AP tests for material I’d never taken a course in, I’d let my dad in on what was going on. My senior year was 1971-72; I’d explain to him that oil prices were going to go up rather sharply before too long (I figure that change would be robust, regardless of the butterfly effect) and we wanted to stay invested in oil futures, rolling them over until OPEC yanked oil prices through the roof. (Even if there’s no Yom Kippur War in that timeline, they’d still find an excuse to jack the prices up at some point.) At which point we’d make out like gangbusters. Nothing but good times ahead!
No, thank you.
:eek:
I went to high school between 1963 and 1967. I’d immediately come out, that would override all other issues to such an extent that no-one would notice what I had forgotten, and with the side bonus that I might get to start having actual sex sooner. Not in high school, probably, but definitely in college.
If it wouldn’t result in uncomfortable attention from the Secret Service, I might lay some bets about Kennedy being assassinated to make some quick cash. I should be able to get great odds.
24-14-20.
The lack of easy access to bourbon would be my major problem.
I don’t think I’d have any issue catching up with the classes as far as where I was.
But my life going forward would be very very different. For starters, 40 years of growth means I wouldn’t be anywhere near the same person I was. Also, my black belt in Karate and other martial arts belts would mean that I’d probably end up beating the ever loving fuck out of my father when he tried to beat me (instead of ending them at 17 by pointing a gun in my father’s face when he chased me to my room and BROKE my door down), and then end up being put in a foster home, which would be a welcomed positive step. I can think of a few incidents with a certain gang of bullies that would also be very very different in outcome.
And I wouldn’t even need to go back through programming school!
What would be most unusual would be a young man who was able to think things through. Adults would recognize this behavior and know something was out of the ordinary
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Unfortunately for me i am hyperthymestic, so sadly i will know where my locker is and what boring class i dont really want to be going to, so since i’ve already done that, perhaps this time around i could become a dropout? it’s different
Getting an ID would’t have been a terrible issue at that time so…
I would rather not go based on academics. I did fine when I was there many moons ago, but lately I’ve been helping my daughter with Biology and Algebra, yeah, I don’t remember a lot. It is mind blowing how much these kids need to know in depth about photosynthesis and cellular respiration in 9th grade. And the Math, never my strong suit. Now, if I can just go back for the social aspects, I’m all in. Good times 
.
I was just thinking about this thread. We went to the park on Sunday and there was a high school couple there with the girl doing most of the talking and boy nodding. They were holding hands and it was really cute.
Except it would be really creepy for someone my age, and boring as all hell, even if I were in the body of a teenager.
Looking back, there were a number of cute girls who were interested in me, but I had absolutely no idea of that at the time. I’m sure we could go out, but my interests are so much closer to their parents that it would not be a fun date.
Locker would be no problem as we didn’t use locks. I think you could get one or use your own if you wanted but no one ever did.
Other than that I don’t know why I would ever want to go back there. Nothing good ever happened for me when actually in the school. After school and weekends were a different story.
I was 16 in 1969. If I woke up in my 1969 body, My buddy Frank would be stopping by to walk to school with me. I am sure he wouldn’t buy the time travel story, but I am sure I could convince him I had gotten high enough the night before to need him to walk me through where I was supposed to be and when. We lockered together, so that would also be solved. This would have been at the end of my sophomore year or the beginning of my junior year. My class schedule would not have been very demanding.
Knowing my weaknesses, I could have better applied myself for the last two years of high school and gone on to college with a different agenda.
The end result was that I would now be at the point of retiring from my job as the pretty eccentric social studies teacher at the local high school. I would have guessed properly and bought into Berkshire Hathaway early, and let it ride, adding 10% off the top of every paycheck.
I would have searched out The Incomparable Sunflower earlier and loved her longer.