The bully topic has been covered very well…I thought it might be fun to compare what your experiences were for the four years of semi-confinement known as high school.
So, I will start off…my chief memory (its been 20+ years now)is that afternoon classes (particularly French)really proved the theory of relativity to me…time slowed down to a crawl!
I remember long dreary afternoons, with the second hand of the clock moving like the hour hand, then lapsing into semi-sleep, awakened by the screaming voice of the teacher, trying to remember how to conjugate french verbs… boy, Im glad that’s over!
Other than that, i remember being bored most of the time, and really wishing it was over!
Let me know how YOU experienced secondary education!
A little comparison:
In Junior High (grades 7-9), I:
[ul]
[li]went to every dance[/li][li]was picked on all the time (was only 70-90 lbs)[/li][li]had a lot more friends[/li][/ul]
In High School (grades 10-12), I:
[ul]
[li]didn’t go to any dance, not even Prom[/li][li]wasn’t picked on at all (weight went up to 120)[/li][li]had fewer friends, mostly in my school band clique[/li][/ul]
Overall, I liked JH better. High school got too clique-y, and everyone paired up (this is why I didn’t go to prom). I also couldn’t drive until January of my senior year, so I was always bumming rides. Made me feel rather put-behind. (In JH, everyone had to bike, so we were together.)
I really loved elementary. Three recesses a day, easy classwork, and my size didn’t matter, since the other kids didn’t outweigh me by that much. :D:D
J.H. - I was tall and skinny with braces and a headbanger. I didn’t join any clubs or team except baseball and drama.
H.S. - I was very active in Drama, the cheerleading coach tried to recruit me, so did track & field (I am not very athletic), I had two long-term bf’s one after the other and that’s it. I did not have a ton of friends that I miss, those I liked I still talk to. I did not get all teary when I left. I was glad to go. I was very wallflowerish. People who meet me now, most do not remember me from high school and guys that ignored me then, hit on me now, guess that’s what they mean by “late bloomer”
Basically, my day went like this, especially my senior year.
-Go to first period, so they wouldn’t call home, and catch up on sleep.
-Catch my friends and take off for Roy Rogers for breakfast, or go do some skateboarding.
-Come back for all 3 lunches and hang out with people, catch up on gossip, pull pranks on the admins, etc
-Take off again and go use a friends trampoline or skate some more.
Obviously, I got a lot accomplished. I actually got expelled halfway thru my senior year for not going. Talked my administrator into letting me finish school at one of the “alternative” high schools. IE, one class a day, just your requirements, basically for rejects 
Still got to participate in my original high schools graduation though, and my diploma lists my original school.
Funny note - Graduated from high school with a 1.6. Went to a university that offered night classes, and finished 2 years worth with a 4.0 GPA. Then finally quit that cause it was too easy and kept working full time. Now I’m a computer geek. 
I miss high school.
In J.H.: I was about 6’1 to 6’4 and fat, had big hair and Red Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. Tried to talk to girls but they ran away.
Fresh-Soph: Got wire glasses, people realized that I played good basketball, stopped growing, a few girls talked to me.
Junior/Senior: Pretty much ran the school, drove the nicest cars, Champion Cross Country Runner, all county basketball player, won sexiest legs in school contest, Had no problem talking to girls, prom-King Candidate. After High-school I went to Nashville for music and ended up modeling. I consider myself a success for Nerds everywhere.
Okay, I’m done tooting my own horn. Now I am a faceless goon in a sea of mediocre people in Atlanta.
9: Got beaten up by a boy while a teacher stood by and did nothing.
10-11: Lost every single friend I had made in jr. high, got picked on constantly, found death threats in my locker nearly every single day, was threatened with physical violence more times than I can count.
12: Discovered Monty Python. Learned that the Duplin County, North Carolina public school system SUCKS. Laughed at all of my senior classmates when they cried at the prom. Much to the chagrin of the principal and the guidance counsellor [in title only], became Valedictorian. Quoted Richard Brautigan in my valedictory address against the wishes of the principal.
Like Stephen King said–you can’t trust anyone who can look back fondly on their high school years.
I was pretty much invisible in high school. I had a small circle of both male and female friends, but I never had a date. My grades were OK, I graduated with a 3.2, or something close to that. I never skipped classes until my senior year, when my friend Genette and I would leave for lunch. My one moment of fame was when I got the lead in the play my senior year. I was Helen Keller in the Miracle Worker. I got a few extra pictures in the yearbook that year too. I wish I could go back and do it all over again. Not so much for the social aspect, but just so I could apply myself to my studies more thoroughly. Things might have turned out differently for me if I had worked harder at math and science.
Uuuuugh. Wore glasses and didn’t spend a lot of money on clothes (or makeup) and was smart. I got contacts in 10th grade which helped, but I was still nothing to look at. Didn’t party. No athletic ability. Which almost made me a loser. HOWEVER, I had gone to grade school with all the kids who did develop all those popularity traits, and that was a good connection. Plus I had a sense of humor. So I was tolerated, even liked, but wasn’t popular. I did manage to get elected to Student Council, and I embraced theatre and its little community of losers. I dated a band geek so I got along with those losers too.
The principal hated me because my parents wrote a letter once to complain that he wouldn’t let our French class travel to a foreign language event even though the fricking sports teams missed school all the time. The guidance counselor didn’t like me because I decided I wanted to broaden my horizons and leave Nebraska for college. Faculty loved me. I was valedictorian.
It was tolerable, but just barely. Part of the joy of going away for college was a chance to reinvent myself, be whoever I wanted to be instead of the Nice Funny Geek label I had on me.
High school’s a bit of a blur - I was one of those guys with the long hair and the dark glasses who sat at the back of the class and always smelled like smoke.
I loved HS, after Frosh year, I stopped getting made fun of. I really loved my Junior year cause that’s when my boyfriend moved into town and we met in English class. I needed chemistry help and he was great at it. He made jokes about chem, don’t ask me how, but I was rolling everynight cause of him, it made chem not seem so evil. I still hate it, but I’ll never forget how to do conversions, thanks to him making it fun:) We went to senior prom together…that was the best. We’re still dating after 3 1/2 years High school was great.
Started out as a total dork, got threatened by a few of the bigger folks. Got into a computer course that the teacher basically let me blow off because I already knew everyhting he was supposed to teach and instead spent my time writing little programs. Sat next to some big honkin’ senior who knew as much about computers as your average sea cucumber. Taught him a bunch of stuff (oddly, I never did his coursework - I actually taught him what he needed to know to pass) and he proceeded to lumber over to my threateners and make vauge rumbling comments about how they might like to suffer multiple fractures. Never got bothered again.
After that, it was a bunch of time spent with the art people who were, in my school anyway, basically clique nomads; never bothered by anyone and never invited by anyone. Instead, we sat with who we felt like sitting with and when we got tired of them, we sat with someone else or went off and ditched class (or spent math class in the art room playing with the airbrushes). By senior year, I was attending classes about one day out of three and was never bothered by the dean who was afraid to call my mother about it (my sister went to the same school before me and once when the dean called my mom to complain about my sister ditching detention to attend an after-school class designed to help her learning, my mom chewed him out. My main memory of that conversation was her calling him a “dick head” repeatedly). Had one real girlfriend who was a certified psycho though it took me about eight months to realise it. Didn’t bother with prom as I wasn’t dating anyone at the time and couldn’t see spending hundreds of dollars for a “date”. Went to Milwaukee’s GenCon instead for a weekend and had a blast. Anyone worth keeping up with from high school I still know, so I’m not sure if I’ll bother attending the reunion next year. Still, I’m doing good for myself and have nothing to be ashamed of, so maybe I’ll make an appearance.
8th grade: Initiation–Jocks beat up the little kids. I wasn’t exactly a little kid–I beat up the jocks instead. I found the band-nerd-beating-up-the-football-player role-reversal irresistable. Learned to pick all locks in the school.
9th grade: Access to chemistry labs (covert). Made all manner of interesting explosives with the assistance of an igor from among my small circle of friends. Helped install school computer system; gave myself superuser password and locked out the support password. Phenomenal Cosmic Power–I could alter grades and other records and had the dope on faculty and administration who were foolish enough to save questionable stuff on the file server…
10th grade: With the disappearance of a key custodian, I became the only person capable of understanding and manipulating the arcane intricacies of the programmable climate control system. Another Phenomenal Cosmic Power–became de facto liason between student body and administration.
11th grade: Physics teacher/assistant football coach gave up and let me teach his physics class. Parties happened.
12th grade: Graduated valedictorian–escaped the pest-pit forever! Still received calls for the next year about how to make things operate at the school. Considered establishing a 1-900 help number.
Some of the faculty loved me, some hated my guts, and a few were justifiably afraid of me. My sense of humor was very dry and adult, and I didn’t have much in common with most of the other students. I was never popular–not many dates or dances–but among those in the know, I got respect.
9th: Classes with no one I knew. Came from the “wrong” side of town, middle school, etc. Not good. Got a girlfriend (basically because she wanted someone to go to Homecoming with). BAD relationship (too bad I realized this at the END of the year).
10th: Classes with people I knew a bit better. Broke up with my girlfriend right before christmas break because the relationship was hurting me emotionally and spiritually and every other way it possibly could. Was in the top musical group (show choir, singing and choreography). We traveled and generally had fun. Went to my first party ever. Had fun. Still generally felt like an outsider, though. Determined not to let that happen the next year.
11th: Well, I guess we’ll see how it starts here in a couple weeks.