I realise that some of the people reading right now may still be in high school but most of you? I suspect most of you have left. Let’s talk about our high school experiences: good, bad, average? What did you enjoy about it, what did you hate about it?
For me high school was a real mixed bag. On the one hand I met some great people that I’m still friends with to this day. On the other hand, my high school was a bit rough and full of some legitimately insane human beings. In the first couple of years of high school I suffered from some fairly frequent bullying and that was a real shock for me. My primary school days were brilliant, but the first couple of years of high school? Pretty brutal.
But on the other hand, school was sometime rewarding. I was good at stuff. I was a pretty good student, got good grades. Good enough to leave high school a year early (Scotland has a slightly different system to Australia). I was also pretty good at track and field and won a fair amount of awards for that.
Actually, that reminds me of a pretty brutal story.
In my final year of school I managed to win the overall ‘Sports Champion’ award. You win this by consistently performing well in things like the 100m/200m/high jump/long jump. You were presented your award in front of the whole school. When I went up to collect my award the entire school booed me.
I played it off like I didn’t care and started playing to the boos. But I can’t lie — it stung!
What was your experience with high school like?
Comments
72 responses to “Off Topic: High School”
7.5/10
2/10 would not bang….
god damn i am so glad to be out of that hell hole.
3/10.5
It was boring stuff i didn’t need to know, there for i spent my time messing about with my mates or not in class.
“You will never get a job” they said, i did, and it was the one that i wanted.
It was terrible, then I changed schools and it got better. Went to a school that was all about alpha male bullshit and if you weren’t tough you would have a terrible time. Regularly bullied, had some drama forced on me. One ended up with suspension, another ended up with a stanley knife. Eventually had enough and when asked if I wanted to leave by the principal I said yes. Went to a new school. Problem is that it made me slack off because I always had trouble in school and now I had friends who wanted to hang out. While I still did my work I never put in the extra effort because I was more concerned about hanging out with people. Also adding to the fact that I was forced to live as a country kid for 20 years and my time to hang out was limited to high school hours.
Funny thing is, I stopped hanging out with my friends. After high school my main friends had no aspirations and were content with slugging through a boring work week then moving on to drinking all weekend. They all started doing alpha male shit and I decided to stop hanging out with them. Only one friend actually went on to do something with his life and whenever he’s back in town all my other friends pull him in and force him to have another high school drinking party.
I totally understand about the country town thing, and people having no ambition.
Of my grade 10 class (which was as high as the town I grew up in went), there were 100 kids all together – only 28 of us went onto senior high school, and only 11 of us graduated year 12. And only myself, and another girl didn’t have kids in our first year out of school at all :/
Country kids operate in different ways. I was in a rural town for uni and the drop out rays and early pregnancy numbers were staggering.
I think it’s to do with the insular nature of small populations – you get exposed to less and therefore it’s harder to think long-term. When the Woolies down the road is the biggest employer in town it’s kind of hard to develop aspirations.
I should of changed schools, I think I was petrified of changing schools and having no friends. I wasn’t friends with any of my highschool friends within two years of finishing anyway, they weren’t real friends.
0/10.
Would not do again. No. Go away. Stop upsetting me. No. Please.
It’s over now, you made it out 🙂
Highschool was pretty great for me, I never really understood why some people hated it so much. Even my other friends who I was there with. I don’t think I’ve ever quite been into games like I was back then with that group, I remember taking in Metroid Prime the day it came out just to show it off, and carrying it around in my blazer pocket all day. In hindsight there was some bullying I guess but I mostly shrugged it off at the time. I avoided all sporting stuff and stuck with the music section, I always enjoyed that. Ended up near the top of the hierarchy there, somehow 😛 School musicals were always loads of fun, teaming up with the local girls’ school for the production and ending up with a whole lot of time just stuffing around thanks to being in the band and out of the jurisdiction of the horrible music teacher that was in charge of everyone in the show. Best place to be.
So yeah, was good. Would happily go back and do it all again 😛
My junior high (8-10) was horrible; small country town where everyone is related and outsiders are harshly judged. I spent a lot of time in the library, which I am very grateful for, really. Horrible girls doing a lot of bullying is my prevalent memory. Also getting in trouble a lot for not wearing my proper uniform and arguing about it (this did get me onto the debate team though, where I won every debate I took part in).
Senior high (11-12) was a blur; I had a couple of really horrible boyfriends (it was the first time anyone had shown interest, so of course I said yes to going out with them, even though I knew they were gross), and I got really sick for about three months. But, I did meet my best girlfriend there, and made some friends I still see a couple times a year.
Spent all my time in high school without a care in the world and hanging out with my mates.
13 years later I’m cursing at it all as I’m trying to get pieces of paper to let me do a uni course while all those “mates” I sacrificed the past decade and a half of education and decent work for I haven’t spoken to since. Teen me was an idiot.
EVERYONE is an idiot as a teenager. EVERYONE. Even cool kids, haha.
Heh. You sit there and hear a bunch of teenagers talk and you think there was no way we were ever that inane and idiotic. Then you really think about it and yes. Yes we were.
That sounds like me. Although they did keep me around as a friend for transportation :/
It was alright by me. In the top classes and in the football & rugby teams. I moved away from my home city though to a village not too far away though and ended up commuting in by bus each day for an hour each way. As a result as I was in my last year and a half of high school (sic(secondary school)), I wasn’t invited to much. Made me get by on my own, become a bit of a hermit, and gave me plenty of time to my PSOne and PS2 when it came out. No really bad memories though. We were lucky in that there weren’t really any dickish groups of kids in our year and everyone got on with each other more or less
eh.
8/10 they hired me right out of school as an IT Trainee, got my Cert IV and $18K burning a hole in my pocket over those 2 years and best of all it was a VET course I did so I got all of that during college school hours.
Best time of my life.
I hate who I was in high school. Caught lots of crap and got no respect, but I didn’t deserve it. As high school experiences go, I guess mine weren’t too traumatic, but they were such bland years, and I focused on all the wrong things, and got nothing but good grades out of those years.
Not worth dwelling on any further.
Moved around here (NZ) quite a bit growing up and a stint over in the UK so was the “new kid” quite a bit in school which was pretty tough trying to make new friends all the time but like most things there was good and bad times but people say school years are the best of your life the only way that would be true if id gone straight to jail after high school for the rest of my life.
Mediocre. Had a few friends, never really had any problems with others, but mostly flew under the radar. I essentially buried myself in books until after HSC. Upside was that, thanks to my mum’s collection of uni textbooks, I got a two year headstart on year 11/12 math… How I got through year 12 as the only person doing 4-unit math without getting any flak for it is beyond me…
0/10. It was awful. Primary school too.
Younger, smaller, smarter, fatter, and uglier than all my classmates. I was bullied constantly, suffered severe depression because of it, and entertained suicidal tendencies.
I was the only person I knew with any vested interest in computers and video gaming and felt very alone because of it.
11 and 12 were ok. All the bullies left to go elsewhere/pick up trades, I caught up and then passed most people in height and strength, and actually began to enjoy it somewhat.
Uni was amazing though. Finally found people who shared my interests, and made heaps of friends. Got over my depression and now am a very happy chappy.
How good was Uni compared to High School. So very different!
Soooo very much better!
I met one of my best mates in the first week of Uni, turns out we lived only 1.5km away and had been bumping into each other for years. Those were the bestest years 😀
I envy you people with your pleasant university experiences.
I still have horrible nightmares about my high school experiences to this very day due to the years of bullying I got from year 7 to year 12, as well as getting major trust issues, no self esteem, permanent injuries on my left leg and overall depression which I never seemed to be able to truly break free from.
So yeah I’d rate it a 0/10, would rather remove it from my brain entirely so I don’t remember at all
That sounds awful, here’s hoping that those issues you have mentioned are sorted (barring the left leg).
I didn’t mind high school overall. It beats adulthood. I tended to get along with most people.
However, there was a bully and his pose. He picked on me from year 1 to year 11 except for the year when I was in the junior school and he was in his first year of high school. As an adult I would have nightmares about the bullying but as time went on, I became the aggressor in the dreams and frustratingly, I would be stopped before I could hospitalize him in my dreams.
I had a crush on my Legal Studies teacher. That’s what happens when you go to a single-sex private school.
This is going to expose my teenage naivety:
I went to an expensive private school in Melbourne. I was surprised at how many openly racist jerks were around. (I said I was naive back then! I guess I assumed wealth bred out such traits).. even from friends. eg I walked up to a friend who was in the midst of some conversation at the exact point when he said “Well at least I’m not Asian”.
Then there was the bus trip back from an actual race track the “Motor Engineering” class, we were in front of a car with an Asian family and the racists were joking about shooting them.
Going to university, I was amazed at how much racism was pushed under the radar. It was all over toilet cubicles but not spoken publicly. It kind of felt like the cockroaches had been forced into hiding… I can only really remember two racist incidents as an adult after uni. One of them was in Rooty Hill.
Re: the Racism.
I share a very similar background (expensive private school in Perth) and the racism was there and very much alive during school.
At uni, the racism is indeed relegated to the toilet stalls. It’s a connection i have never thought about. For some it was surely a fad or a method to maintain face but for others, it is a pervasive element of their beliefs and attitudes.
I still have friends who crack racist jokes and it is starting to really hit me a lot deeper than before. I’m scared that the ‘racist’ label that the media tells us is attached to us as a nation may well be reality.
I know it’s off-topic but thank you for opening my eyes a little bit further 🙂 Naivety levels are shrinking
minus a billion out of 100. Hated it. Went to a smart person school when I was clearly a dummy. Met my ex who was from a competing school, who also ended up cheating on me for 7 years.
On the plus side, the teachers were (mostly) nice to me, and it was in walking distance to home with a Maccas and KFC in between heehee
Life after high school is awesome…
My time at high school was pretty decent. Lots of time to spend with friends, not a lot of responsibility. It helped that my grade was pretty level-headed on average too (not a lot of bullying, etc).
Having said that, there’s no way I would do it again. Just because life after school is so much better 😛
There was no such thing as a pile of shame until after school ended though ;_;
The school part was pretty good, it’s just the people part that ruined it.
I went to a pretty rough school but managed to escape any of the bad bullying. I remember bringing and amplifier in once, sneaking through a window at lunchtime, pulling the wires out of a PA speaker and hooking it all up. We then played death metal through the whole school PA system and there was nothing they could do to stop it! We also figured out that you could use a spark-plug gap tool to break into the IT lab and play Counter-Strike 1.4 any time we liked, as we had pencil cases full of different notes saying we had to go and do computer related things. I also remember frequently making smoke bombs out of toilet roles, potassium nitrate and sugar. We set one off in a corridor once, that was scary but hilarious. Writing this out now makes me realise I actually had a fair bit of naughty but harmless fun.. I could easily go on!
I enjoyed spending time with my mates but other than that everything seemed quite boring, add to it i was not mr popular which sucked.
High school was all right, though I was the kid selling weed at the back of the oval and I only bothered to go to classes that interested me like history and outdoor education. I got expelled after their was a principle change. we went from one that thought while me and my mates were in school we weren’t robbing petrol stations to one that wanted all of “our type” out of “his school”. IF I had to I would do it again……
sounds like the principle needed to relax…
Grades 1 – 5 were great. 6 & 7 absolutely horrible. 8 – 10 okay. 11 was great. 12 mostly bad.
Lots of douchebags in Darwin.
I only miss hanging with good mates. That’s it. Now no one keeps in touch. I do think maybe that’s a good thing. Overall I would not do again. I would chase up an apprenticeship or something.
It wasn’t perfect but overall pretty good. For whatever reason in primary school I made a best friend who I spent so much time with I was basically family. When we hit High School he became insanely popular with everyone due to being an incredible Rugby player (his older brother also played for Waratahs). I guess I was popular via association and it probably helped immensely because reality is that I’m a giant nerd and was terrible at sports.
It’s been over 10 years since HS and my friend and I have drifted apart. Reality is, we’re extremely different people and honestly have very little in common. Doesn’t change that he’s probably one of the best people I’ve ever known.
I hated it until i met some really good mates in grade 8. Small country towns suck for nerds but it was way more bearable when you have friends. I found school fairly easy so i had a lot of free time. All in all it was a pretty good time getting to talk to friends all day and just have fun. I got bullied but i also got over it.
got you the name Hotrossssssss though!
Man, so much negativity in here. Makes me kinda sad, although I guess I also feel pretty lucky that I apparently managed to get away unscathed.
Wow, sad to see so many poor high school experiences! I sympathise with many of you.
I can’t complain about my high school experience – I was a big kid so I was never bullied, but what the bullies didn’t know was that I was a softy inside. However my confidence in myself grew as I went through the years and started getting good at sport, continued getting good grades, then entered VCE and all the idiot kids had left and only the decent students remained to complete it.
We had a game we made up called tennis hack, using hacky sack and the school fence to essentially polay tennis with our feet. It became a daily thing and it grew in popularity to the point where teams would line up (it was 2 v 2). That would have to be one of my best memories.
Oh man Hacky Sack….that was soooooo 90’s but sooooooo awesome, lost a lot of lunch times kicking those things around. thanks for the memories.
Yo-yos! Chatter rings! Yoho Diablo! Tamagotchi!
I hated high school. Actually, I liked school work. I hated the bullies that drove me away from it.
Fuck you, bullies. All of you.
Not too bad overall.
I made some awesome friends I still have to this day.
But I was a bit of a problem teen. Always in trouble, or skipping classes. I was actually really smart at the work, but just got distracted way too easy. In the end, I got asked to leave after I told the vice principal I’d cut him if he kept calling me into the office to blame me for things I’d legitimately not done.
Yeah was pretty good actually, would do it again but probably slightly different.
I went to a pretty rough school, with lots of fighting, drugs, alcohol etc (which at the time I probably spent way to much time focusing on) Lucky for me I was already about 6ft when high school started and was good mates with the another 2 guys who were over 6ft. I never really had any problems due to this fact, the 2 mates both got in a lot more trouble than me ( I was a bit smarter the way I went about things than they were and usually talked my way out of any trouble) Funny thing is because of my height and size (and look) I was judged as being a trouble maker by association (which then led me to become a bit of a trouble maker). When in reality all I wanted to do was Jam in my mates mums shed (it was the 90’s and we were a garage band so most people kind of liked us for that as we were pretty decent). I always had good grades (without trying) had a few teachers who could see I was smarter than I looked and wanted to help (which I mostly resisted due to being a bit of a douche), but most others thought I was a drop kick and wrote me off (like they were really in a position to judge me).
All the parties, fights, good times and bad times I think are pretty important as they helped make me who I am. the only thing I regret is I was sometimes I was a bit of a dick to others when I probably could have handled it better (young, dumb and full of c*m as they say) but I was far from a bully and friends with most people in the school, and am still friends with heaps of my old mates even though we are spread throughout the world now.
High school.
Private school.
Class of 6.
1 teacher taught 4 of our subjects.
Was Banned from using computers from year 10 – 12.
I had to go to high school with Lance McDonald. You tell me what the experience was like 😛
I met some new friends, got to know old ones better, almost failed a bunch of classes because I was disorganised, unmotivated and bored, bullied and got bullied, but generally had a good time.
I taught the IT guys a thing or three about social, physical and virtual security. I taught them how server room doors can be opened with swipe cards or scissors, even if locked, how classroom doors can be opened by tricking teachers with the ol’ “left my books in there” ruse, and how you shouldn’t leave the main control panel for the internet proxy open on the server (free internet for half a year until I was caught and had to pay half of it back)
Now that the tables have turned (I’m an IT guy in a school) I know what to look out for and try and teach the kids that hacking is awesome, but only for stuff you own (e.g. your own PC, your Wii, the lock to your cupboard)
Who’s Lance McDonald?
During an IT section of our class we were to teach old people how to use computers, leading up to sending an e-mail. The admins created new login accounts for them all. What they overlooked and what we all picked up on very quickly was that these accounts had admin access. So we abused that. One guy went into the database and leached every photo that we weren’t suppose to access. One guy downloaded the entire Red vs Blue series. One guy downloaded something and printed off 600 pages of something.
Lance E. McDonald, the Black Annex guy.
Our school used to have a system where you’d pay for internet use. Get $5 at the start of term and that’d get you a hundred meg of browsing or so. Classes would have their own account, so SOSE, maths etc. would have a name and password that teachers would top up so students weren’t using personal credit for school work. If we discovered those accounts, they’d be flogged to death and run into the negative balance within hours (as the balance didn’t update immediately).
We got sick of it, so we created our own account with unlimited money. It was awesome fun spending your spare periods in the computer room downloading a gig or more (in 2003) of just random crap. Till we got caught. $500 later, I wasn’t laughing!
One day I needed to do something on the computer that required internet access. The IT teacher (who was also one of the admins) came over and typed in her password over my shoulder. “darcy” (it was so simple, I remember it, even to this day). We logged in to her account often enough, but never knew where to go from there, so we just used it to run programs in folders we had no access to. Dope wars was the most fun!
Looking back, it was 2001 and the school still had a lab with Windows 3.1 machines in it. Ouch!
Hated it.
A couple of the teachers were alright, and there were a handful of other students that were ok, but for the most part teenagers can be terrible people. I didn’t even go to the 10 year reunion a few years ago because I had no desire to revisit that part of my life.
Uni was much better.
Looking back it’d be a 5/10. Pretty much middled at everything. Had heaps of nerdy mates, but also got to hang out with lots of sports mates. Did ok in class, good at athletics, ok at team sports… Got bullied from 9-10 but never got to a physical point so that was ok. I’d say year 12 was awesome in the end, everyone stopped being at each other’s throats and actually just started getting along and having a yahoo together. The thing that surprised me the most was the first few years after high school I ended up having way more in common with the jocks/slackers than with the nerdy Christian group I hung with in school. Didn’t help I was an atheist but still 😛 Yay for beer and pub trivia bringing the world together!
I hated 95% of the people in my grade and 99% of everyone else. I got along ok with most of the teachers but hated study and schoolwork. I was unpopular, frequently bullied and the patsy for jokes ranging from lame to cruel. Later on I tried to endear myself to the masses by being the class clown but this only served to give them a reason to hate me more because now they had an excuse.
When I think back to all the times my parents/grandparents insisted that I would look back on those years as the best of my life my fingers involuntarily curl into fists. Being an adult is way, way better than being a kid and anyone who says otherwise is just lying to their own children so they don’t give up. I personally would have found it more reassuring to have a light at the end of a dark tunnel. I think my experience in high school is part of why I personally won’t ever have kids, though a small part of me wonders if my kid would have a better time of it if I raised them properly. I’d rather play it safe.
On the upside I didn’t pop pills or cut myself like a few of my friends did. I made it through with bad memories but no scars or serious emotional disorders.
School in general sucked. I appreciate the friends I made but the classes were boring and the bullying incessant. I freaking love being an adult.
I got thrown out about halfway through Year 11 but it was excellent until then. I did get beat up a few times but mostly I remember playing soccer and softball a lot, tooling around on the drums in the music rooms when I shouldn’t have been, smoking a lot of pot and getting way more sex than I did for like the next 10 years after high school ended. Great group of geek/hippie/outcast friends who used to mess with the popular kids and mostly get away with it.
High School, huh?
Well, I guess it was pretty average.
Being the smart, not particularly athletic kid in a small country town full of sportspeople?
Not a good combination.
A bit of verbal bullying during 7 – 10-ish, but after primary school, it just didn’t affect me much anymore, and I just stayed with my main group from public school.
10-ish – 12, though? Much better!
Most of the people that didn’t get along with me left, and I started getting to know the other people in my year, and made some cool friends.
I got along with all of my teachers, most of them were pretty great. Even if some were a little eccentric (I’m looking at you Ext. English and Psychics teachers).
Although, in years 11 – 12 I was not terribly motivated, and I effectively didn’t study. My HSC results weren’t that great… Still managed to get an offer to study at ANU, though. Deferred that, and was basically handed a one year traineeship at a local law firm. The idea being if I liked the work, and they liked me, then I could do my Dip Law through LPAB while working full time… I’m now in my second year working there, my deferred course at ANU having lapsed, and I haven’t started any study… Should probably figure out what to do with my life.
Anyway! High School?
Yeah, I guess it wasn’t too bad. Could have been worse.
Country high school: 1/10, would not recommend.
Who is the girl in the left of the photo?
She will be my new woman!
Didn’t like high school, for a lot of reasons. I also felt I wasn’t taught overly uselful things. Like sure some of it is helpful, but being taught in say year 10 how to do up a resume along with a cover letter or similar would’ve been nice. But that’s just me.
We did cover the subject of writing a CV. Once. Like one, lazy, phoned in period to check a box off a list. Skills for finding a job should have been an entire class in year 10 and VCE. I mean in VCE English we wasted half the year reading terrible books to what? Prove that we could read? That we could understand extremely blunt story telling. Unfunnily enough the illiterate girl in my year level wasn’t helped by the fact we were reading stuff that wasn’t written in English (Orthello’s a great play, but it’s not written in English).
I felt like 90% of English classes were about pleasing idiots who look at what the kids are learning and say ‘oh, they’re teaching Shakespheare, that sounds awfully smart’. Learning to read a manual for a printer or learning how to use search engines effectively would have been a much more practical use of our time. =P
Had a pretty good time in High school. I was an A grade student who slacked off when it came to assignments – so I’d lose marks for not doing stuff like that, but ace my tests. So ended up with a few A’s a lot of B’s and sometimes C’s… it wouldn’t of happened any other way. Slacking off consisted of me and one of my mates in constant conversation about videogames and technology, PC gaming, and console gaming, both of us armed armed with the latest info – him armed with PC Powerplay magazine knowledge and me armed with Hyper>> magazine knowledge. I still remember when the original PlayStation released I snuck 5 of us home at lunch time to check it out and then having to explain why the console was upside down… Lots of fun really, especially in “Business Data Processing” – computer class. Hours of typing and what not filled with talk of technology, slaps in the back of the head for talking to much… had a great teacher, you wouldn’t believe how smart this old lady was with tech! She kept everything up to date for the school, as soon as something knew came out on the market she’d work her magic to get it bought and paid for. She got a scanner when they were a separate device and $1000+ a digital camera $1000+ and dropped off by a helicopter (country town) when they first appeared, and also one of the first schools in the country to get internet access – one computer and you needed an internet licence, rest assured I was the first to pass the test and also nabbed the new upgraded Pentium 200 MMX PC as my normal computer I used in class too, mwahahaha… I still remember seeing the first primitive flash animations on the net, at the Stick Figure Death Theatre and getting a slap in the back of the head when the teacher would catch me (no she wasn’t an abuser, just from the old-skool, it was light enough to annoy ya but didn’t hurt – plus it was fun to see my other mates across the room getting a slap in the head when they were stuffing around…)
Also lots of Microsoft Golf after me and me mate finished our work and had time to spare.
All that recurring really, a fair few of us boys all had Sega MegaDrives so there was lots of game talk, but me and me mate always had more in depth conversations about up and coming stuff, Sony PlayStation, the latest PC cpu and video cards, up until the early talk of Sega Dreamcast. Good times.
So overall, the boredom of school filled with game and tech talk to get us through the day. School was just the six hours up until I could get back home and turn the console on 😉
Holy crap, Pentium 200 MMX!!!
I’m ….what….35 years old TODAY, I’m married with three kids, live in NZ and have a job within a rather huge company. It’s unskilled labor but I make enough to support my family without my wife working and have play money to boot.
Yeah….nah, wouldn’t go back to high school, I’m satisfied with what I was educated with, my year 10 pass was enough to give me basic math and English. I plan on backing my kids a bit more than my parent(s) backed me during my school years though.
The things I remember from high school???…..Sim city 2000 in the library, hiding in the library from troublemakers, kinda wishing I had enough courage to talk to girls more. After school Manga and model making and for some reason migraines and headaches….. . Video games I remember….Hmm, had a Mega drive, so Streets of rage 2/3, Thunderforce 4, Road rash 2 (which consisted of all night game sessions with my bro to see who could run all the way to the finish LOLOLOL), Flashback! Neo geo games down the shop, being in awe at the first time I saw polygons in video games (Virtua fighter) the first playstation and being utterly blown away by Resident evil!
I had a pretty pleasant high school experience, all things considered. I never quite had the right mentality for bullying to stick, which coupled with the fact that I was pretty into martial arts and a damn sight fitter than I ever have been since, I was never much of a target, despite being a particularly awkward, spotty nerd.
Marks wise I had the full spectrum, but had decided by year 9 that I was going into game dev and didn’t need marks (while true, whoever told me that probably shouldn’t have).
Wasn’t until uni where things got really bad. An awkward, artsy kid out from behind Mum’s apron for the first time thrust into the wretched bogan cesspool that is La Trobe Bendigo. Turned me into the twisted creature you see before you.
Sorry to hear about all the bad high school experiences. It’d be great if some of those c*nts that made it what it was could read through this and actually see how selfish they were/are.
Personally, I can relate to the ‘best years of your life’ statement. No worries, friends, cheap food, sports, some enjoyable things to learn, shorter days.
I wasn’t one to get bullied and definitely not one to dish it out. If anything, I’d step in if I saw something like that going on.
High schol wasn’t for me. Scratch that, the educational system wasn’t for me. I’m the first to admit I’m retarded but I am smarter than I act and I genuinely enjoyed a lot of the subjects… until I actually had to face them in a classroom environment. Then it’s all about how well you can fill in a test, very rigid progression and moving at the pace of the slowest student. I was always failing because I work best when I don’t dwell on anything. Explain it to me and move on or else I’ll get so bored I’ll tune it all out. Instead school was all about explaining one idea over the span of two weeks.
English class absolutely destroyed my love of reading. I mean who the hell reads a book one chapter at a time over the space of months? Read Chapter 1. The book might be ok but stop there because nobody else is going to go past that. Listen to someone who really doesn’t want to be standing there read Chapter 2. Maybe scatter in a few dumb exercises that amount to proof that you actually read the book (although it seems for most that meant just skimming the book for answers because even if you had read the book it was safer/easier).
The fact I hated Sport and PE is a crime considering that shortly after high school I learned that I absolutely love exercise.
I’m more about the smash it open and eat it’s brains school of learning. I swear I learned more by tearing apart my Nintendo than I did in all my school years. Funnily enough that sort of independent exploritory learning led to some wide skillsets and a pretty successful career path.
Socially it was great though. The first few years were so-so, I had good friends but we were all sort of off in our own worlds. Towards the end though I was friends with everybody. To this day I’ve got no idea how an introvert like me pull that off. =P
I’m kinda stunned at how many people had a bad time in high school. Those were some of the best years of my life! I threw myself into it head-first and was well-rewarded in terms of non-curricular learning, life experience, and acclaim.
Acting, stage management, art classes, visiting the old folks’ home, Rock Eisteddfod, debating, chess, cross-country, tennis, rowing, basketball, soccer, concert band, stage band, school council, toastmasters… if you could volunteer for it, I did it. So many memories of late nights biking home from school, then eventually driving…
So much of what I learned about time management, team management, project-planning, budgets, public speaking, fitness, self-defense had a firm grounding in what I learned at that place. (Even the less-savory stuff I learned so much about thanks to high school, such as sneaking into adult establishments, the art of playing hooky while on school grounds, drug culture, porn, piracy, sex-ed… there’s useful things to learn anywhere you look, when you’re young and inexperienced.)
People mention bullying a lot, which is also a surprise. We did our damnedest to make sure it was kept to a minimum where we were. There were obviously folks who didn’t get along with each other, but it was a big enough place to keep the antagonists separate from one another and civil. Worst we ever had was a few minor scuffles if a guy got caught sleeping with another guy’s girl. Probably helped having a graduating year of only 40 students and some really intense school camps of utterly grueling challenge in a kind of trial-by-fire that keeps folks banding together against their challenges instead of against each other.
Eg: Year 8 camp: Hike, canoe, and hike some more over a period of a week of orienteering with bushcraft (and borderline fieldcraft) being learned along the way, carrying the entire week’s rations, shelter, and gear on your back. When you’re done with 50km uninterrupted march and have to forage for and construct an apparatus for non-contact removal of simulated ‘nuclear waste barrels’ from a stream to safer disposal grounds, you’re entirely too tired to give much of a shit about petty playground politics and the other guff of being a teenager.
All these stories of keeping your head down to avoid bullies and just ‘get through it’ seem like just this… tragic waste.
High schools are full of teens. Teens are typically shitty, moody, horny losers. As a result a lot of people who weren’t bullied in the TV sense still feel like they had people pushing them around 24/7 and were constantly on the defensive. If you’re socially awkward I think high school just defaults to nightmare difficulty. =P
Considering that I am still in High School, I will make do with what I have. Summarised, pretty bad, although, I doubt it is the worst someone here has experienced. Originally I had gone to a religious private school for a short while, but after some incidents with knives, choking others and constant fighting, which caused me to be suspended several times that was just over a term, I was expelled (“Politely” asked to leave) just before the end of the first semester of the 7th Grade. I then experienced the joy of being the ‘new kid’, even though it had not been that long since the start of High School. So, after some more knives, violence and suspensions, I had acquired a pretty bad reputation, so I ended up having few friends, of which I told one of them about my past, which they then proceeded to spread it throughout the school, which made my reputation even worse. Thus ended the 7th Grade.
The 8th grade was mostly the same, except I had started sitting alone during breaks an in class and I had started attempting to get help about my mental “conditions”. The 9th grade consisted of me being alone a lot with my reputation being forgotten and along with it the barrier that kept people away. This is when the bullying restarted. I had people in every grade besides the 12th grade bullying me daily. Even the people who were normally the targets of bullies would join in and fill my bag with bricks, throw half-eaten food at me, etc. (One tried setting my books on fire but was caught). The 9th grade was also when I became a passive, spineless coward, who could fight, but was too much of a bitch to do anything.
The 10th grade started and consisted of me being alone again, with even the bullying stopping, I did not talk to anyone outside my family for days on end. Not much else to say about the 10th grade besides I was alone.
Funnily enough, my grades were pretty high throughout all of this.
And here I am now, ranting to people who are older than me online about my past because I am that desperate to talk to someone.
(Too lazy to go through and edit this, so, take it as it)
Well, I did just spend 40 minutes recounting my High School life thus far (Still in the 10th grade) full of violence (on my part), knives, knives, more knives, suspensions x 13, expulsion, knives, bullying, a shit-tonne of being alone and more knives, then my tablet decided that it would be a great time to restart for updates. I am not impressed.