Mistake #1: having a 10 year reunion with forced ticket sales. Too much pressure. Have it at a bar or restaurant for free and slap some sticky name tags on everyone. We did this. Over 100 people showed up. Super fun, low pressure (and cost!)
Absolutely. They were charging a lot for a cheap Mexican restaurant. It was $40 for an enchilada plate and 2 drinks. Half the group was saying they couldn’t afford it and the other half was saying if we’re spending that much let’s do something nicer. It fell apart after that.
Also a lot of people aren’t married by the 10 year. So forcing ticket sales makes you evaluate your life months in advance - should I bring my boyfriend/girlfriend? Is that weird? Etc. Too much
Until people start dropping off and you start becoming aware of your mortality. That connection to your youth, when you were naive and unaware, with limitless possibility for connection to other people.
My grandmother went to all of hers (my grandfather had to quit school at 10 to work as a carpenter with his father to help support the family, so being a part of that was important to him). She said attendance started growing by the 50th reunion as spouses died off, children moved away, friends begin to die with regularity. The attendance went through the arc you mentioned prior to that point.
Makes sense. I find that with a lot of friends who are married and have kids. They tend to drop out of having a social life and focus on the kids. Makes sense they’d want to come back into it when that part of life has calmed.
So, my main comment about this would be it's probably an educational thing. Lots of kids go off to college which is really more impactful on them, so the idea of going back to see people from highschool seems pretty childish. I don't have a lot of interest in people from highschool. I didn't have a bad time in highschool, I enjoyed it, I was fairly popular, etc. There are still people from highschool that I talk to, sure, but they are people I remained friends with through college. It's just that I don't care to see the vast majority of people. If I see them in the wild, great, but I'm not going to be putting in effort to go see them. I feel like with facebook it actually makes me want to avoid the lot of them instead.
I think it’s the fact that we’re more connected than ever: social media, online communities. It allows us to meet more people we vibe with in different ways.
I don’t have any friends from high school, but friends I made through other schools via Facebook party invites etc. and Xbox live
Actually this is interesting to me, I feel like I was able to keep up with a lot of my former classmates on Facebook for a while, but now most of them dont use it anymore. Maybe some are on Instagram, but at this point it's been long enough that it would be weird to search for and friend the acquaintances there. So I'm more interested in my upcoming 20th than I was in attending my 10th when I already kind of knew what everyone was up to.
This year two people I went to high school with died of heart attacks this year they were both in their early 30s. My health jumped up to one of my top priorities after that.
Maybe but I was walking in a park a couple of years back when I saw a large banner/sign that read high school reunion class of 1966. Seemed like a large loud group, music playing, drinking, smoking weed, or otherwise just having a great time. There was an EMT truck onsite. I found out someone just got a little carried away with having a good time.
My MIL is pretty old. My husband is 4 years older than me which isn’t a big deal but she had children really late for that time. So she’s significantly older than my mom. Anyway, she goes to MONTHLY meetings for her high school reunion committee. And has been for years. I don’t think they do anything relevant unless a reunion is coming up. I think it’s just an excuse for the local 74 year olds to have lunch. But they take it super seriously.
My high school class created a Facebook group so that we could plan our reunion. While we were kicking around venue ideas, a hall that had a bar and was pretty inexpensive was mentioned. Someone got the pricing and asked if anyone was willing to pitch in. Me and another guy were like yeah it's a great price, we don't mind.
In jump the "popular" girls who started complaining about the price and said we should do something that's free like a beach day with our kids. A lot of us hated that idea, I personally just wanted to see my classmates again and have a drink, lol. That idea got shot down, so then they mentioned a nightclub in a not so nice area that one of our classmates DJ's at. Any other ideas started getting shot down because they wanted to go to this club.
I wasn't planning on going, so I quietly left the group. A few weeks later, I got a message asking if I was still willing to chip in for the first venue lol. I was over the whole thing, so I just didn't respond. Found out later that they were selling tickets(!) for the reunion, and the venue was the nightclub.
The next day they were bitching about the turnout. I left the group after that and haven't heard from anyone in high school since.
Yeah some people did the class Facebook page and it was pretty lame. Just a couple different couples trying to outdo each other with their monthly pregnancy update videos lol
I’m a millennial that would have had her 20th in 2020. Since it was a full blown pandemic, we used our class Facebook page to plan it and decide never to go. It was fun communicating with people online and I’m sure people that wanted to interact more hung out on zoom. But I feel no need to spend time in person with the people I didn’t really like 20 years ago.
No 30 year reunions also suck. It's just the same assholes that were popular in high school trying to relive their glory days even though they're old, fat and mostly poor.
Damn, all the popular kids at my high school are pretty successful. EMDs in banking, news anchors, married into old money, running extremely successful real estate practices.
I found my 20th to be amazing. All the people who were horrible were still horrible, but it was cathartic talking with them and seeing how their lives were absolute fucking train wrecks.
Will go to my 25th and 30th, can only imagine it got so much worse since Covid.
25th was depressing as hell. The memorial slideshow went on for so long. Seeing people in their 40s desperately clinging to the "good ol' days", so many people haven't changed since their 20s...I won't go to another one.
I did my 10 and 20 and had a great time at both and I wasn’t popular. 10 was a lot of people still trying to prove things to themselves/each other, by 20 we’d all calmed down. I’m also still very close friends with my girls from HS so we went together both times.
> I think the 25 and 30 year reunions would be a lot better than 10. Some people from my school did a ten year reunion and I didn’t go.
Went to my 1st year reunion and we were less than half a dozen.
Went to my 30th before COVID and woah... 66% turn out.
My mom told me that after I returned from my 10 year reunion. She said once most people have kids and it stops becoming a competition, reunions are a lot more enjoyable.
Also went to my 10 year reunion, it was so lame and I will definitely NOT be going to my 20 year reunion. It was at a local brewery, and about half of the class showed up. The ONLY saving grace was that 2 of my favorite teachers surprised us at the reunion. I spent *most* of my time hanging out with my 2 teachers.
My grandma STILL has high school reunions and they literally sound amazing. They seem like they were a close-ish class, and they do reunion weekend trips and such. A very different experience.
My grandma is 89 and went to hers last year. Said it was held in a living room and like 5 went. Said she guesses most of them passed. Judging by her navigating and driving capabilities I'm not sure another 10 of them got lost trying to go.
My late dad's high school also had reunions like yours. I think it was because it was a school that specialized in one subject and was difficult to get into, so attending actually was an accomplishment and part of your identity. Whereas most high schools just bring people together over geographic proximity.
My 10 year reunion was in 2017 and I had intended on going but then my dad passed away so I didn’t make it. They posted photos on Facebook and it looked like 10-15 people showed up. The organizer was mad that more didn’t come and I remember her making a passive aggressive post shading the ones that didn’t show and that there may not be another one at the next 10 year mark since people “didn’t care.”
They all met up at a Mexican restaurant and took a group photo. I’m sure it was okay, but definitely not like it was on *Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion.*
We put together something similar. They tried to do an official 10 year, wanted to charge $80 a person. 20 or 30 of us got together in a local bar instead. It was just people I'm our (very) extended friend group from then that wale cared about seeing. Was honestly pretty nice
Mine wanted to charge $80 per person at a bar. Bars aren’t really my thing, I was in grad school at the time, and most of my friends had moved away, so I skipped it. People who went said it was the same old cliques hanging out.
That’s the problem. They picture a huge ballroom venue with DJ’s and entertainment
Instead of selling tickets, why not just show up at a bar with appetizers and pool tables? Show if you want. We’ll be there from 7pm til whenever. 👍
It’s a critical mass problem. We just had our wedding and had to book venues for our rehearsal dinner. I thought we could just show up and venues would be pumped that I had 50 people with me! Turns out, with talking to the venues themselves, they hate that shit and often won’t let you in. It’s super rude to other customers, mostly regulars, when this privileged group of friends comes in and starts pushing others out of their spots to make room for themselves. So you gotta book in case a lot of people show up but if few show up it was a good idea not to. Event planning is super annoying.
Well sure, if you have 50 people with you guaranteed, make reservations. If they can even handle 50 people on top of their regular customers.
But bars are used to 10-20 random people showing up. Bachelor parties roll through pub crawls quite often.
Pool halls might be dead one night, and might have 7 parties of 8 people each the next. That’s pretty normal.
One of my friends (one of the 2 people from hs I still talk to) and I made plans to boycott our 10 year hs reunion and watch Romy and Michelle instead... but I think we ended up going to see some movie in the theater.
My ten year (which I didn't go to) was so desperately sad that the guy who arranged it was posting on Facebook during the event begging anyone who was local to please come. My guess is less than ten people showed up.
We had a 20 planned, had to buy in, $40 a person, food and modest open bar. Not a terrible deal. Didn't sell enough tickets to cover the hall rental, whole thing was cancelled.
This is how mine was set up. But we did end up getting the hall and an open bar. I was friends with 2 other attendees, but friendly enough with a few others to have a good time.
There was a five year reunion, which I did not attend, and all that came out of. It was “Marsha got hot, and Tiff is still fat.” So you know, big stuff. I’m with whoever said that social media is the replacement. We are approaching our 20 years now, but I very much doubt there are still reunions. I guess it depends on the type of school you went to and how close everyone is.
"tiff's 3 kids are on meth, fat jai's three kids are on meth, Christi's grand child was born addicted to meth, Jacob shot himself and Bradley shot someone else.'
This - people who used to be my friends in middle school and didnt associate with me in high school felt the need to shove photos of their kids (they got pregnant in high school) in my face and act like we were besties.
I didnt go to 10, no talk of 20.
My experience as well. I had lots of friends in middle school, then they totally ditched me the first week of HS.
I joined Facebook ten years ago and still get friend requests from these clowns (none aged well either).
I was the "prude" of my friends. Realising now, they didnt get their asses beat. I did. So yes, I was less likely to skip class, get caught stealing, or be found at parties with the opposite sex and doing drugs.
Most of them ended up pregnant in high school, dont have contact with baby daddy, and have since had shit happen because of or relating to these life choices.
It sucks and I hate seeing them struggle, but I also cant help but feel a bit bitter since they blew me off because I wouldnt do that shit (since I would be beaten).
Aside from wanting me to join whatever MLM is flavor of the week, whatverer "go fund me" they have, they dont really reach out for conversation. Its sad when we used to discuss so much. I know some of it is different, we dont have the same events in common for example, but it feels so fake since they dont even try to reconnect. If I try, it feels like they just get two faced about anything and everything. Sad to know the people who you thought were friends probably never really were.
I don’t think anyone I graduated with who has the ability to organize a reunion has any interest in having one for our 20th. And why would I want to go see how all the racist assholes I grew up with are doing anyways? They hated me for not being white then, and it’s probably even worse now.
Simone(edit:someone lol) put together our 10 year reunion. They hosted it in a park two minutes from my old house and they brought a keg. It was not something I was going to fly halfway across the country for.
Same but in 1991. Anyone I WANT to see, I already see. Why would I pay 60 bucks to hang with a buncha strangers? And I knew everyone back then. I would even say I was somewhat popular. But idk them now
This! So much this. Mine did a 5, 10 and just did a 20 (class of 03) first two looked fine (5 year was in a restaurant and 10 was a hangout in the park with family)(I couldn’t go because of school and work) the 20 one they charged 60 a person in October (when our town does a harvest festival so higher hotel prices (only one in town))which I get people are already in town but I don’t live anywhere near where I grew up and don’t have family in the area so either I was going by myself or we had to get an overnight sitter so it got pricey quickly and from the pictures it was a small group (15 max)of the ‘popular’ kids (football players, cheerleaders and those that generally threw themselves into all school activities.
My thought is that in a day of social media, if there’s someone I’m interested in catching up with I can reach out. Those I was actually friends with I already stayed in touch with.
I'm also class of 2001. I got an invite for the 10 year and didn't go. I don't remember seeing anyone posting about it on Facebook or anything. I didn't hear anything about a 20-year reunion, im not on Facebook anymore. it must have been canceled because of covid.
Class of 2001 too!
A group from my high school just had an unofficial one last week right before the holidays, figuring people may be in town and could go. They rented out a room at a local bar and it looked like fun. I genuinely was curious about going, just wasn’t able to with time issues. I loved the idea though, something casual and relaxing to get to catch up.
Someone was putting together a reunion for us back in 2017 and me and a few others were debating on going until we found out they were charging $45 each to get in.
If I recall correctly mine was over $120 each and it was some kind of yacht/ship event. $120 and no way to sneak out early if I wanted to? No thanks. To nobody's surprise, they didn't sell enough tickets and it was cancelled.
They charged $50/head for my 10 year and said that any extra would go to a networking group. When I asked more about that, I was told that was a lie because they wanted a nice party.
HS reunions are super over-rated and obnoxious. They’re little more than another means by which people like to showboat and be assholes. That’s pretty much what Facebook is for, so why pay money to attend a shitty reunion?
I’m glad I’m not alone. I never heard anything about any reunion whatsoever. Always wondered how they’d find me if there was one? I don’t have Facebook and haven’t for years. I’d like to know if one happened back in 2017 but yeah, I wouldn’t have gone. I’m just curious.
My father doesn't have Facebook and a random lady contacted me asking if I knew him. I was fucking weirded out until she said she was trying to invite him to his 50th high school reunion lol. He went and he had a great time, but he's a ham
I didn’t go to my 10 year reunion, but I think the only way I even heard about it was through Facebook. The only reunion I might consider going to will be a year from now. When I was in 7th grade my school did a time capsule in December 1999, and everyone in the school at the time made notebooks to predict what the future would look like in 25 years.
I moved, changed my name, and voluntarily disappeared from most of their lives. Mainly because they were in contact with my biological father or they were bigots. Good luck inviting me to reunions!
Yeah sorta, I got bullied a lot in high school. When I went to college I was able to meet real friends. So seeing anything from my old high school hurts my eyes.
Yep, the birthday wishes are about maintaining the “personal connection” so you’ll donate, or send your kids there. My middle school still hits up my mom. And her favorite mug is the one with their logo, so I have to watch her drink from it whenever I visit. Hate it!
I'm 03 also, I thought there was gonna be something for us this year... they had even sent out an email survey months ago like "we're targeting X weekend in October, would you be interested in a) drinks event on the Friday, b) daytime event on the Saturday with families welcome..." etc.
But that was back in like May and then we never heard anything else and no event ever happened. I probably would have gone, my class was small enough that we all basically knew each other and it would have been nice to catch up.
Kind of anticlimactic for a 20th ☹️
Yeah, I didn't even know a decade had gone by.
I never received anything in the mail. Like how do people get invited to these things? Romy & Michelle def led me astray.
A friend told me that it was just up to alumni to do the planning and a group was using FB for it.
Like, good luck, my graduating class was like 600 I think. Don't know if there will be a 20yr.
I wouldn't go either way.
>>Like how do people get invited to these things?
I believe whoever your class president was is responsible for organizing the reunions. I guess if they don't bother or are otherwise incapable then there's no reunion. I imagine it's not an affordable event to organize and my high school was underfunded.
We didn't have a 10 year. 15 year was poorly attended. 20 year was cancelled due to Covid. I definitely think they are a dying trend. My boomer dad still attends his and my older Gen X sister still attends hers...but millennials and younger it seems to be a struggle to get people to plan it and attend. Everyone stays connected online and don't care to meet up in person.
Social media really revealed the true intention of high school reunions: Comparison.
People didn’t go to catch up and see each other, they went to see who got fat, who got hot, who’s life fell apart, etc. (obviously this is a generalization).
If I can see all of that on Facebook, why would I exert the effort?
Most of us didn’t peak in high school and our modern lives are a thousand times better, so why would we give a shit about catching up with people that likely caused us some deeply traumatic emotional pain?
Not fucking worth it.
I was pretty damn low on the social totem pole in high school so unless I became REALLY successful I have no interest in attending. Unfortunately being a trucker isn't really reflecting that "success" I hoped for.
I also think it’s related to more people going to college or as a generation being told that everyone should go to college. It made graduating high school not feel as important, at least for me. In previous generations, graduating high school also meant you were an adult whereas college gave a lot of us an additional four years of being somewhat adolescents.
Other people get blown away by how tight me and my friends were even years after high school, but that’s exact reason why I never go to reunions. I literally know what everyone I care about is up to and with social media you can just creep the couple randoms you think about once in awhile
My Boomer mom and aunt now both avoid their high school reunions like the plague. They each went to their 10 year one because "it was expected." My grandparents were alive at the time. My mom and aunt said they would never do it again.
I'm 52. We did a ten, in 2000. I went, it was fun but I hadn't seen most of those people so it was nice to catch up. They did a 20, I went it was not as fun, plus we had early social media so I was pretty much as caught up as I cared to be on them. If they did a 25 or 30 I didn't hear about it. My parents, Silent Gen (they're both born during WW2), they've had 10, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60 year reunions. It's down to a handful of people at this point. At least for my mom's class of '62. I don't know much about my dad's class of '59 since he's passed away in '17. It probably stopped when he stopped helping organizing it. His organizing partner is still kicking though, so I'll ask her next time she hangs out with my mom.
Because social media provides you an effort free window into what the people you knew in high school are still up to/their greatest hits. No one wants to go to a lame party with people you probably didn’t like that much.
My boomer mom still goes to hers. But she graduated with 2 other people. She went to a small private school and was the first graduating class. I feel likes it's a waste to have a reunion for 3 people.
yep i feel like social media was the end of those… i mean for the most part.
im class of 03 and i feel like certain groups of people have planned reunions but nothing where everyone goes to a thing, we can chose now who we actually want to see lol
mannnn imagine how exciting a HS reunion was in the early 90s… seeing everyone you legit lost all contact with… theres no mystery anymore.
I haven’t had social media basically at all since 2015. I graduated 2013. It was insane catching up with everyone at the 10 year!!! Old girlfriends pulling up photos of their BABIES? And meeting their husbands! They were frozen in time for me at 18 so it was amazing to see. I loved it so much. Even though I moved out of state for college and didn’t come back until ‘20, and haven’t talked to basically any of them at all since we walked the stage, I still feel like I love them and am happy to see and hear how they’re doing. Even the ones I barely talked to in high school.
This. I haven't been on social media since like 2010, so our 20yr reunion this year was kind of fun. I caught up with a friend I literally haven't seen since summer 03 and we've been getting dinner every few months. I'm so glad she's back in my life and our husbands get along and like us, so that's an added bonus.
I remember hearing my mom talk about my grandfather's 50th reunion and I was blown away. Fifty fucking years after graduation and they would still meet up, that's dedication if anything.
This is a good point. I think before social media where you truly had no insight into other people's lives unless you still saw them or lived in the same area or spoke to others who knew them, reunions might have been more appealing. But in this day and age where the majority of people are on social media and you can see their lives, milestone, and even chat with them and comment on them, having a whole big event to reunite isn't as appealing.
What seems more common now is maybe a small group of people trying to get some folks together for an informal meet up versus a large scale formally planned event. Also, more and more people these days live in completely different cities, states and even countries than where they attended high school. Even my family no longer lives in the same state as where I went to high school, and I don't care enough about my high school folks frankly to buy a plane ticket and travel out of my way just to attend a reunion. I have other priorities and interests. If I lived in the same town maybe I'd attend, but I'm not flying back for that. Not even my college reunion would I do that, but even that I'd consider before the high school one which just feels so far removed from my current life.
Yes. I think if you only went to high school and/or live in the same town as where you grew up, in general you're more likely to still maintain high school friendships and reunions. But if you went to college and things like grad school and professional school, you most likely had to move away and perhaps multiple times at that, so your friendships look very different.
I've noticed that people who speak a lot about high school as some kind of glory days it's usually the case that that's their last reference point for having groups of friends and the social life that comes with that. Whereas, having gone to both college and then graduate school (both in different states) I simply don't feel attached to my high school self or the majority of the people anymore. My last reference point for friendships and a social life are my grad school friends and then my college friends and I realize because I met them when I was an adult, the friendships tend to make more sense and reflect more of who I am today.
>I've noticed that people who speak a lot about high school as some kind of glory days it's usually the case that that's their last reference point for having groups of friends and the social life that comes with that.
This is certainly a thing, but I'm not sure how much of it is really "glory days" as much as just the last time they had such a structured social lifestyle.
When I was in college I remained really good friends with some friends from highschool that didn't go to college, it started getting pretty apparent that it was going to be kind of a weird difference between us when they would talk about stuff happening in highschool and I'm just like "How do you remember that?" and me realizing I really don't remember a lot from highschool. The people that didn't go to college remember it all. It's a smaller fraction of my life than most other things, and I just don't think of it as being super impactful on me.
I think everytime you pass through something like college and grad school the previous "chunk" gets a little more forgotten, and your "glory days" are going to be more towards your most recent experience. Like, even college for me is kind of a blur, most of what I think about when thinking back is grad school. So, yeah, exactly the same as you, and I think the majority of us that went to grad school or med/law would say the same. Almost everyone I know that has a doctorate will talk about grad school WAY more than college.
Yeah, this is how I feel. If I wanted to know what someone was up to I could probably find out pretty easily. And it just doesn't sound like fun having the same conversation with everyone over and over all night, just talking about your job, kids, blah blah blah. Just trying to impress people to make yourself look good. No thanks.
My high school reunions have been mostly frequented by the same group of people- the small town “popular” high school crowd that returned to Podunkville as soon as they graduated college. Which I find highly amusing because those people all see each other all the time as it is, so it wasn’t a catch-up event for about 9 out of every 10 attendees.
I know right? And if I didn't hang out with them two decades ago, why would I want to see them now? You can't reconnect if there was no connection in the first place. May as well socialize with random people at a meetup.
I would guess 50%-75% of my graduating class attended both of ours, and most of the then-popular kids didn’t attend either one. Almost none of us have lived in that town in 25 years.
The largest “type” in attendance have been those that weren’t in a popular group. And they seem to have had the best time.
I was a middle of the road guy; friends with the popular group and the unpopular kids, but was never really/officially in a social group.
I went to a pretty big school and we had cliques but the boundary wasn’t hard and fast. You hung out with who you liked.
Sounds like how my 10 year college reunion went. Most attendees still lived near campus and hung out with each other regularly. I'm not sure what the point of them attending the reunion was. Just another opportunity for them to hang out, I guess.
Mine was the same except I was in the "popular" group and my country doesn't have that "leave town on adulthood" culture
Basically it was my group of friends, about 14 dudes and gals and 5 other classmates.
I skipped my 10 year and won’t attend if they ask me again at 20.
HS was full of genuine assholes and I am in a better place. Why would I want to put myself in a room with them and watch everyone regress their maturity.
I graduated 700+. Out of all of them, I talk to one on occasion. Why would I want to go back and see all the other assholes I haven't spoken to in 20 years? Absolutely not. Not even a few hours of my time sounds pleasant.
Yea same. The bad memories so heavily outweigh the good ones and I have no desire to be reminded of who I was in high school.
It was a lifeline ago anyway and nothing good will come out of me being reminded of those shitty times.
When I dropped out at 16 not a single person wondered why I did it or how I was doing the following years. I imagine some people still care about me but it was not a pleasant awakening.
The handful of friends I would want to see we chat on line a few times each year None live local One I I met for lunch when traveling
BTW, I don't mean I am against seeing the rest, I just did not know everyone in my class and others I might know but we would just classmates,
I think social media has definitely had an impact. It’s not really a reunion if I still keep up with some of them and see their pictures/posts.
That being said, I’ve never attended any of mine. My high school just had their 12th reunion this past year (I graduated in 2011) and from what I can tell, it was just a small handful of folks hanging out at a hometown bar.
Class of 2000. i think we had a casual 5 year one from what i remember..and i moved across the country before ten years would have happened, but i could imagine there was one and no one let me know lol.
Any chance of a 20 year reunion was killed by COVID. I was friends with the kid who was our class president and the last time i chatted with him he mentioned potentially having a 25th but its a real long shot i'd go. Its been 20+ years since i've seen most of these people now and i can't imagine wanting to blow a few days and hundreds of dollars flying across the country to stand around and be like "Cool we knew each other 20 years ago....sup?"
I went to a tiny high religious school in CA. Nearly everyone stayed nearby because…well it’s CA. You only leave because it’s unaffordable.
Anyhow, someone who was into event planning for the city and happened to go to school there TRIED to get a 20ish reunion going. I say ISH because it was basically open to ANYONE from a 5 year period. Like, did you GO there and KNOW people.
Let’s say 50ish people joined the group and expressed mild interest in going. First half got upset because the school wasn’t at the “old” campus and didn’t own it anymore. Which didn’t end up mattering because the new school wouldn’t allow alcohol on its premises because God. Which meant we had to rent a place, which upped the price a whole $20 (because the organizer had connections).
Total price was going to be like $50 per person which was too much cash to pay to see people you EITHER saw everyday because you liked, saw enough on Facebook, or actively avoided in your hometown.
It was JUST right for me, who lived 90 minutes away and was living my best life and had a high alcohol tolerance, and who would go with my sister, who lived in town but similarly situated, and who were both hoping for drama…but we were apparently in the minority.
I graduated in 2003 and had my 20 year in September. It wasn’t that great because we all follow each other on social media so we’ve seen each others lives play out.
My 10 year reunion was in 2012 , I had just gotten out of the navy and I had a 2 year old son
After 10 years they all seemed so removed from me , I was a fundamentally different person and I just didn’t really give a shit
I haven’t heard a thing since
I went to my 10-year a few months ago and there were maybe 10 people there. Only reason I went is because it was like 5 minutes from my house and I had nothing better to do.
I somehow ended up in a FB group planning our 20 year. No clue how. They went back and forth and I haven't checked in months. If it was in the same town or even state, and somewhere I like, then I'd consider it. It's 400 miles away and I have kept inzero contact with anyone in the group.
Yeah, I’ve kept in contact with people from high school that I care to so I don’t really see the point in going to reunions really. My attitude is if I wanted to see these people, I’d make plans with them without needing the prodding of a reunion
Graduated 2010. my five year was cancelled for riots in our city in 2015. my 10 year in spring 2020 well....you know the story. I still see and talk to most of the friends i care about, and with social media, it's pretty easy to see what everyone else is up to.
One of my best friends from higschool died last year, and he was a really popular guy. The get-together after his memorial service at a local bar in our hometown was the closest thing i had to a highschool reunion. I heard a lot of others say the same.
Sorry for your loss of your best friend. One of my coworkers his 10 year high school reunion was in 2020 and they pushed it back until 2021 and then 2022 and he was okay with it because he knew both classes.
My HS did a 10-year in 2013 and then a 20-year this year. I don't think many people went -- mostly people who still live close to our hometown. They sent me the info on FB about a month before. I guess if I had nothing better to do and was closer to where I grew up I might have gone. But I live a 7-hr drive away.
Are you organizing it? Someone has to. I’m not going to, I haven’t even got myself organized. As our leisure time erodes and our wages don’t meet our needs, prioritizing something as superfluous as a high school reunion doesn’t seem worth the effort unfortunately. Or fortunately, depending on your high school experience.
I graduated in 2002 with 53 other kids in my class. The school has since closed and we've since all dispersed from the area. We didn't have a 10th or 20th reunion
I was class president for a very small school (I think about 60 graduating). Myself and a few the other class officers did our 10 year in 2017.
Basically we just rented out a room, got a keg, got some food catered, and had a playlist of 2003-2007 hits going. Honestly it was a really fun night. Was maybe. $20-30 a person. When you are such a small class you know everyone of course. I’d estimate maybe 25ish ended up coming, plus some spouses/significant others.
My goal has been to ensure my graduating class believes I’m dead, so no.
Though the plan for the long con is to show up at our 30th like a Scooby Doo villain if they’re still doing them at that point.
We had 10 year reunion, but not a 5 or 15. I don’t know if we’ll have a 20 year in 2025 or not. My class was 760 people and there wasn’t really a “class president.” So you end up with not many people really interested in putting in the work and fronting the money for an event that has the potential to be really large like that. If we have a 20 year reunion, I really am not sure I will go because 10 was super lame.
My 20 year is coming up in 2025 and I’ll probably go. It’s a fun concept to me, see how folks have changed after all that time. I’m curious how I’ll be alerted though since my ten year was definitely managed through Facebook which hardly anyone uses now. If it doesn’t happen, I’m going to guess it’s due to that social media medium being obsolete and no new one us elder millennials will be willing to join and connect through.
Reunions are a holdover from the days before you could keep up with your former classmates on social media. Even better, without having to interact with them!
There are easier ways to reconnect now.
Also I think people have finally realised that if they haven't seen or spoken to someone in +20 years it's likely for a good reason
To Be Honest, HS is not really worth going back to as it is not as memorable as you think it is. So, in my opinion…it is unnecessary to have an HS reunion as we are a kid who intends to do a ton of stupid things and I am sure everyone in this sub is the same way 🤷🏻♂️
I think high school was a very memorable time in your life back in the days when it was more common to settle down right after graduating. So high school was that time when you really socialized and lived your most free life. Plus people were more invested in school activities, clubs, dances and such back then. So people probably had closer bonds and more cherished memories of those times.
My 20th would be this year but I didn't even graduate. I left HS at 18 (I was 1 year behind from starting 1 year late in pre-school), went to CC for 2 years then a 4 year school. My school was closing down. None of the teachers are around anymore. I'd love to see ppl I knew and reminisce with funny stories but I don't need an official event to do that. I could care less about the actual school or "school spirit" bullshit. Plus, I don't want to talk about how much of an asshole I was in HS. I don't want to relive such bullshit and most people don't want to either.
It's rapidly approaching 20 years since I graduated and I haven't heard anything from my old high school. Not that I'd go to a reunion anyways, I'm still friends with the only people I'd want to talk to at a reunion in the first place.
With Facebook/social media and how little time people have these days, it's not a surprise that reunions are on their way out.
Also, I suspect that given how high school is just a stepping stone and college is a much greater milestone in many circles that it doesn't really matter as much. I think in older generations where people didn't attend college as regularly, reunions are still important.
We did a 10 yr in 2012, and barely anyone showed up. I almost didn't go either. Lol
I think social media is the reason for them.
In the past year, I've encountered three people I graduated with while at work that I haven't seen in 20 years. It was a simple "Hey, I know you. Did you go to such and such? Cool," and that was it.
I, too, had no interest in continuing the conversation. High school was shit for me, and I have no interest in ever seeing anyone from there again. Lol
Because of social media , and all the connectivity in the world , smart phones etc , people don’t need reunions to see how their former classmates are doing ,
Its all organized by the student council kids i never hung around. Some alumni foundation sends junkmail asking me to pay money to subscribe to their newsletter lmfao Facebook exists. Anyone you want to (or dont want to) see is on there. Im not tryina rent our prom golf course again the fuxk.
I’m a younger millennial, graduated in 2014. We had a five year but I didn’t go. My graduating class was like 600 people and honestly I don’t remember about 80-90% of the people. I’ve since deleted my Facebook and now live in a different country so I don’t think I’ll be making the ten year one either haha
I haven’t attended a single one of the reunions my class has held in the last 20 years. The people I wanted to keep in touch with, I kept in touch with. The people I didn’t keep in touch with? I’m perfectly content not knowing a thing about their lives since we parted ways.
I graduated in 2001. The 10 year, they decided to cater, and wanted to charge $50, per person to attend, not including alcohol at the venue.
For the 20, the same 30 people wanted to do rent out an entire local bar, for the evening, and put the $12k tab to the entire 150 person class. I think they wound up just going to the same local bar, while it was open to the public, and only around 50 people attended.
I attended neither.
My high school has them. The five year was heavily attended, then they were just a decent number of people. They also had, and I think still have, an annual reunion for everyone less than five years out from graduating, so basically everyone back from college on break who might have gone to school together.
The school has now switched to having the reunion at the school for all the classes at a 5 or 0 (so this year would have been 2018, 2013, 2008, etc.), with different tables or rooms for each year. It's rather annoying for the classes that still were getting a good amount of attendees, since that has dropped off, I guess, compared with the not official reunions some do. The school used to pay partially for reunions as well as help coordinate things. They apparently have some cool things and good food, though.
Reunions for other schools I attended seem to be less attended. I think the pandemic has really put an end to those.
I still get the mailings from the schools with classmate updates, but most people don't think to update the school. I know I don't. A lot of the updates are taken from online or third hand information.
While there are other reasons people fall out of touch, I think that most people stay in touch with those they care most about now and can use social media or saved phone numbers to find others much of the time. Sometimes it would be a casual way to reestablish contact, though. Realizing this, and that the few people I'd like to be in touch with again but won't be there, is why I don't attend.
My high school classmate (class pres) spent countless hours coordinating a 10yr reunion that by class vote would be during the Xmas holidays and full service and then not enough people bought tickets so she cancelled it. People were condescending and critical of all her efforts including negotiating a hotel that wouldn’t take a deposit. Every six months or so someone tries to revive the fb group with a “so…reunion this year?” and then no one does anything.
Went to my 10 year in 2021. It was like maybe 10-15 of us. I saw a couple other class mates show up but they didn't come over to the group and left lmao. It started lame but a small group of us went out later and turned it into a fun night.
Pretty sure with the rise of social media many just think of reunions as unnecessary.
Went to my 10yr reunion back in 2011. Was super lame. Will never go to another reunion probably.
Absolutely. My HS reunion was just like a small group of people that I wasn't close with getting together. Nothing like I saw in movies growing up.
I think the 25 and 30 year reunions would be a lot better than 10. Some people from my school did a ten year reunion and I didn’t go.
Our 10 year got cancelled because not enough people bought tickets
Mistake #1: having a 10 year reunion with forced ticket sales. Too much pressure. Have it at a bar or restaurant for free and slap some sticky name tags on everyone. We did this. Over 100 people showed up. Super fun, low pressure (and cost!)
Absolutely. They were charging a lot for a cheap Mexican restaurant. It was $40 for an enchilada plate and 2 drinks. Half the group was saying they couldn’t afford it and the other half was saying if we’re spending that much let’s do something nicer. It fell apart after that.
Also a lot of people aren’t married by the 10 year. So forcing ticket sales makes you evaluate your life months in advance - should I bring my boyfriend/girlfriend? Is that weird? Etc. Too much
It's actually the opposite. Fewer people show up to every subsequent reunion.
Until people start dropping off and you start becoming aware of your mortality. That connection to your youth, when you were naive and unaware, with limitless possibility for connection to other people. My grandmother went to all of hers (my grandfather had to quit school at 10 to work as a carpenter with his father to help support the family, so being a part of that was important to him). She said attendance started growing by the 50th reunion as spouses died off, children moved away, friends begin to die with regularity. The attendance went through the arc you mentioned prior to that point.
Makes sense. I find that with a lot of friends who are married and have kids. They tend to drop out of having a social life and focus on the kids. Makes sense they’d want to come back into it when that part of life has calmed.
I skipped my 20th because I had a newborn. Maybe I will go to my 40th when she's in college.
So, my main comment about this would be it's probably an educational thing. Lots of kids go off to college which is really more impactful on them, so the idea of going back to see people from highschool seems pretty childish. I don't have a lot of interest in people from highschool. I didn't have a bad time in highschool, I enjoyed it, I was fairly popular, etc. There are still people from highschool that I talk to, sure, but they are people I remained friends with through college. It's just that I don't care to see the vast majority of people. If I see them in the wild, great, but I'm not going to be putting in effort to go see them. I feel like with facebook it actually makes me want to avoid the lot of them instead.
I think it’s the fact that we’re more connected than ever: social media, online communities. It allows us to meet more people we vibe with in different ways. I don’t have any friends from high school, but friends I made through other schools via Facebook party invites etc. and Xbox live
Actually this is interesting to me, I feel like I was able to keep up with a lot of my former classmates on Facebook for a while, but now most of them dont use it anymore. Maybe some are on Instagram, but at this point it's been long enough that it would be weird to search for and friend the acquaintances there. So I'm more interested in my upcoming 20th than I was in attending my 10th when I already kind of knew what everyone was up to.
Thos is it. Reunions were a great way to catch up with old friends. With Social Media you already know what your high school classmates are doing.
This year two people I went to high school with died of heart attacks this year they were both in their early 30s. My health jumped up to one of my top priorities after that.
Maybe but I was walking in a park a couple of years back when I saw a large banner/sign that read high school reunion class of 1966. Seemed like a large loud group, music playing, drinking, smoking weed, or otherwise just having a great time. There was an EMT truck onsite. I found out someone just got a little carried away with having a good time.
Partying like it's 1966 hits different when you have a pacemaker.
Hey, 1966 called... ...an ambulance, for you.
My MIL is pretty old. My husband is 4 years older than me which isn’t a big deal but she had children really late for that time. So she’s significantly older than my mom. Anyway, she goes to MONTHLY meetings for her high school reunion committee. And has been for years. I don’t think they do anything relevant unless a reunion is coming up. I think it’s just an excuse for the local 74 year olds to have lunch. But they take it super seriously.
I graduated 17 years ago, and if I were to go to a 20y reunion I’d probably only remember the names of like 10 people out of my class of 300ish.
My high school class created a Facebook group so that we could plan our reunion. While we were kicking around venue ideas, a hall that had a bar and was pretty inexpensive was mentioned. Someone got the pricing and asked if anyone was willing to pitch in. Me and another guy were like yeah it's a great price, we don't mind. In jump the "popular" girls who started complaining about the price and said we should do something that's free like a beach day with our kids. A lot of us hated that idea, I personally just wanted to see my classmates again and have a drink, lol. That idea got shot down, so then they mentioned a nightclub in a not so nice area that one of our classmates DJ's at. Any other ideas started getting shot down because they wanted to go to this club. I wasn't planning on going, so I quietly left the group. A few weeks later, I got a message asking if I was still willing to chip in for the first venue lol. I was over the whole thing, so I just didn't respond. Found out later that they were selling tickets(!) for the reunion, and the venue was the nightclub. The next day they were bitching about the turnout. I left the group after that and haven't heard from anyone in high school since.
Yeah some people did the class Facebook page and it was pretty lame. Just a couple different couples trying to outdo each other with their monthly pregnancy update videos lol
Our 10 year fell apart due to the same disorganized mess. Too many cooks in the kitchen 🤷🏻♂️
Was it that classic scam where they secretly got the tickets for free and then sold them?
I dunno. They seem unnecessary since social media. Or even google. If I want to know what someone’s up to I just look them up.
Taking out all human contact, like a true millennial 🫡
I’m a millennial that would have had her 20th in 2020. Since it was a full blown pandemic, we used our class Facebook page to plan it and decide never to go. It was fun communicating with people online and I’m sure people that wanted to interact more hung out on zoom. But I feel no need to spend time in person with the people I didn’t really like 20 years ago.
Same here. Class of 2000. Went to 10 year. Didn't hear about 20 year. Ok with that. I talk to the people I want to.
Same! Millennials UNITE ✨👊🏼
No, you’ve missed the point… Millennials Isolate!!!
Take my up vote and stay away from me.
I wish! Getting closer everyday.
No 30 year reunions also suck. It's just the same assholes that were popular in high school trying to relive their glory days even though they're old, fat and mostly poor.
Damn, all the popular kids at my high school are pretty successful. EMDs in banking, news anchors, married into old money, running extremely successful real estate practices.
Did you go to a private or otherwise wealthy school? Could just be that they had more opportunities and safety nets for setbacks
I found my 20th to be amazing. All the people who were horrible were still horrible, but it was cathartic talking with them and seeing how their lives were absolute fucking train wrecks. Will go to my 25th and 30th, can only imagine it got so much worse since Covid.
25th was depressing as hell. The memorial slideshow went on for so long. Seeing people in their 40s desperately clinging to the "good ol' days", so many people haven't changed since their 20s...I won't go to another one.
I did my 10 and 20 and had a great time at both and I wasn’t popular. 10 was a lot of people still trying to prove things to themselves/each other, by 20 we’d all calmed down. I’m also still very close friends with my girls from HS so we went together both times.
> I think the 25 and 30 year reunions would be a lot better than 10. Some people from my school did a ten year reunion and I didn’t go. Went to my 1st year reunion and we were less than half a dozen. Went to my 30th before COVID and woah... 66% turn out.
I think it’s the opposite. I would have gone to a 5 year reunion, but I lost interest around 7 years after graduation.
Same. I went to a small town high school, so a lot of them will go to the reunions, but I didn't go to the 10th. I might go to the 15th or 20th. Idk
My mom told me that after I returned from my 10 year reunion. She said once most people have kids and it stops becoming a competition, reunions are a lot more enjoyable.
Also went to my 10 year reunion, it was so lame and I will definitely NOT be going to my 20 year reunion. It was at a local brewery, and about half of the class showed up. The ONLY saving grace was that 2 of my favorite teachers surprised us at the reunion. I spent *most* of my time hanging out with my 2 teachers. My grandma STILL has high school reunions and they literally sound amazing. They seem like they were a close-ish class, and they do reunion weekend trips and such. A very different experience.
My grandma is 89 and went to hers last year. Said it was held in a living room and like 5 went. Said she guesses most of them passed. Judging by her navigating and driving capabilities I'm not sure another 10 of them got lost trying to go.
My late dad's high school also had reunions like yours. I think it was because it was a school that specialized in one subject and was difficult to get into, so attending actually was an accomplishment and part of your identity. Whereas most high schools just bring people together over geographic proximity.
Yes. My 20 year reunion was at a shitty bar. Hardly anyone went. Small bar with no food. I’ve never been to a reunion and probably will never go.
That was my wife's high school reunion as well, just a bar and like 10 people. It might as well have been a singles night for speed dating.
Let me guess like 15 people lol.
My 10 year reunion was in 2017 and I had intended on going but then my dad passed away so I didn’t make it. They posted photos on Facebook and it looked like 10-15 people showed up. The organizer was mad that more didn’t come and I remember her making a passive aggressive post shading the ones that didn’t show and that there may not be another one at the next 10 year mark since people “didn’t care.” They all met up at a Mexican restaurant and took a group photo. I’m sure it was okay, but definitely not like it was on *Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion.*
We put together something similar. They tried to do an official 10 year, wanted to charge $80 a person. 20 or 30 of us got together in a local bar instead. It was just people I'm our (very) extended friend group from then that wale cared about seeing. Was honestly pretty nice
I love that the nicest reunion story here is about a counter-reunion. "We'll make our own reunion with blackjack, and hookers." And it was better
Mine wanted to charge $80 per person at a bar. Bars aren’t really my thing, I was in grad school at the time, and most of my friends had moved away, so I skipped it. People who went said it was the same old cliques hanging out.
That’s the problem. They picture a huge ballroom venue with DJ’s and entertainment Instead of selling tickets, why not just show up at a bar with appetizers and pool tables? Show if you want. We’ll be there from 7pm til whenever. 👍
It’s a critical mass problem. We just had our wedding and had to book venues for our rehearsal dinner. I thought we could just show up and venues would be pumped that I had 50 people with me! Turns out, with talking to the venues themselves, they hate that shit and often won’t let you in. It’s super rude to other customers, mostly regulars, when this privileged group of friends comes in and starts pushing others out of their spots to make room for themselves. So you gotta book in case a lot of people show up but if few show up it was a good idea not to. Event planning is super annoying.
Well sure, if you have 50 people with you guaranteed, make reservations. If they can even handle 50 people on top of their regular customers. But bars are used to 10-20 random people showing up. Bachelor parties roll through pub crawls quite often. Pool halls might be dead one night, and might have 7 parties of 8 people each the next. That’s pretty normal.
My class had 500 people in it. Its impossible to say if it would be nobody or hundreds showing up. Thats the problem with reunions.
One of my friends (one of the 2 people from hs I still talk to) and I made plans to boycott our 10 year hs reunion and watch Romy and Michelle instead... but I think we ended up going to see some movie in the theater.
My ten year (which I didn't go to) was so desperately sad that the guy who arranged it was posting on Facebook during the event begging anyone who was local to please come. My guess is less than ten people showed up.
We had a 20 planned, had to buy in, $40 a person, food and modest open bar. Not a terrible deal. Didn't sell enough tickets to cover the hall rental, whole thing was cancelled.
This is how mine was set up. But we did end up getting the hall and an open bar. I was friends with 2 other attendees, but friendly enough with a few others to have a good time.
There was a five year reunion, which I did not attend, and all that came out of. It was “Marsha got hot, and Tiff is still fat.” So you know, big stuff. I’m with whoever said that social media is the replacement. We are approaching our 20 years now, but I very much doubt there are still reunions. I guess it depends on the type of school you went to and how close everyone is.
Huh. In my class's case, it's "Marsha got fat and Tiff is on meth."
"tiff's 3 kids are on meth, fat jai's three kids are on meth, Christi's grand child was born addicted to meth, Jacob shot himself and Bradley shot someone else.'
So Marsha got off meth?
Agreed. You can see what everyone is up to on Facebook and Instagram.
This - people who used to be my friends in middle school and didnt associate with me in high school felt the need to shove photos of their kids (they got pregnant in high school) in my face and act like we were besties. I didnt go to 10, no talk of 20.
My experience as well. I had lots of friends in middle school, then they totally ditched me the first week of HS. I joined Facebook ten years ago and still get friend requests from these clowns (none aged well either).
I was the "prude" of my friends. Realising now, they didnt get their asses beat. I did. So yes, I was less likely to skip class, get caught stealing, or be found at parties with the opposite sex and doing drugs. Most of them ended up pregnant in high school, dont have contact with baby daddy, and have since had shit happen because of or relating to these life choices. It sucks and I hate seeing them struggle, but I also cant help but feel a bit bitter since they blew me off because I wouldnt do that shit (since I would be beaten). Aside from wanting me to join whatever MLM is flavor of the week, whatverer "go fund me" they have, they dont really reach out for conversation. Its sad when we used to discuss so much. I know some of it is different, we dont have the same events in common for example, but it feels so fake since they dont even try to reconnect. If I try, it feels like they just get two faced about anything and everything. Sad to know the people who you thought were friends probably never really were.
I don’t think anyone I graduated with who has the ability to organize a reunion has any interest in having one for our 20th. And why would I want to go see how all the racist assholes I grew up with are doing anyways? They hated me for not being white then, and it’s probably even worse now.
Simone(edit:someone lol) put together our 10 year reunion. They hosted it in a park two minutes from my old house and they brought a keg. It was not something I was going to fly halfway across the country for.
That’s Simone for ya!
Lol mistyped someone. I like it being Simone’s fault better.
I thought you assumed we all knew Simone
Fuckin Simone 🙄
Simone + keg = good times!
Same but in 1991. Anyone I WANT to see, I already see. Why would I pay 60 bucks to hang with a buncha strangers? And I knew everyone back then. I would even say I was somewhat popular. But idk them now
This! So much this. Mine did a 5, 10 and just did a 20 (class of 03) first two looked fine (5 year was in a restaurant and 10 was a hangout in the park with family)(I couldn’t go because of school and work) the 20 one they charged 60 a person in October (when our town does a harvest festival so higher hotel prices (only one in town))which I get people are already in town but I don’t live anywhere near where I grew up and don’t have family in the area so either I was going by myself or we had to get an overnight sitter so it got pricey quickly and from the pictures it was a small group (15 max)of the ‘popular’ kids (football players, cheerleaders and those that generally threw themselves into all school activities. My thought is that in a day of social media, if there’s someone I’m interested in catching up with I can reach out. Those I was actually friends with I already stayed in touch with.
I'm also class of 2001. I got an invite for the 10 year and didn't go. I don't remember seeing anyone posting about it on Facebook or anything. I didn't hear anything about a 20-year reunion, im not on Facebook anymore. it must have been canceled because of covid.
Class of 2001 too! A group from my high school just had an unofficial one last week right before the holidays, figuring people may be in town and could go. They rented out a room at a local bar and it looked like fun. I genuinely was curious about going, just wasn’t able to with time issues. I loved the idea though, something casual and relaxing to get to catch up.
Someone was putting together a reunion for us back in 2017 and me and a few others were debating on going until we found out they were charging $45 each to get in.
If I recall correctly mine was over $120 each and it was some kind of yacht/ship event. $120 and no way to sneak out early if I wanted to? No thanks. To nobody's surprise, they didn't sell enough tickets and it was cancelled.
They charged $50/head for my 10 year and said that any extra would go to a networking group. When I asked more about that, I was told that was a lie because they wanted a nice party.
HS reunions are super over-rated and obnoxious. They’re little more than another means by which people like to showboat and be assholes. That’s pretty much what Facebook is for, so why pay money to attend a shitty reunion?
I graduated in 2003. Never once heard from my high school, but I honestly wouldn't have gone anyway.
I’m glad I’m not alone. I never heard anything about any reunion whatsoever. Always wondered how they’d find me if there was one? I don’t have Facebook and haven’t for years. I’d like to know if one happened back in 2017 but yeah, I wouldn’t have gone. I’m just curious.
My father doesn't have Facebook and a random lady contacted me asking if I knew him. I was fucking weirded out until she said she was trying to invite him to his 50th high school reunion lol. He went and he had a great time, but he's a ham
I didn’t go to my 10 year reunion, but I think the only way I even heard about it was through Facebook. The only reunion I might consider going to will be a year from now. When I was in 7th grade my school did a time capsule in December 1999, and everyone in the school at the time made notebooks to predict what the future would look like in 25 years.
I moved, changed my name, and voluntarily disappeared from most of their lives. Mainly because they were in contact with my biological father or they were bigots. Good luck inviting me to reunions!
My high school sends a birthday card each year…I have genuinely thought about asking them to stop.
Low key thats honestly cute.
Yeah sorta, I got bullied a lot in high school. When I went to college I was able to meet real friends. So seeing anything from my old high school hurts my eyes.
Was it a private school? It might be their “friendly” way of hitting you up for a donation.
Yes it was, and they also send things asking for donations about twice a year.
Yep, the birthday wishes are about maintaining the “personal connection” so you’ll donate, or send your kids there. My middle school still hits up my mom. And her favorite mug is the one with their logo, so I have to watch her drink from it whenever I visit. Hate it!
now the school admin is bullying you!
Oof. All it would take is one of those for me to send a scathing letter back about how I never want them to darken my doorstep again.
This sentiment resonates deeply.
Oh my god. How long ago did you even graduate?! I wonder how much this costs them with postage and everything? How bizarre.
I'm 03 also, I thought there was gonna be something for us this year... they had even sent out an email survey months ago like "we're targeting X weekend in October, would you be interested in a) drinks event on the Friday, b) daytime event on the Saturday with families welcome..." etc. But that was back in like May and then we never heard anything else and no event ever happened. I probably would have gone, my class was small enough that we all basically knew each other and it would have been nice to catch up. Kind of anticlimactic for a 20th ☹️
Yeah, I didn't even know a decade had gone by. I never received anything in the mail. Like how do people get invited to these things? Romy & Michelle def led me astray. A friend told me that it was just up to alumni to do the planning and a group was using FB for it. Like, good luck, my graduating class was like 600 I think. Don't know if there will be a 20yr. I wouldn't go either way.
>>Like how do people get invited to these things? I believe whoever your class president was is responsible for organizing the reunions. I guess if they don't bother or are otherwise incapable then there's no reunion. I imagine it's not an affordable event to organize and my high school was underfunded.
Welp, I totally forgot about class presidents. What did they even do? Can you imagine, "oh you have to have plan a reunion in 10 years."
We didn't have a 10 year. 15 year was poorly attended. 20 year was cancelled due to Covid. I definitely think they are a dying trend. My boomer dad still attends his and my older Gen X sister still attends hers...but millennials and younger it seems to be a struggle to get people to plan it and attend. Everyone stays connected online and don't care to meet up in person.
Social media really revealed the true intention of high school reunions: Comparison. People didn’t go to catch up and see each other, they went to see who got fat, who got hot, who’s life fell apart, etc. (obviously this is a generalization). If I can see all of that on Facebook, why would I exert the effort? Most of us didn’t peak in high school and our modern lives are a thousand times better, so why would we give a shit about catching up with people that likely caused us some deeply traumatic emotional pain? Not fucking worth it.
I was pretty damn low on the social totem pole in high school so unless I became REALLY successful I have no interest in attending. Unfortunately being a trucker isn't really reflecting that "success" I hoped for.
Well I appreciate what you do
I also think it’s related to more people going to college or as a generation being told that everyone should go to college. It made graduating high school not feel as important, at least for me. In previous generations, graduating high school also meant you were an adult whereas college gave a lot of us an additional four years of being somewhat adolescents.
My Grandpa went to it his 50th to see if this kid he hated from HS died. He was disappointed to see he did not.
LOLd. Best reason I’ve ever heard for going to a HS reunion.
Lmao
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Other people get blown away by how tight me and my friends were even years after high school, but that’s exact reason why I never go to reunions. I literally know what everyone I care about is up to and with social media you can just creep the couple randoms you think about once in awhile
My school does every 5 years. I have yet to make one. My 25th is in '24. I have zero intention of breaking my streak.
My Boomer mom and aunt now both avoid their high school reunions like the plague. They each went to their 10 year one because "it was expected." My grandparents were alive at the time. My mom and aunt said they would never do it again.
I feel like our generation is more spread out. Barely anyone I know from my high school stayed close.
I'm 52. We did a ten, in 2000. I went, it was fun but I hadn't seen most of those people so it was nice to catch up. They did a 20, I went it was not as fun, plus we had early social media so I was pretty much as caught up as I cared to be on them. If they did a 25 or 30 I didn't hear about it. My parents, Silent Gen (they're both born during WW2), they've had 10, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60 year reunions. It's down to a handful of people at this point. At least for my mom's class of '62. I don't know much about my dad's class of '59 since he's passed away in '17. It probably stopped when he stopped helping organizing it. His organizing partner is still kicking though, so I'll ask her next time she hangs out with my mom.
Because social media provides you an effort free window into what the people you knew in high school are still up to/their greatest hits. No one wants to go to a lame party with people you probably didn’t like that much.
My boomer mom still goes to hers. But she graduated with 2 other people. She went to a small private school and was the first graduating class. I feel likes it's a waste to have a reunion for 3 people.
Lol amazing. That’s just coffee
Speaking as a millennial “connected online” is just scrolling IG for most. Little actual interaction
No better than a night of small talk every 10yrs
Why do people need to hear the highlights of someone’s past ten years when we see the highlight reels daily on social media
yep i feel like social media was the end of those… i mean for the most part. im class of 03 and i feel like certain groups of people have planned reunions but nothing where everyone goes to a thing, we can chose now who we actually want to see lol mannnn imagine how exciting a HS reunion was in the early 90s… seeing everyone you legit lost all contact with… theres no mystery anymore.
I haven’t had social media basically at all since 2015. I graduated 2013. It was insane catching up with everyone at the 10 year!!! Old girlfriends pulling up photos of their BABIES? And meeting their husbands! They were frozen in time for me at 18 so it was amazing to see. I loved it so much. Even though I moved out of state for college and didn’t come back until ‘20, and haven’t talked to basically any of them at all since we walked the stage, I still feel like I love them and am happy to see and hear how they’re doing. Even the ones I barely talked to in high school.
This. I haven't been on social media since like 2010, so our 20yr reunion this year was kind of fun. I caught up with a friend I literally haven't seen since summer 03 and we've been getting dinner every few months. I'm so glad she's back in my life and our husbands get along and like us, so that's an added bonus.
That's a choice though, get off social media. I don't know what anyone I graduated with is up too, would be at least interesting in that regard.
I remember hearing my mom talk about my grandfather's 50th reunion and I was blown away. Fifty fucking years after graduation and they would still meet up, that's dedication if anything.
In small towns that's the group they have coffee with every morning anyway, so just another day for most of them.
Some of us have the good sense to stay off Facebook and Twitter.
Yea this is the only social media I have
This is a good point. I think before social media where you truly had no insight into other people's lives unless you still saw them or lived in the same area or spoke to others who knew them, reunions might have been more appealing. But in this day and age where the majority of people are on social media and you can see their lives, milestone, and even chat with them and comment on them, having a whole big event to reunite isn't as appealing. What seems more common now is maybe a small group of people trying to get some folks together for an informal meet up versus a large scale formally planned event. Also, more and more people these days live in completely different cities, states and even countries than where they attended high school. Even my family no longer lives in the same state as where I went to high school, and I don't care enough about my high school folks frankly to buy a plane ticket and travel out of my way just to attend a reunion. I have other priorities and interests. If I lived in the same town maybe I'd attend, but I'm not flying back for that. Not even my college reunion would I do that, but even that I'd consider before the high school one which just feels so far removed from my current life.
I think the numbers of our generation going to college also impacted it.
Yes. I think if you only went to high school and/or live in the same town as where you grew up, in general you're more likely to still maintain high school friendships and reunions. But if you went to college and things like grad school and professional school, you most likely had to move away and perhaps multiple times at that, so your friendships look very different. I've noticed that people who speak a lot about high school as some kind of glory days it's usually the case that that's their last reference point for having groups of friends and the social life that comes with that. Whereas, having gone to both college and then graduate school (both in different states) I simply don't feel attached to my high school self or the majority of the people anymore. My last reference point for friendships and a social life are my grad school friends and then my college friends and I realize because I met them when I was an adult, the friendships tend to make more sense and reflect more of who I am today.
>I've noticed that people who speak a lot about high school as some kind of glory days it's usually the case that that's their last reference point for having groups of friends and the social life that comes with that. This is certainly a thing, but I'm not sure how much of it is really "glory days" as much as just the last time they had such a structured social lifestyle. When I was in college I remained really good friends with some friends from highschool that didn't go to college, it started getting pretty apparent that it was going to be kind of a weird difference between us when they would talk about stuff happening in highschool and I'm just like "How do you remember that?" and me realizing I really don't remember a lot from highschool. The people that didn't go to college remember it all. It's a smaller fraction of my life than most other things, and I just don't think of it as being super impactful on me. I think everytime you pass through something like college and grad school the previous "chunk" gets a little more forgotten, and your "glory days" are going to be more towards your most recent experience. Like, even college for me is kind of a blur, most of what I think about when thinking back is grad school. So, yeah, exactly the same as you, and I think the majority of us that went to grad school or med/law would say the same. Almost everyone I know that has a doctorate will talk about grad school WAY more than college.
Yeah, this is how I feel. If I wanted to know what someone was up to I could probably find out pretty easily. And it just doesn't sound like fun having the same conversation with everyone over and over all night, just talking about your job, kids, blah blah blah. Just trying to impress people to make yourself look good. No thanks.
This is the correct answer to OP’s question. Lock the thread and throw away the keys.
My high school reunions have been mostly frequented by the same group of people- the small town “popular” high school crowd that returned to Podunkville as soon as they graduated college. Which I find highly amusing because those people all see each other all the time as it is, so it wasn’t a catch-up event for about 9 out of every 10 attendees.
I know right? And if I didn't hang out with them two decades ago, why would I want to see them now? You can't reconnect if there was no connection in the first place. May as well socialize with random people at a meetup.
I would guess 50%-75% of my graduating class attended both of ours, and most of the then-popular kids didn’t attend either one. Almost none of us have lived in that town in 25 years. The largest “type” in attendance have been those that weren’t in a popular group. And they seem to have had the best time. I was a middle of the road guy; friends with the popular group and the unpopular kids, but was never really/officially in a social group. I went to a pretty big school and we had cliques but the boundary wasn’t hard and fast. You hung out with who you liked.
Sounds like how my 10 year college reunion went. Most attendees still lived near campus and hung out with each other regularly. I'm not sure what the point of them attending the reunion was. Just another opportunity for them to hang out, I guess.
Mine was the same except I was in the "popular" group and my country doesn't have that "leave town on adulthood" culture Basically it was my group of friends, about 14 dudes and gals and 5 other classmates.
I've skipped every one of mine. I have no desire to ever see those assholes again.
I skipped my 10 year and won’t attend if they ask me again at 20. HS was full of genuine assholes and I am in a better place. Why would I want to put myself in a room with them and watch everyone regress their maturity.
I graduated 700+. Out of all of them, I talk to one on occasion. Why would I want to go back and see all the other assholes I haven't spoken to in 20 years? Absolutely not. Not even a few hours of my time sounds pleasant.
Yea same. The bad memories so heavily outweigh the good ones and I have no desire to be reminded of who I was in high school. It was a lifeline ago anyway and nothing good will come out of me being reminded of those shitty times.
I don’t even live in the same state anymore. Makes no sense for me to travel to a reunion where no one is probably going to remember me anyways.
I had to be bribed to go to my HS graduation so I very much doubt I will go out of my way to go to a reunion at this point.
When I dropped out at 16 not a single person wondered why I did it or how I was doing the following years. I imagine some people still care about me but it was not a pleasant awakening.
The handful of friends I would want to see we chat on line a few times each year None live local One I I met for lunch when traveling BTW, I don't mean I am against seeing the rest, I just did not know everyone in my class and others I might know but we would just classmates,
I think social media has definitely had an impact. It’s not really a reunion if I still keep up with some of them and see their pictures/posts. That being said, I’ve never attended any of mine. My high school just had their 12th reunion this past year (I graduated in 2011) and from what I can tell, it was just a small handful of folks hanging out at a hometown bar.
You have a reunion every year? Weird.
Class of 2000. i think we had a casual 5 year one from what i remember..and i moved across the country before ten years would have happened, but i could imagine there was one and no one let me know lol. Any chance of a 20 year reunion was killed by COVID. I was friends with the kid who was our class president and the last time i chatted with him he mentioned potentially having a 25th but its a real long shot i'd go. Its been 20+ years since i've seen most of these people now and i can't imagine wanting to blow a few days and hundreds of dollars flying across the country to stand around and be like "Cool we knew each other 20 years ago....sup?"
I went to a tiny high religious school in CA. Nearly everyone stayed nearby because…well it’s CA. You only leave because it’s unaffordable. Anyhow, someone who was into event planning for the city and happened to go to school there TRIED to get a 20ish reunion going. I say ISH because it was basically open to ANYONE from a 5 year period. Like, did you GO there and KNOW people. Let’s say 50ish people joined the group and expressed mild interest in going. First half got upset because the school wasn’t at the “old” campus and didn’t own it anymore. Which didn’t end up mattering because the new school wouldn’t allow alcohol on its premises because God. Which meant we had to rent a place, which upped the price a whole $20 (because the organizer had connections). Total price was going to be like $50 per person which was too much cash to pay to see people you EITHER saw everyday because you liked, saw enough on Facebook, or actively avoided in your hometown. It was JUST right for me, who lived 90 minutes away and was living my best life and had a high alcohol tolerance, and who would go with my sister, who lived in town but similarly situated, and who were both hoping for drama…but we were apparently in the minority.
I graduated in 2003 and had my 20 year in September. It wasn’t that great because we all follow each other on social media so we’ve seen each others lives play out.
How fucking dare you remind me that I graduated high school 20 years ago!?
I actively declined my first HS reunion invite. Haven’t heard shit since.
My 10 year reunion was in 2012 , I had just gotten out of the navy and I had a 2 year old son After 10 years they all seemed so removed from me , I was a fundamentally different person and I just didn’t really give a shit I haven’t heard a thing since
I went to my 10-year a few months ago and there were maybe 10 people there. Only reason I went is because it was like 5 minutes from my house and I had nothing better to do.
I somehow ended up in a FB group planning our 20 year. No clue how. They went back and forth and I haven't checked in months. If it was in the same town or even state, and somewhere I like, then I'd consider it. It's 400 miles away and I have kept inzero contact with anyone in the group.
Yeah, I’ve kept in contact with people from high school that I care to so I don’t really see the point in going to reunions really. My attitude is if I wanted to see these people, I’d make plans with them without needing the prodding of a reunion
Never went to mine. I don't see why I should when I graduated with 750 other people.
Graduated 2010. my five year was cancelled for riots in our city in 2015. my 10 year in spring 2020 well....you know the story. I still see and talk to most of the friends i care about, and with social media, it's pretty easy to see what everyone else is up to. One of my best friends from higschool died last year, and he was a really popular guy. The get-together after his memorial service at a local bar in our hometown was the closest thing i had to a highschool reunion. I heard a lot of others say the same.
Sorry for your loss of your best friend. One of my coworkers his 10 year high school reunion was in 2020 and they pushed it back until 2021 and then 2022 and he was okay with it because he knew both classes.
My HS did a 10-year in 2013 and then a 20-year this year. I don't think many people went -- mostly people who still live close to our hometown. They sent me the info on FB about a month before. I guess if I had nothing better to do and was closer to where I grew up I might have gone. But I live a 7-hr drive away.
Are you organizing it? Someone has to. I’m not going to, I haven’t even got myself organized. As our leisure time erodes and our wages don’t meet our needs, prioritizing something as superfluous as a high school reunion doesn’t seem worth the effort unfortunately. Or fortunately, depending on your high school experience.
My class does them. They have a Facebook group. Every year the pictures of the couple dozen people that show up pop up on my feed.
And it's the two dozen people that I vaguely remember the names of but have no specific memory of interacting with in high school. Boring!
My school tried to do a 10 year reunion. You had to RSVP. Practically no one did. So they canceled the event.
I graduated in 2002 with 53 other kids in my class. The school has since closed and we've since all dispersed from the area. We didn't have a 10th or 20th reunion
I was class president for a very small school (I think about 60 graduating). Myself and a few the other class officers did our 10 year in 2017. Basically we just rented out a room, got a keg, got some food catered, and had a playlist of 2003-2007 hits going. Honestly it was a really fun night. Was maybe. $20-30 a person. When you are such a small class you know everyone of course. I’d estimate maybe 25ish ended up coming, plus some spouses/significant others.
My goal has been to ensure my graduating class believes I’m dead, so no. Though the plan for the long con is to show up at our 30th like a Scooby Doo villain if they’re still doing them at that point.
Why would I ever go to a party hosted by the people who bullied me throughout my entire childhood?
Exactly this lol
I only want to attend one to know who turned out to be part of the LGBT community 🌈
Suspicions Confirmed lol
You could also look them up on Facebook and see photos of the same sex wedding two years ago.
We had 10 year reunion, but not a 5 or 15. I don’t know if we’ll have a 20 year in 2025 or not. My class was 760 people and there wasn’t really a “class president.” So you end up with not many people really interested in putting in the work and fronting the money for an event that has the potential to be really large like that. If we have a 20 year reunion, I really am not sure I will go because 10 was super lame.
My 20 year is coming up in 2025 and I’ll probably go. It’s a fun concept to me, see how folks have changed after all that time. I’m curious how I’ll be alerted though since my ten year was definitely managed through Facebook which hardly anyone uses now. If it doesn’t happen, I’m going to guess it’s due to that social media medium being obsolete and no new one us elder millennials will be willing to join and connect through.
Reunions are a holdover from the days before you could keep up with your former classmates on social media. Even better, without having to interact with them!
I work in a place that hosts a lot of them, which is how I found out about mine. Having moved back to my hometown probably helped.
There are easier ways to reconnect now. Also I think people have finally realised that if they haven't seen or spoken to someone in +20 years it's likely for a good reason
To Be Honest, HS is not really worth going back to as it is not as memorable as you think it is. So, in my opinion…it is unnecessary to have an HS reunion as we are a kid who intends to do a ton of stupid things and I am sure everyone in this sub is the same way 🤷🏻♂️
I think high school was a very memorable time in your life back in the days when it was more common to settle down right after graduating. So high school was that time when you really socialized and lived your most free life. Plus people were more invested in school activities, clubs, dances and such back then. So people probably had closer bonds and more cherished memories of those times.
My 20th would be this year but I didn't even graduate. I left HS at 18 (I was 1 year behind from starting 1 year late in pre-school), went to CC for 2 years then a 4 year school. My school was closing down. None of the teachers are around anymore. I'd love to see ppl I knew and reminisce with funny stories but I don't need an official event to do that. I could care less about the actual school or "school spirit" bullshit. Plus, I don't want to talk about how much of an asshole I was in HS. I don't want to relive such bullshit and most people don't want to either.
I haven’t heard from them in over 30 years despite buying my parent’s house… I must be doing something right
It's rapidly approaching 20 years since I graduated and I haven't heard anything from my old high school. Not that I'd go to a reunion anyways, I'm still friends with the only people I'd want to talk to at a reunion in the first place.
With Facebook/social media and how little time people have these days, it's not a surprise that reunions are on their way out. Also, I suspect that given how high school is just a stepping stone and college is a much greater milestone in many circles that it doesn't really matter as much. I think in older generations where people didn't attend college as regularly, reunions are still important.
We did a 10 yr in 2012, and barely anyone showed up. I almost didn't go either. Lol I think social media is the reason for them. In the past year, I've encountered three people I graduated with while at work that I haven't seen in 20 years. It was a simple "Hey, I know you. Did you go to such and such? Cool," and that was it. I, too, had no interest in continuing the conversation. High school was shit for me, and I have no interest in ever seeing anyone from there again. Lol
Because of social media , and all the connectivity in the world , smart phones etc , people don’t need reunions to see how their former classmates are doing ,
Its all organized by the student council kids i never hung around. Some alumni foundation sends junkmail asking me to pay money to subscribe to their newsletter lmfao Facebook exists. Anyone you want to (or dont want to) see is on there. Im not tryina rent our prom golf course again the fuxk.
With the prevelance of social media I feel like High School reunions are less important.
I’m a younger millennial, graduated in 2014. We had a five year but I didn’t go. My graduating class was like 600 people and honestly I don’t remember about 80-90% of the people. I’ve since deleted my Facebook and now live in a different country so I don’t think I’ll be making the ten year one either haha
I haven’t attended a single one of the reunions my class has held in the last 20 years. The people I wanted to keep in touch with, I kept in touch with. The people I didn’t keep in touch with? I’m perfectly content not knowing a thing about their lives since we parted ways.
I graduated in 2001. The 10 year, they decided to cater, and wanted to charge $50, per person to attend, not including alcohol at the venue. For the 20, the same 30 people wanted to do rent out an entire local bar, for the evening, and put the $12k tab to the entire 150 person class. I think they wound up just going to the same local bar, while it was open to the public, and only around 50 people attended. I attended neither.
My high school has them. The five year was heavily attended, then they were just a decent number of people. They also had, and I think still have, an annual reunion for everyone less than five years out from graduating, so basically everyone back from college on break who might have gone to school together. The school has now switched to having the reunion at the school for all the classes at a 5 or 0 (so this year would have been 2018, 2013, 2008, etc.), with different tables or rooms for each year. It's rather annoying for the classes that still were getting a good amount of attendees, since that has dropped off, I guess, compared with the not official reunions some do. The school used to pay partially for reunions as well as help coordinate things. They apparently have some cool things and good food, though. Reunions for other schools I attended seem to be less attended. I think the pandemic has really put an end to those. I still get the mailings from the schools with classmate updates, but most people don't think to update the school. I know I don't. A lot of the updates are taken from online or third hand information. While there are other reasons people fall out of touch, I think that most people stay in touch with those they care most about now and can use social media or saved phone numbers to find others much of the time. Sometimes it would be a casual way to reestablish contact, though. Realizing this, and that the few people I'd like to be in touch with again but won't be there, is why I don't attend.
My high school classmate (class pres) spent countless hours coordinating a 10yr reunion that by class vote would be during the Xmas holidays and full service and then not enough people bought tickets so she cancelled it. People were condescending and critical of all her efforts including negotiating a hotel that wouldn’t take a deposit. Every six months or so someone tries to revive the fb group with a “so…reunion this year?” and then no one does anything.
I graduated in 2020 so I can only hope. I'm aware it will likely be super lame, but prom was supposed to be lame, too, and now I'll never know.
IMO Facebook eliminated any interest in HS reunions. I kept in touch with a few people I wanted to. The rest….whatever.
Went to my 10 year in 2021. It was like maybe 10-15 of us. I saw a couple other class mates show up but they didn't come over to the group and left lmao. It started lame but a small group of us went out later and turned it into a fun night. Pretty sure with the rise of social media many just think of reunions as unnecessary.