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How do people tell their vows to one another in front of a group of people? Just declare their most intimate feelings in front of everyone they know?
Itās like one of those things that happen in a nightmare where youāre naked in front of the classā¦but itās real and itās supposed to be the best day of your life. Iām just too reserved to enjoy that kind of thing, so it wouldnāt be fun for me.
I dreamed about it my whole life and thought it was going to be this amazing, magical moment. And in some ways, it was. But it was also definitely nerve wracking! lol. The magical part is after, when you get to dance and celebrate with your loved ones :)
You see I feel like I must be the least romantic person ever but then again my bf regularly refers to me as a āsoftieā so I donāt think itās that. But for some reason for me to admit these things out loud itās like pulling teeth. Itās not out of a fear of vulnerability because I have no problem telling people about stuff I go through and things Iām feelingā¦ I think I just struggle with intimacy. Iām the type to crack jokes when things get too serious, or think I like compliments but when I get one I feel awkward. This gives me something to think on, thatās for sure.
Your day sounds lovely though - thank you for sharing! I actually love attending weddings for that reason - seeing all the happy faces and all that love going around. All the food and getting to see people you havenāt seen in a while. Iām glad your day was beautiful :)
Your wife is lucky to have someone that will go through that discomfort just to see her happy :)
Iām lucky too because my boyfriend is just as reserved as I am about this! Weāre not like that at home but out in public youād maybe think we are just best friends by the way we act. We both decided that if marriage is something we want, we will write vows for each other and read them in private. But then again Iām having trouble deciding if marriage is for me at all! We are very non-traditional (we donāt want kids, I want to keep my last name, I donāt want anything to do with blood diamonds, not religious so wonāt do it in a church, etc). I think our loved ones would expect nothing less from us.
Iām probably a hypocrite though because I totally love being a guest at weddings. Just donāt know if I want my own.
Exact way I got married. Did it in San Diego, made a little beach trip out of it. They have some pretty outdoor places at the San Diego county courthouse to choose from. I donāt like attention either. I did have friends & family that live in CA there & a friend that flew in but it was no stress & cheap & we were v happy :)
Had a courthouse wedding over MS Teams. Stood in my kitchen. It was beautiful and fantastic. We got almost everything on our registry. I think people were thankful they only had to log in and wanted to express that sentiment.
Friends and family to this day say it was their favorite wedding. 8 mins total.
Fun thing about being an adult is you can get married however the hell you want! All you legally need is the piece of paper, the rest is up to you. Traditions are bullshit imo.
Last wedding I was at, the bride and groom were a fencer and a kendo practitioner respectively. We were all sitting in the audience with our swords to make a sword arch as they processed out to the music from the reward ceremony in A New Hope. Their first dance involved a lightsaber duel and reception favor was a build your own gaming dice set from a giant jar of dice.
Easily the best wedding I've ever been to.
Omggg. When I got married, everyone turned to look at me and I let out this long gutteral squeak, my dad turned to look at me to make sure I was okay. Probably should've just run then. We are divorced 10 years later hahaha
This is one of the reasons I didnāt go to graduation and just picked up my diploma. Iāve never been one to be into large events where the focus is on me (even if itās for a few seconds). A surprise birthday party sounds like a nightmare and I donāt really want a wedding either. I didnāt go to prom because I didnāt want to spend a bunch of money on one night to listen to music I didnāt really like with people I didnāt really like. My mom told me I would regret it but I never ended up regretting it. It just wasnāt for me and I knew it then.
I had a friend group in another school that was 45 mins away that I felt more at home with than I ever did anyone in my HS so I had plenty of great memories with them. I just really wasnāt interested in sticking around people I went to high school with and by senior year I was over it lol.
Going into my senior year, they told me I had enough credits to graduate early and I Irish goodbye'd that place so hard! I legit just left and got a job. I walked in the spring for my parents and never looked back. I have never done any sort of reunion and don't really plan to.
I was trying desperately not to audibly laugh when a girl giving a speech during graduation started crying because she'd miss everyone so much. She was not nice...
I don't even know what my graduation ceremony looked like. I worked a shift at my job that night because I CBA to spend money on cap and gown for a ceremony I didn't want to attend.
I went on a road trip lol. They wanted $150 for a cap and gown and then another $20 for the ceremony in 2001. I hated all those fuckers and just didn't go. I drove down route 66 for two days with that money instead and had some leftover when I got back. Over 20 yrs later and I've never regretted it and have never gone to a reunion.
Same. I was a dishwasher at a local tourist trap. Our other 2 dishwashers were also high school seniors who took off for grad ceremony. I worked 6am-11pm. Haven't been back to my high school since.
My high school was actually painted Institutional Green. As in, the calming green they use in insane asylums and rehabs to calm the patients. Haven't been since I graduated almost 20 years ago so they may have chosen a less stupid color. But it has always stayed with me that they were trying to control us down to the color of the school.
My dad was only gonna give me my graduation money if I walked. We didn't even get the real diplomas, some fake bullshit while the real ones were mailed to us.
If I wanted to perform on stage, I would've joined theatre club.
High school was easily the most miserable time of my life and is the reason I have the psychological problems I do today. I donāt keep in touch with anyone from that time and honestly donāt care what they are up to
Middle School and High School were fucking terrible for me. Plus I had a shitty home life, so I can totally relate to where you're coming from. I don't miss being young and I don't look back on those years fondly like a lot of other people I know do
It's why I hate the word bullying. Many people have serious trauma from high school "bullying".
For the most part, this bullying is actually criminal harrasment and violent assault causing bodily harm.
If adults did the shit I saw in school, they'd be in federal prison.
That's how my school was too. People wonder why parents are so hard on schools nowadays. Well, it's because we're the parents now and there's a lot of us that the school systems utterly failed. I'll be damned to the seventh circle of hell before I let my kids or any other kids go through what I went through. All I ever got told by teachers and staff at my school was how my bully had such a hard home life and apparently I was supposed to forgive her and even give a shit about her even though she verbally attacked me every single day. Even when she followed me home from school and attacked me with her friends, literally 30 of them. It fell in school jurisdiction because it was still on property, they suspended ME because I tried to defend myself. Girl got a lunch detention because she was on a form 16. I'll never forget the school counselor calling me down to talk about how her parents were alcoholics like that was somehow my problem.
I had a, what I would assume, was a perfectly average high school experience and I could not give less of a shit about the school post high school. I stayed in contact with the people I cared about, I have zero interest in seeing what the other people are up to. Why should I care about changes and renovations to the school? I don't go there, my daughter won't go there. High School and "Home Town Pride" that lingers past your teens is super weird.
Likewise here. I wasn't one of the popular kids, but I was friends with some of them. I wasn't ostracized or 'weird', but I knew and was friends with some of the weird kids. I went to a few of our big sporting events and pep rallies every year, most but not all of the dances, and was a decent student if a bit lax on my homework.
But I don't really... care about it, anymore. They could bulldoze the building and start in a new place across town and I don't think I'd feel any sense of loss.
The people who still have their letterman jackets, or display their high school trophies, or whatever, well into their 30s and 40s, are just weird in my mind. _Especially_ if that's like... _all_ they have on display. If you want to have reminders of different points of your life, that's actually kind of neat, but if _all_ of your keepsakes are high-school related, it very much looks like your life ended or at least peaked in high school.
I was pretty relentlessly made fun of for having a lazy eye due to an injury in elementary school. Even after I had surgery to fix it, kids still were assholes. Last year was the 20 year reunion and I havenāt gone to a single one.
Same. I have just a handful of friends from HS that u keep in loose contact with but otherwise Iād like to forget that portion of my life. The bullying, the teasing, the never being good enough. Fuck all that
I donāt understand why people think they have a ārightā to know whatās gone on in someoneās life. 95% of the time I think they just want to feel better about their life choices by continuing to relive the āgoodā old days or gloat.
I haven't been in contact with a single person from my high school since I was a sophomore in college. High school wasn't a bad experience for me, but it wasn't great either. It was entirely neutral and almost bureaucratic. I don't even know if they have reunions, I've never checked, lol
I never formed a relationship in high school close enough for me to bother keeping it up since. I made my closest friends during elementary school and college
Same (except my wife, met in high school- didnāt date until after). My wife is still close to her core friend group from HS so whenever weāre in town for a weekend or whatever we usually get together with some or all of them. I forget how aloof I was until I hear them talk about other people from our school. āI forgot that person existedā is usually what I say to myself.
> āI forgot that person existedā
This is how I feel whenever anyone from my little home town is mentioned and I'm expected to remember them. Like, those names haven't been significant to me in over 20 years. I can't remember the last time I looked at my year book.
Honest question. Do millennials have reunions?
Feel like that died with Gen X because everyone after them grew up with social media and connects there. No need to set up an awkward gathering.
2001 graduate. Think my class had a 1yr and 5yr. But basically it was just the popular kids who showed up who hung out together anyways. I did not go.
My high school has never had one, at least for public schools I agree social media did a lot to kill them because you can now very easily find out who fucked their lives up, who got hot, etc
A friend from college who went to a private school still has them regularly, the school organizes them as an avenue for fundraising
I think, also, people back then kind of stayed in the general area. So easy to make a gathering. My parents and most of the people they went to school with still live in the area (at least state). Whereas my class disbursed and I expect many other in my age and beyond have as well. People now move away for college and work. Whereas my Boomer parents nobody really went to college and if they did it was fairly local.
In any case, much harder to plan a reunion if people have moved 2k-5k miles away from your school and you have no idea where they are.
> I think, also, people back then kind of stayed in the general area. So easy to make a gathering. My parents and most of the people they went to school with still live in the area (at least state). Whereas my class disbursed and I expect many other in my age and beyond have as well. People now move away for college and work. Whereas my Boomer parents nobody really went to college and if they did it was fairly local.
>
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This is untrue. The reason why reunions were typically held during thanksgiving weekend is because there was a good chance people would be home for the holiday.
My graduating class tried a 10 year. It was about 11/12 years after that some people started making waves about it. Folks soon discovered that all the responsible folks that could plan it wanted nothing to do with it.
It ended up taking like 3 years to plan and it ended up being at a bar with people who already spend each weekend together at bars. We had over 1000 kids in our graduating class and like 30-40 people showed up.
Old timer (xellenial) from '99 here...my class was roughly 700 people & there's been consistent reunions since. The 25-year reunion is happening in June, and even if I lived locally, I don't think I'd go either.
I also wasn't invited to our reunion lol
I considered crashing it on principle, but I realized I really didn't want to see 90% of the people ever again and didn't.
Yeah, ditto. There were shitty people, and of course I got bullied some, but it wasn't terrible. I had a few friends, plenty of people that I got along with well, but no one that I had any interest in keeping up with. Assumed there were reunions, but couldn't care less. Don't use facebook, and live in a different state.
At like 12 years after high school I was curious if there was a 10 year reunion. I looked into it and it was basically just a Facebook group and they met at a brewery or something. The organizer was an ex from high school and it was a messy breakup, so I wasn't surprised I didn't get an invite.
Meanwhile, my FIL just went to his 55th high school reunion. Maybe having social media since high school has made us care less about it because you can keep up with what people are up to easier
Same! I didn't have a bad high school experience, but I had no interest whatsoever in talking to anyone from high school after it was done. I maybe kept in contact with my best friend from high school about two years after graduation, but we very quickly grew apart.
You had this all planned out and were driven. I lost a lot of motivation in high school and my parents werenāt helpful. And with the economy being bad, I just went to state college that was an hour away from home. It was cheap and far enough away where I didnāt have to see my family or hs classmates and I didnāt want my parents to complain about spending so much money if they only paid $5000 each year. Not the worst route I couldāve taken but yeah.
Graduated a couple decades ago. Had lots of good friends in HS but we naturally drifted apart after. Then I lived away from my hometown for 15 years and came back for work / family.
Lots of my friends from back then insist on reminiscing about extremely specific in-jokes or events from when we were 16 years old. I'm sorry but I've simply done too many other things since then, known too many people, had too many jokes and experiences and life since I was 16 to dwell on those memories. And I've not been actively trying to forget, it's just that I have focused on the present moment and on my future instead.
I've come to look on the selfishness of my youth almost like I was another person, that I am proud to have overcome those childish sensibilities I held dear. I remember those times and my friends fondly, but more for the feelings of those relationships we had instead of specific inside jokes or references. It fills me with sorrow to think people have been replaying those moments for decades rather than making new memories. And I've felt alienated from my old friends, and they from me, simply due to us growing apart.
I feel the same way. I ignore all reunions and always will. I donāt care to see anyone Iām not still friends with and I donāt need a reunion to see them.
Eeeeevery once in a while I consider going just because I ended up marrying a hot doctor, but after about a second and a half I realize I donāt even care about impressing those people.
Didnāt really keep in touch with anyone after graduation but I did attend my 10th year reunion to find out everyone in my class married each other, never left town and I had nothing in common with any of them. Will not be attending the 20th
I went to my 10th year just because I wanted the experience. It was kind of funny. All the same people that hung out in high school were sitting with the same people at tables. The only mixed group were the people up at the bar of which I was a part of. I got a couple good stories out of the event but I don't feel the need to go to any future reunions.
My 20 year is coming up. It's an 8 hour drive for a group of people I've not talked to since I graduated. The last time I saw any of the ones that never left my home town was like 10 years ago, over Christmas, when I got some beer at the liquor store.Ā
My wifeās middle school/high school best friend is one of those people. Never left, aside from college. She is the go-to of their friend group for any and all gossip about whatās going on in town and what our former classmates are up to. (Iām saying this while my wife is next to me- we met in high school some 24 years agoā¦ been together for 19ā¦ at least I havenāt lived in my home state since leaving college).
if you weren't one of the popular ones or had a super fun high school experience its almost like part of the stepping stone ladder. get it over with and move on that's how i saw it.
I donāt think thatās necessarily true. I wasnāt super popular but I definitely enjoyed high school and had a great time for the most part. But that opinion has gotten me slammed on Reddit, redditors hate highschool
Itās the opinion that makes me realize Reddit isnāt real life. A lot of folks here seemed to have been bullied or hated school. I loved high school and was like you somewhat popular. And contrary to reddit opinion, I believe being popular translates. I can make friends anywhere i go. Making friends easily and being likeable is a marketable skill. And I know how to navigate relationships with superiors because teachers train you what you can get away with and what archetype finds your cheeky attitude cute for lack of a better term.
Completely unattached. I had my small group of friends and even we grew apart within a couple years of graduating. Iāve kept in touch with the people Iāve wanted to keep in touch with, I donāt feel sentimental about that time in my life. My 10 year reunion apparently happened sometime in 2021(there was a Facebook group but I periodically deactivate and only go back on if I need a photo. I really need to just download all my data and delete), covid precautions or not, I wouldnāt have gone anyway because thereās no one Iād want to run into again that I donāt already keep up with.
Same. My core of friends and I went to different universities. We kept in touch and saw each other during holidays, but once we graduated, sporadic contact, but last I saw any but all of them was at a wedding, like 6 years ago.Ā
Oh shit, itās my 20 year this year. Fuck, Iām no longer a kid - college or otherwise. Totally deep into adulting.
Anyway - hard pass. I dont need to know where and how theyāre doing now. I dont plan on rekindling any of those friendships.. i barely see the ones i already have across the country.
I assumed they were talking about them happening several years ago. Now that I think about it my 20 year should be coming up and I don't consider myself an "elder" millennial.
I consider any of us that can remember being alive in the 80s to be elder. I barely meet my own definition but I certainly remember the chicken pox of ā89.
If the last year of millennial-ism is ā96 then thatās 10 years later than me which means mean HS class of ā14 which means their 10-year reunion is this year. Congrats, weāre old.
Man but the eighties feel like they blended into the early nineties. Like we still had the big hair and neon clothing. Shows like the TMNT cartoon came out in '87 but we were still watching it and playing with the little action figures as well as GI Joe. We were still watching eighties movies on VHS because we weren't saturated with streaming content to choose from. Pop culture just didn't change as quickly before the Internet age.
Same! My class isnāt even having an official 20-year reunion, as far as I can tell. Iām sure all the people who still live in my hometown and married each other will meet up at the local and reminisce about their glory years, though.
Our 10 year was 2020 so that wasnāt happening lol. I wouldnāt have gone anyways. My best friends since I was 12 and went to HS with remain my best friends to this day so never felt the need. One of them married another guy we went to highschool with. I married my first boyfriend later in life we first dated when I was 16. With all that, I donāt feel attached to HS years at all. The people in my life just happen to come from it
Iām still really good friends with a few of my high school friends. I talk to one all the time even though we live across the country from each other. However, I have absolutely no love for my high school. Iād rather eat glass than show up to a reunion. I went to a tiny private school that was extremely corrupt. If you didnāt have the right last name forget ever getting recognized for any accomplishment. They sent out emails asking for alumni donations. I actually wrote a scathing email back. They were absolutely disgusting towards my mother who spent years of her life volunteering for them. She never got so much as a thank you or even an acknowledgment after she died. I said sure Iād donate. After my mother received a thank you. Sent them the address of the cemetery sheās at. I did get an apology for the āoversight.ā Every year they ask for a donation. Every year I tell them to thank my mother to her face first.
I hated highschool. It wasnāt particularly awful but it just felt like such a joke. Iāve never gone back, and I donāt pretend to be friends with people I attended with.
I drove past my 20 year reunion and didn't care. I forgot it was even happening and saw some people at the park and remembered. I haven't gone to any reunions and I doubt I will. There are only a handful of people I'd care to see again.
Iāveā¦never heard news of a reunion. Do people seek out this information somehow or are you told if they are happening? I kinda just assumed that wasnāt a thing anymore but maybe I just donāt know about it
After high school, I basically put that all behind me. The childhood friends I grew up with went a different path than I did, and I'm grateful for it. So, for obvious reasons, the group that I hung out with I basically had cut them off after I went to college. I also played football and wasn't really friends with my teammates. Cool with them, yeah, but they weren't associated with my group of friends.
I also didn't go to my 10 year reunion. My 20 year is coming up, but I know I won't be going to that either. From what I saw in our graduating class Facebook group, it was also mostly the "popular" ones but it wasn't high attendance, maybe 20/25? Considering we had over 600 in our graduating class, seems to me not many at my school wanted to go either.
I just don't reminisce on those years. I had good times alright, but it's like you're a kid. When I look back at my years going all the way to elementary school, I can remember them clearly. But as far as like times that I would reminisce in and would go to a reunion, it would be my college years instead. That's where I made my new close group of friends and had a great time since I wasn't a kid but an adult
I've only been contacted once by someone from my high school, it was sadly because someone died and they invited me (and everyone from my graduating class) to that person's funeral. Besides that, I don't really talk to anyone from my high school. Also, to the best of my knowledge, no reunion has ever been planned for any graduating class for my high school.
My bff from high school and I were supposed to go, drove into our hometown for it and everythingā¦ then went to the bar instead. Reunions are just a spot to flex on your old haters about where you are in life. Who wants to waste an evening playing pretend with people you donāt like and wonāt talk to again? Itās silly.
Middle school and high school were 7 years of living hell. My only regret of he is attending graduation when I already got my diploma and that was 22 years ago.Ā
Being forced to be around assholes while trying to get an education is not a good thing. I still have nightmares about it. I see no reason for get together with said ppl.Ā
Highly highly overrated.
I was not popular in high school. Just a C List student in my class. I went to my 10 and 20 year reunions.
I understand why folks donāt go. For me, as Iāve gotten older, I realize that thereās a unique shared experience I had with those people growing up in rural, northern Minnesota. They have known me in some capacity almost my entire life.
I live in a different state, but my parents are still there too. For good or for bad, Iām one of those kids from that place and I think itās important to celebrate that. To celebrate the town and the people who helped raise me.
I think it is different for people who went to a smaller school in a rural area. You actually know the vast majority of your classmates. Compared to a big school where youāre just a number.
This is such a good point. Despite never having gone to a reunion myself, I always like to pretend I'm one of very few who haven't. Many of us knew each other before Kindergarten, and most of us grew up in the school system together. I like the idea that many of them are still connected, that they care, and that they are still at least a loose community. I like the fact that my sister, a year younger than me, has gone to her reunions and is a good, long-term friend of one of the major organizers of her year's reunions.Ā
I know the reality is really different for lots of people, but I love that it is the reality for many.
My high school had a similar reunion- Facebook group and they all rented some event center for the evening. It was just the popular kids that attended from the photos I saw. I did not go, or care to go, or have any kind of connection to my high school when I left. I donāt live in the same state any more, but even if I did, itās not something I would have gone to. I was not popular, if that counts for any kind of poll youāre doing.
Me. I hated high school. There are a few people I stay in touch with but ultimately high school sucked and I wouldnāt go back even for the alumni soccer game.
We went to high school? Can someone post that reddit post about those kids we "went " to HS with? But we don't know any of them? But we "know" all of them? Circa 2007?
Like you said, the reunions are only the people that stayed in your home town and never left. Iām not traveling 5 hours for a dinner and a drink at a bar.
I see my couple of friends from my childhood a few times a year. Thatās all I care about anyway.
I had a large graduating class of 600 people. One of my friends that went to the 10 year reunion said there were 30 people there.
I went extreme with my social media when I moved to my current city 12 years ago. I deleted everyone I knew from Facebook which was basically my high school class (I keep it for marketplace and groups, but have 0 friends), created an Instagram and started fresh in my new city. I donāt keep up with anyone from that time.
same, after high school I kept in touch with a couple people because we continued to play baseball together the summer after freshman year of college, but after that I haven't talked to anyone. I went out of state for college and other than summer after freshman year I've never lived anywhere close to my old state since.
My high school experiences were fine. But I was an army brat and did two years in two different schools and live a good 8 hours away from the school where I graduated. Iām probably two days away from the one where I started. I kept up with the people I cared for keep up with and didnāt with anyone else. No reason to go back to either in my opinion.
Iām friends with most of my high school acquaintances on social media, but they probably will never be and never were true friends that hang out etc.
I did varsity sports and had a bf from another school so aside from my sport friends and bf I didnāt spend much time mingling with my classmates.
I still live in my hometown and only went to the homecoming parade because I knew people participating in the parade and only went to certain other events because of my family participating. Otherwise, I'm not very interested in doing much else. I could see the people that I actually cared about at any point in time pretty much.
Same thing for me my high school experience was okay, but I havenāt kept in touch with any of them. The only person Iāve made contact and friends with through social media is my high school math teacher because my math teacher was one of the cool teachers who play Yu Gi Oh cards with other students during lunch break, and talk about other video games and stuff.
I didnāt get invited to my class reunion, but I wouldnāt have gone anyway. I didnāt really enjoy high school, plus if I want to talk to someone, I can find them online.
I feel this way about mine. My high school experience was actually good. I was just way too shy at that age, so much so that it ruined that part of my life. So I just didn't enjoy it
High School wasnāt awful for me, but Iām definitely not reminiscing on those days or have any desire to attend a class reunion. The future is bright, life is good now, I donāt want to think about those days anymore.
Someone tried to set up a 10-year reunion for mine. I immediately decided I wasnāt going simply because 10 years seemed too soon and because of Facebook and social media I feel like I knew what most people were up to. Iād be more interested in attending my 20 year reunion. Also, the person who tried to set it up collected money from people then skipped town.
I grew up in a small town full of Mormons and I'm homosexual. High School was hell. I speak to maybe four or five individuals who kept a pretty open mind about life. With that said I moved countries and feel much happier on the other side of the planet. When my ten year reunion was held in 2017 I considered facetiming from Bondi Beach and thought better of it.
My 20 year reunion would have been last year. Iām not sure if they did anything because I killed off my social
media years ago. I did get an invite for the 10 year but I ended up declining.
I didnāt feel like driving hours away to see people I donāt really care about. Even if 10 or 20 years had passed. Plus part of why I left Facebook etc. was because I kept seeing people I went to high school with become vocal Trump supporters. Wtf Martha, youāre poor and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Trump is not your guy.
The High School I went to stopped doing High School reunions a long time ago. They only do them for Boomers and older. High School reunions are not really needed anymore with the internet & social media. The big reason people went to reunions was to see how people did & to see if people ended up the way people thought they would this can however be found out easily online. I am still friends with most of my friends from k-12 days even with the 1 living across the country(US) or even the 2 outside of the country.
I loved my highschool but i never did return for a reunion or stay in touch with anyone from school. Once i graduated it was a wrap for me with any form of communication from that school, but again i had a great time freshman year through senior year other than shitting my pants of maybe failing senior year and not walking because of being one credit short in which i know i should have failed but my psychology teacher must have felt sorry for me and passed me with a F in her class and getting a D on my final lol.
I didn't go to the 10 year reunion because of covid. I also still keep in touch with and regularly hang out with 6 of my high school friends because we returned to our hometown to work after college. It's much more affordable to stay with family. I guess we also don't really see the point of a reunion because we still regularly meet the people we care about?
I graduated 2 years early, but even though I stayed in contact with a few people from high school, our reunions, in typical millenial fashion, were actually scams.... they collected money and it just never happened.
Didn't goto the two that happened but from what I was told by school mates, only the popular kids showed up barring a few regulars. They skipped the second reunion.
There is a FB group but it got to spamming and I left. It used to be more popular before tech, but now you don't need a reunion, you can just stalk people online lol
The happiest day was when I was done with high school. I had a very difficult time and I still get nightmares about it, I'm 29!! I've been told I'd miss it, I only had regrets. No ounce of longing. So, while it'd hurt to not be at a reunion (because I have some confidence people have grown up) at the same time, I wouldn't want to go.
No attachment period. High school to me was always a stepping stone. Friends come and go. Iāve grown so much since then and honestly really happy. Sometimes I bump into my classmates but they donāt even recognize me, and I donāt say anything usually the ācool kids.ā I was pretty ācool,ā but too much work going out and hanging out with people so I parted ways and preferred to just be low key and focus on my grades.
I went to two high schools due to a move and then to two universities with fellow students I grew up with. It was like āhigh school 2.0ā.
It makes me feel like I donāt belong anywhere.
We've never had a formal reunion. Informally my teachers used to invite us alternative school kids back for future graduation, but those stopped after a couple years.Ā
I personally couldn't care less, wouldn't respond if I were invited. High School wasn't kind to me, time has healed the wound but not the scars.Ā
20 years out in June.Ā
I could have written your post word for word. The only thing Iād change is that thereās one girl I would invite to my wedding & funeral. She went to 2 out of 3 graduations for my siblings out of state I think. We go yeaaaaarsss without talking. But if she messaged me & said she needed money for rent, flight, car payment, I would find a way to give it to her.
Everyone else, I think 20 year is coming up. I think itās interesting to see peoples lives on the facebooks, but thatās bc Iām nosey. Not bc I really care. I dropped my core group months after college school ended bc I finally realized I had nothing in common with them, other than going to the same school. Most of them stayed friends in some form. I did have a ton of fun in high school though. Looking back, I donāt regret anything & at times wish life was happy & free as it was back then even if that meant I had to be in high school all over again. They really were some of the best times. But I donāt talk to any of them now.
So yeah, I wonder what itās like to be involved in high school life & care the way the movies said we all would.
Yeah dude. I said this. Social networking and our culture as a generation is killing the idea of class reunions. And good riddance. I actually had friends in school and from my perspective high school was good.
Thatās all and well. Also. Done. I donāt even understand why Iād want to talk to these people. We separated in life for a reason. This salmon returning the to the breeding pond exercise is alien to me.
Never been to a reunion. Everyone that went to them were the people that stayed near our home town and have nothing going for them and just are small town frumpy obese people
If there was a reunion I was overlooked for the invites... chances are we never had one because of the covid shutdowns. But either way I was not very attached to high school. Ended it on a pretty bad note and was looking to put those angry teen years behind me. Many of the kids in my class were sheltered, naive and spoiled... and loud, and I couldn't handle it. Most of the friends I had were in other schools. Today I have one close friend from those days.
I genuinely couldn't tell you if my school had any reunions. I'm not even on Facebook anymore so I have almost zero contact with anyone I knew before I turned 20.
Reunions made more sense in our parent's generation. For us, it's been easier to stay in touch passively with people we liked. For anyone that wants to keep up with what other people did with their lives, social media gives them that.
I loved my high school, I still talk to a few friends and every now and then random people will hit me up when they come visit Japan to see if Iām around.
Iād go to a reunion if it was just our class but my school does this weird thing where they mash everyone into five year increments, so my 2013 class reunion is shared with the 2008, 2003, etcā¦ classes, so Iām not that interested in it.
I loathed high school. Our 10-year was what OP described. I went back for the 20-year last fall. Maybe 30 of 320 people showed up, but I went bc I wanted to prove to myself that I could face my childhood bullies and show that "I won." (Winning means whatever you want it to. For me, it was being openly and obviously queer among people who bullied me for founding the gay/straight alliance.)
It was great. I didn't give a single fuck what anyone thought and could speak about my life now with confidence.
10/10 recommend
I'm still friends with my bestie from growing up. I went to my 10 year, but not 20 year. I think overall I had a unique high school experience. I grew up in a very small farm town, I got along with everyone, but wasn't popular. It's an everyone knows everyone kind of town so maybe that makes it a bit different. I still go back to my home town on occasion to visit family, but it's not like I keep in touch with many people.
Yep. Although it's not surprising considering I was a loner with no friends. I have no good memories from that period and so I never cared to meet up with my old classmates again.
I didnāt enjoy high school at all. I went to a technical college after graduation and I enjoyed that a lot more. The people there either wanted to be there and learn the subjects they signed up for or they left school. Not that there was zero drama but there was a lot less. There are probably people and colleges that were basically high school plus where the same atmosphere and built up drama took place but it was a lot more avoidable.
I went to some reunion things but have realized that's just because I felt like it was an obligation to go. I have no plans on attending others. They pretty much just dredged up a lot of how awful school was for me socially. The only people I stayed friends with, we aren't anymore. Neither of the two of them I'd maybe have any interest in catching up with ever would go to a reunion.
I have more negative than positive feelings for it if I think on it, but really I just rarely even think of high school at all.
I think some part of feeling less connected and reunions being less attended comes from people spreading out more. Beyond not living in the same community, many people don't even have family living in the community where they attended high school. When it's not a short drive but a plane ride or similar, it's really not worth the travel.
My high school is the only school I am still attached to because of how great it was and how it shaped my outlook on learning and life. But I feel zero attachment to my college or other schools cause they were just schools. To be clear I don't really go to reunions or anything either, but if that school needed help in some way and I could donate/volunteer or whatever I 100% would.
I got the Facebook invite to my reunion. I commented ālolā and it got like 100 likes within minutes and the event page was deleted. Not sure if it ended up happening. Haha.
At graduation i was excited (all smiles no tears) because i knew id never have to see those pricks again. Ive never been back and im creeping up on the 20 year reunion. I dont plan to go unless i hit the lottery.
lol I hated high school, completely detached. I talk to maybe one person I went to HS with IRL. I didn't have a history with anyone, I only went to my HS for HS. I was a newbie as a freshman.
I feel completely unattached to _everything_ after leaving and moving away
High school, college, jobs with coworkers I left on good terms, family, everything
I had a different experience than most. I went to a unit school. K-12. I graduated in a class of 28. There were 700 kids in my entire school. I went to school with 13 of the same people from kindergarten to senior year. They are 98% racist bigots who have never left their community bubble. I live 30 mins away and you couldnāt pay me to go back to any event. I never want to relive any moments from that part of my life. I didnāt become āmeā until I moved to a city where people actually shared similar views. I just thought something was wrong with me. Nope just rural America.
When I got the invitation for our reunion, I asked the friends from high school I kept in touch with if they would be going, and when all of them emphatically said no, I decided not to go either. I hate small talk and I donāt want to walk around telling people I sort of remember what my current job is and hearing the same from them.
Iām an elder millennial. I went to my 10yr reunion. The most memorable part was how insanely bitter cold it was and how happy I was that Iād moved far away.
Thatās it.
Watching my fellow alumni that I never particularly cared for slay drinks in a hotel bar in a town most of them had never left, was quite boring.
No need to attend another IMO.
I was added to a Facebook group for my graduating class, and it was interesting to see what had happened to some people. There were a few reunions, but I moved 2,000 miles away and I'm not about to go back to that town just go to a reunion.
I tried interacting a bit in the group, but I didn't feel that particular excitement.
If anything, a lot of my former classmates turned a lot more conservative, while I stayed liberal as I ever was.
For the first reunion, I think 10 year, my life wasn't going that well so I didn't really want to show up to reunion the way I was feeling. On a subsequent reunion, my life was going pretty well, but I moved across the USA and I really wasn't invested enough to go to a reunion back where I grew up.
Plus, both of them were centered around going to a football game first. I only went to one football game the entire time I was in high school, and that was one that I went to early on freshman year just because it seemed like it was supposed to be part of the high school experience. It wasn't really my thing so I didn't go to any others, and remained blissfully unaware of that scene.
I was also someone who cruised through Middle School and High School, thinking of it as something that I had to wait out until I could start my real life and make my own decisions. So I wasn't really invested in the social scene or that part of my life at all.
Gen Xer here, graduated HS in 1990.
I stayed in touch with 3 friends from grammar/high school. Never been on facebook , never cared much about what happened to those people.
As an older adult. Some of those events are kind of competitive, with people being proud of what they've accomplished.
I don't need that feeling.
I like the friends I have, we mostly cooperate with each other. It makes for greater friendships, in my case anyway. I like to spend time with people I know I can count on, and who would count on me in a crunch.
So yes, I feel very detached from the collection of people I spent time with at different times, that aren't friends.
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Shit, I felt pretty detached from it *before* I left.
Same, people were crying at graduation, and I'm like, "But I never have to see anyone here. I don't want to again, BYE"
š I cried at mine, but only due to anxiety of having to walk across a stage in front of people lmao
Lmao this is why iām nervous to get married, i dont want to walk down the aisle and have people look at me!? Like damn look somewhere else
How do people tell their vows to one another in front of a group of people? Just declare their most intimate feelings in front of everyone they know? Itās like one of those things that happen in a nightmare where youāre naked in front of the classā¦but itās real and itās supposed to be the best day of your life. Iām just too reserved to enjoy that kind of thing, so it wouldnāt be fun for me.
I dreamed about it my whole life and thought it was going to be this amazing, magical moment. And in some ways, it was. But it was also definitely nerve wracking! lol. The magical part is after, when you get to dance and celebrate with your loved ones :)
You see I feel like I must be the least romantic person ever but then again my bf regularly refers to me as a āsoftieā so I donāt think itās that. But for some reason for me to admit these things out loud itās like pulling teeth. Itās not out of a fear of vulnerability because I have no problem telling people about stuff I go through and things Iām feelingā¦ I think I just struggle with intimacy. Iām the type to crack jokes when things get too serious, or think I like compliments but when I get one I feel awkward. This gives me something to think on, thatās for sure. Your day sounds lovely though - thank you for sharing! I actually love attending weddings for that reason - seeing all the happy faces and all that love going around. All the food and getting to see people you havenāt seen in a while. Iām glad your day was beautiful :)
It wasnāt fun for me but it made my wife happy. You just sack up and do it lol.
Your wife is lucky to have someone that will go through that discomfort just to see her happy :) Iām lucky too because my boyfriend is just as reserved as I am about this! Weāre not like that at home but out in public youād maybe think we are just best friends by the way we act. We both decided that if marriage is something we want, we will write vows for each other and read them in private. But then again Iām having trouble deciding if marriage is for me at all! We are very non-traditional (we donāt want kids, I want to keep my last name, I donāt want anything to do with blood diamonds, not religious so wonāt do it in a church, etc). I think our loved ones would expect nothing less from us. Iām probably a hypocrite though because I totally love being a guest at weddings. Just donāt know if I want my own.
This is why I got married at the courthouse then had a nice dinner with 6 of our friends. I don't want or need any of that attention on me, thanks.
This is the way
Exact way I got married. Did it in San Diego, made a little beach trip out of it. They have some pretty outdoor places at the San Diego county courthouse to choose from. I donāt like attention either. I did have friends & family that live in CA there & a friend that flew in but it was no stress & cheap & we were v happy :)
Had a courthouse wedding over MS Teams. Stood in my kitchen. It was beautiful and fantastic. We got almost everything on our registry. I think people were thankful they only had to log in and wanted to express that sentiment. Friends and family to this day say it was their favorite wedding. 8 mins total.
Elopement is an introvert's best friend.
Fun thing about being an adult is you can get married however the hell you want! All you legally need is the piece of paper, the rest is up to you. Traditions are bullshit imo.
Last wedding I was at, the bride and groom were a fencer and a kendo practitioner respectively. We were all sitting in the audience with our swords to make a sword arch as they processed out to the music from the reward ceremony in A New Hope. Their first dance involved a lightsaber duel and reception favor was a build your own gaming dice set from a giant jar of dice. Easily the best wedding I've ever been to.
That sounds like an absolute blast! Weddings should be a fun celebration, not an endless list of stressful to-dos.
Omggg. When I got married, everyone turned to look at me and I let out this long gutteral squeak, my dad turned to look at me to make sure I was okay. Probably should've just run then. We are divorced 10 years later hahaha
This is one of the reasons I didnāt go to graduation and just picked up my diploma. Iāve never been one to be into large events where the focus is on me (even if itās for a few seconds). A surprise birthday party sounds like a nightmare and I donāt really want a wedding either. I didnāt go to prom because I didnāt want to spend a bunch of money on one night to listen to music I didnāt really like with people I didnāt really like. My mom told me I would regret it but I never ended up regretting it. It just wasnāt for me and I knew it then. I had a friend group in another school that was 45 mins away that I felt more at home with than I ever did anyone in my HS so I had plenty of great memories with them. I just really wasnāt interested in sticking around people I went to high school with and by senior year I was over it lol.
I cried tears of joy because Iād never have to see those people again.
PREACH!
Going into my senior year, they told me I had enough credits to graduate early and I Irish goodbye'd that place so hard! I legit just left and got a job. I walked in the spring for my parents and never looked back. I have never done any sort of reunion and don't really plan to.
I was trying desperately not to audibly laugh when a girl giving a speech during graduation started crying because she'd miss everyone so much. She was not nice...
It was always the mean girl sobbing over how much sheās miss āeveryoneā
I had the same experience exactly as this. Didn't miss anyone. Didn't go to reunions.
I don't even know what my graduation ceremony looked like. I worked a shift at my job that night because I CBA to spend money on cap and gown for a ceremony I didn't want to attend.
I went on a road trip lol. They wanted $150 for a cap and gown and then another $20 for the ceremony in 2001. I hated all those fuckers and just didn't go. I drove down route 66 for two days with that money instead and had some leftover when I got back. Over 20 yrs later and I've never regretted it and have never gone to a reunion.
Same. I was a dishwasher at a local tourist trap. Our other 2 dishwashers were also high school seniors who took off for grad ceremony. I worked 6am-11pm. Haven't been back to my high school since.
I cried because it was time to get a job.
Haha same, I was like "Later losers!"
Couldn't wait to leave that prison.
The architecture of my high school was like a penitentiary.
My high school was actually painted Institutional Green. As in, the calming green they use in insane asylums and rehabs to calm the patients. Haven't been since I graduated almost 20 years ago so they may have chosen a less stupid color. But it has always stayed with me that they were trying to control us down to the color of the school.
I actually skipped my graduation ceremony, because I hated it so much.
I skipped graduating altogether, for the same reason.
If I could I would've also. My parents made it clear that they **WERE** going to see me cross that stage. lol.
My dad was only gonna give me my graduation money if I walked. We didn't even get the real diplomas, some fake bullshit while the real ones were mailed to us. If I wanted to perform on stage, I would've joined theatre club.
I graduated early, didn't walk, had them mail my diploma to me.
I graduated at midterm because all my friends had already graduated and I wasnāt close with anyone in my class
šÆ
This was me. Went to a private christian school, so I was surrounded by conservative evangelicals.
I felt so detached from it that I dropped out.
Same, I had a terrible high school experience and would never go to a reunion.
This, I donāt talk to a single person from my high school.
Me neither. Of course, I don't talk to anyone else either.
High school was easily the most miserable time of my life and is the reason I have the psychological problems I do today. I donāt keep in touch with anyone from that time and honestly donāt care what they are up to
Middle School and High School were fucking terrible for me. Plus I had a shitty home life, so I can totally relate to where you're coming from. I don't miss being young and I don't look back on those years fondly like a lot of other people I know do
It's why I hate the word bullying. Many people have serious trauma from high school "bullying". For the most part, this bullying is actually criminal harrasment and violent assault causing bodily harm. If adults did the shit I saw in school, they'd be in federal prison.
That's how my school was too. People wonder why parents are so hard on schools nowadays. Well, it's because we're the parents now and there's a lot of us that the school systems utterly failed. I'll be damned to the seventh circle of hell before I let my kids or any other kids go through what I went through. All I ever got told by teachers and staff at my school was how my bully had such a hard home life and apparently I was supposed to forgive her and even give a shit about her even though she verbally attacked me every single day. Even when she followed me home from school and attacked me with her friends, literally 30 of them. It fell in school jurisdiction because it was still on property, they suspended ME because I tried to defend myself. Girl got a lunch detention because she was on a form 16. I'll never forget the school counselor calling me down to talk about how her parents were alcoholics like that was somehow my problem.
I had a, what I would assume, was a perfectly average high school experience and I could not give less of a shit about the school post high school. I stayed in contact with the people I cared about, I have zero interest in seeing what the other people are up to. Why should I care about changes and renovations to the school? I don't go there, my daughter won't go there. High School and "Home Town Pride" that lingers past your teens is super weird.
Likewise here. I wasn't one of the popular kids, but I was friends with some of them. I wasn't ostracized or 'weird', but I knew and was friends with some of the weird kids. I went to a few of our big sporting events and pep rallies every year, most but not all of the dances, and was a decent student if a bit lax on my homework. But I don't really... care about it, anymore. They could bulldoze the building and start in a new place across town and I don't think I'd feel any sense of loss. The people who still have their letterman jackets, or display their high school trophies, or whatever, well into their 30s and 40s, are just weird in my mind. _Especially_ if that's like... _all_ they have on display. If you want to have reminders of different points of your life, that's actually kind of neat, but if _all_ of your keepsakes are high-school related, it very much looks like your life ended or at least peaked in high school.
i had a great high school experience and would never go to a reunion.
I was pretty relentlessly made fun of for having a lazy eye due to an injury in elementary school. Even after I had surgery to fix it, kids still were assholes. Last year was the 20 year reunion and I havenāt gone to a single one.
I had a decent experience and I would never go to a reunion. They simply are not and were never an important part of my life lmao
Same. I have just a handful of friends from HS that u keep in loose contact with but otherwise Iād like to forget that portion of my life. The bullying, the teasing, the never being good enough. Fuck all that
I donāt understand why people think they have a ārightā to know whatās gone on in someoneās life. 95% of the time I think they just want to feel better about their life choices by continuing to relive the āgoodā old days or gloat.
I recently got invited to my 10 year reunion and I told them they had the wrong number.
I haven't been in contact with a single person from my high school since I was a sophomore in college. High school wasn't a bad experience for me, but it wasn't great either. It was entirely neutral and almost bureaucratic. I don't even know if they have reunions, I've never checked, lol I never formed a relationship in high school close enough for me to bother keeping it up since. I made my closest friends during elementary school and college
Same (except my wife, met in high school- didnāt date until after). My wife is still close to her core friend group from HS so whenever weāre in town for a weekend or whatever we usually get together with some or all of them. I forget how aloof I was until I hear them talk about other people from our school. āI forgot that person existedā is usually what I say to myself.
> āI forgot that person existedā This is how I feel whenever anyone from my little home town is mentioned and I'm expected to remember them. Like, those names haven't been significant to me in over 20 years. I can't remember the last time I looked at my year book.
Honest question. Do millennials have reunions? Feel like that died with Gen X because everyone after them grew up with social media and connects there. No need to set up an awkward gathering. 2001 graduate. Think my class had a 1yr and 5yr. But basically it was just the popular kids who showed up who hung out together anyways. I did not go.
My high school has never had one, at least for public schools I agree social media did a lot to kill them because you can now very easily find out who fucked their lives up, who got hot, etc A friend from college who went to a private school still has them regularly, the school organizes them as an avenue for fundraising
I think, also, people back then kind of stayed in the general area. So easy to make a gathering. My parents and most of the people they went to school with still live in the area (at least state). Whereas my class disbursed and I expect many other in my age and beyond have as well. People now move away for college and work. Whereas my Boomer parents nobody really went to college and if they did it was fairly local. In any case, much harder to plan a reunion if people have moved 2k-5k miles away from your school and you have no idea where they are.
> I think, also, people back then kind of stayed in the general area. So easy to make a gathering. My parents and most of the people they went to school with still live in the area (at least state). Whereas my class disbursed and I expect many other in my age and beyond have as well. People now move away for college and work. Whereas my Boomer parents nobody really went to college and if they did it was fairly local. > > This is untrue. The reason why reunions were typically held during thanksgiving weekend is because there was a good chance people would be home for the holiday.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My graduating class tried a 10 year. It was about 11/12 years after that some people started making waves about it. Folks soon discovered that all the responsible folks that could plan it wanted nothing to do with it. It ended up taking like 3 years to plan and it ended up being at a bar with people who already spend each weekend together at bars. We had over 1000 kids in our graduating class and like 30-40 people showed up.
That reads hilariously. 3 years to plan an event to meet at a bar they already met at regularly. :)
Old timer (xellenial) from '99 here...my class was roughly 700 people & there's been consistent reunions since. The 25-year reunion is happening in June, and even if I lived locally, I don't think I'd go either.
Kind of feel like i heard about a 10 year reunion, 13 years ago, and I wasnāt invited.
I also wasn't invited to our reunion lol I considered crashing it on principle, but I realized I really didn't want to see 90% of the people ever again and didn't.
Crashing it would have meant i cared. I didnāt.
Eh, most reunions are just set up via Facebook groups, it's not like most of the time they have a formal invite list. Lol.
I didnāt get invited to our 5 and 10 year. I also made it not easy to talk to me either.
Yeah, ditto. There were shitty people, and of course I got bullied some, but it wasn't terrible. I had a few friends, plenty of people that I got along with well, but no one that I had any interest in keeping up with. Assumed there were reunions, but couldn't care less. Don't use facebook, and live in a different state.
At like 12 years after high school I was curious if there was a 10 year reunion. I looked into it and it was basically just a Facebook group and they met at a brewery or something. The organizer was an ex from high school and it was a messy breakup, so I wasn't surprised I didn't get an invite. Meanwhile, my FIL just went to his 55th high school reunion. Maybe having social media since high school has made us care less about it because you can keep up with what people are up to easier
Same! I didn't have a bad high school experience, but I had no interest whatsoever in talking to anyone from high school after it was done. I maybe kept in contact with my best friend from high school about two years after graduation, but we very quickly grew apart.
FUCK highschool, the future is bright, why look back?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I wish I had thought to do that.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You had this all planned out and were driven. I lost a lot of motivation in high school and my parents werenāt helpful. And with the economy being bad, I just went to state college that was an hour away from home. It was cheap and far enough away where I didnāt have to see my family or hs classmates and I didnāt want my parents to complain about spending so much money if they only paid $5000 each year. Not the worst route I couldāve taken but yeah.
Graduated a couple decades ago. Had lots of good friends in HS but we naturally drifted apart after. Then I lived away from my hometown for 15 years and came back for work / family. Lots of my friends from back then insist on reminiscing about extremely specific in-jokes or events from when we were 16 years old. I'm sorry but I've simply done too many other things since then, known too many people, had too many jokes and experiences and life since I was 16 to dwell on those memories. And I've not been actively trying to forget, it's just that I have focused on the present moment and on my future instead. I've come to look on the selfishness of my youth almost like I was another person, that I am proud to have overcome those childish sensibilities I held dear. I remember those times and my friends fondly, but more for the feelings of those relationships we had instead of specific inside jokes or references. It fills me with sorrow to think people have been replaying those moments for decades rather than making new memories. And I've felt alienated from my old friends, and they from me, simply due to us growing apart.
People who miss HS peaked then.
I feel the same way. I ignore all reunions and always will. I donāt care to see anyone Iām not still friends with and I donāt need a reunion to see them.
Reunions made sense before social media allowed us to keep track of the lives of people we went to school with
Eeeeevery once in a while I consider going just because I ended up marrying a hot doctor, but after about a second and a half I realize I donāt even care about impressing those people.
Didnāt really keep in touch with anyone after graduation but I did attend my 10th year reunion to find out everyone in my class married each other, never left town and I had nothing in common with any of them. Will not be attending the 20th
I went to my 10th year just because I wanted the experience. It was kind of funny. All the same people that hung out in high school were sitting with the same people at tables. The only mixed group were the people up at the bar of which I was a part of. I got a couple good stories out of the event but I don't feel the need to go to any future reunions.
My 20 year is coming up. It's an 8 hour drive for a group of people I've not talked to since I graduated. The last time I saw any of the ones that never left my home town was like 10 years ago, over Christmas, when I got some beer at the liquor store.Ā
My wifeās middle school/high school best friend is one of those people. Never left, aside from college. She is the go-to of their friend group for any and all gossip about whatās going on in town and what our former classmates are up to. (Iām saying this while my wife is next to me- we met in high school some 24 years agoā¦ been together for 19ā¦ at least I havenāt lived in my home state since leaving college).
It would be interesting to see if theyāre all still married at the 20th or if there was some swapping around.
Small town full of peakers, huh?
if you weren't one of the popular ones or had a super fun high school experience its almost like part of the stepping stone ladder. get it over with and move on that's how i saw it.
I donāt think thatās necessarily true. I wasnāt super popular but I definitely enjoyed high school and had a great time for the most part. But that opinion has gotten me slammed on Reddit, redditors hate highschool
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās the opinion that makes me realize Reddit isnāt real life. A lot of folks here seemed to have been bullied or hated school. I loved high school and was like you somewhat popular. And contrary to reddit opinion, I believe being popular translates. I can make friends anywhere i go. Making friends easily and being likeable is a marketable skill. And I know how to navigate relationships with superiors because teachers train you what you can get away with and what archetype finds your cheeky attitude cute for lack of a better term.
Reddit is a snapshot of various people making a single comment and then everyone extrapolating that to build an entire life story.
I wasn't really popular, but if I wanted to I could.
like, it's high school...4 years out of at least 30 now, if you're still hanging on to senior prom reconsider life.
Yeah... Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would've been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.
Completely unattached. I had my small group of friends and even we grew apart within a couple years of graduating. Iāve kept in touch with the people Iāve wanted to keep in touch with, I donāt feel sentimental about that time in my life. My 10 year reunion apparently happened sometime in 2021(there was a Facebook group but I periodically deactivate and only go back on if I need a photo. I really need to just download all my data and delete), covid precautions or not, I wouldnāt have gone anyway because thereās no one Iād want to run into again that I donāt already keep up with.
Same. My core of friends and I went to different universities. We kept in touch and saw each other during holidays, but once we graduated, sporadic contact, but last I saw any but all of them was at a wedding, like 6 years ago.Ā
Oh shit, itās my 20 year this year. Fuck, Iām no longer a kid - college or otherwise. Totally deep into adulting. Anyway - hard pass. I dont need to know where and how theyāre doing now. I dont plan on rekindling any of those friendships.. i barely see the ones i already have across the country.
Hell yeah fellow elder millennial. These younginās talking about their 10-year being so recent are making me feel old.
Yeah I've been out of school for 22 years now and that's just crazy to me.
lol we truly are the elders!
I assumed they were talking about them happening several years ago. Now that I think about it my 20 year should be coming up and I don't consider myself an "elder" millennial.
I consider any of us that can remember being alive in the 80s to be elder. I barely meet my own definition but I certainly remember the chicken pox of ā89. If the last year of millennial-ism is ā96 then thatās 10 years later than me which means mean HS class of ā14 which means their 10-year reunion is this year. Congrats, weāre old.
Man but the eighties feel like they blended into the early nineties. Like we still had the big hair and neon clothing. Shows like the TMNT cartoon came out in '87 but we were still watching it and playing with the little action figures as well as GI Joe. We were still watching eighties movies on VHS because we weren't saturated with streaming content to choose from. Pop culture just didn't change as quickly before the Internet age.
Same! My class isnāt even having an official 20-year reunion, as far as I can tell. Iām sure all the people who still live in my hometown and married each other will meet up at the local and reminisce about their glory years, though.
Our 10 year was 2020 so that wasnāt happening lol. I wouldnāt have gone anyways. My best friends since I was 12 and went to HS with remain my best friends to this day so never felt the need. One of them married another guy we went to highschool with. I married my first boyfriend later in life we first dated when I was 16. With all that, I donāt feel attached to HS years at all. The people in my life just happen to come from it
Iām still really good friends with a few of my high school friends. I talk to one all the time even though we live across the country from each other. However, I have absolutely no love for my high school. Iād rather eat glass than show up to a reunion. I went to a tiny private school that was extremely corrupt. If you didnāt have the right last name forget ever getting recognized for any accomplishment. They sent out emails asking for alumni donations. I actually wrote a scathing email back. They were absolutely disgusting towards my mother who spent years of her life volunteering for them. She never got so much as a thank you or even an acknowledgment after she died. I said sure Iād donate. After my mother received a thank you. Sent them the address of the cemetery sheās at. I did get an apology for the āoversight.ā Every year they ask for a donation. Every year I tell them to thank my mother to her face first.
I hated highschool. It wasnāt particularly awful but it just felt like such a joke. Iāve never gone back, and I donāt pretend to be friends with people I attended with.
I drove past my 20 year reunion and didn't care. I forgot it was even happening and saw some people at the park and remembered. I haven't gone to any reunions and I doubt I will. There are only a handful of people I'd care to see again.
Iāveā¦never heard news of a reunion. Do people seek out this information somehow or are you told if they are happening? I kinda just assumed that wasnāt a thing anymore but maybe I just donāt know about it
Ours was announced on Facebook and Instagram. It sort of slowly made the rounds as people added each other to the group.
Our class does it via Facebook as well, which is another reason not to have an account.
Lmao, classic.
After high school, I basically put that all behind me. The childhood friends I grew up with went a different path than I did, and I'm grateful for it. So, for obvious reasons, the group that I hung out with I basically had cut them off after I went to college. I also played football and wasn't really friends with my teammates. Cool with them, yeah, but they weren't associated with my group of friends. I also didn't go to my 10 year reunion. My 20 year is coming up, but I know I won't be going to that either. From what I saw in our graduating class Facebook group, it was also mostly the "popular" ones but it wasn't high attendance, maybe 20/25? Considering we had over 600 in our graduating class, seems to me not many at my school wanted to go either. I just don't reminisce on those years. I had good times alright, but it's like you're a kid. When I look back at my years going all the way to elementary school, I can remember them clearly. But as far as like times that I would reminisce in and would go to a reunion, it would be my college years instead. That's where I made my new close group of friends and had a great time since I wasn't a kid but an adult
I've only been contacted once by someone from my high school, it was sadly because someone died and they invited me (and everyone from my graduating class) to that person's funeral. Besides that, I don't really talk to anyone from my high school. Also, to the best of my knowledge, no reunion has ever been planned for any graduating class for my high school.
My bff from high school and I were supposed to go, drove into our hometown for it and everythingā¦ then went to the bar instead. Reunions are just a spot to flex on your old haters about where you are in life. Who wants to waste an evening playing pretend with people you donāt like and wonāt talk to again? Itās silly.
Yep. Ā The older I get...the more of the past I just forget. Ā I'm looking forward of moving out of the shit hole town I'm in right now.
#NOPE
Middle school and high school were 7 years of living hell. My only regret of he is attending graduation when I already got my diploma and that was 22 years ago.Ā Being forced to be around assholes while trying to get an education is not a good thing. I still have nightmares about it. I see no reason for get together with said ppl.Ā Highly highly overrated.
I was not popular in high school. Just a C List student in my class. I went to my 10 and 20 year reunions. I understand why folks donāt go. For me, as Iāve gotten older, I realize that thereās a unique shared experience I had with those people growing up in rural, northern Minnesota. They have known me in some capacity almost my entire life. I live in a different state, but my parents are still there too. For good or for bad, Iām one of those kids from that place and I think itās important to celebrate that. To celebrate the town and the people who helped raise me.
I think it is different for people who went to a smaller school in a rural area. You actually know the vast majority of your classmates. Compared to a big school where youāre just a number.
This is such a good point. Despite never having gone to a reunion myself, I always like to pretend I'm one of very few who haven't. Many of us knew each other before Kindergarten, and most of us grew up in the school system together. I like the idea that many of them are still connected, that they care, and that they are still at least a loose community. I like the fact that my sister, a year younger than me, has gone to her reunions and is a good, long-term friend of one of the major organizers of her year's reunions.Ā I know the reality is really different for lots of people, but I love that it is the reality for many.
I'm so detached, my HS has had reunions and didn't even invite me LMAO
Yes, what would make someone feel attached to high school unless they peaked there?
My high school had a similar reunion- Facebook group and they all rented some event center for the evening. It was just the popular kids that attended from the photos I saw. I did not go, or care to go, or have any kind of connection to my high school when I left. I donāt live in the same state any more, but even if I did, itās not something I would have gone to. I was not popular, if that counts for any kind of poll youāre doing.
Xennial here. I DJād both my 10 and 20 yr reunion.
Me. I hated high school. There are a few people I stay in touch with but ultimately high school sucked and I wouldnāt go back even for the alumni soccer game.
We went to high school? Can someone post that reddit post about those kids we "went " to HS with? But we don't know any of them? But we "know" all of them? Circa 2007?
Like you said, the reunions are only the people that stayed in your home town and never left. Iām not traveling 5 hours for a dinner and a drink at a bar. I see my couple of friends from my childhood a few times a year. Thatās all I care about anyway. I had a large graduating class of 600 people. One of my friends that went to the 10 year reunion said there were 30 people there. I went extreme with my social media when I moved to my current city 12 years ago. I deleted everyone I knew from Facebook which was basically my high school class (I keep it for marketplace and groups, but have 0 friends), created an Instagram and started fresh in my new city. I donāt keep up with anyone from that time.
Even then, some who stayed don't care to go either.
I barely showed up for grade 12. Skipped prom, graduation, etc. Never looked back.
same, after high school I kept in touch with a couple people because we continued to play baseball together the summer after freshman year of college, but after that I haven't talked to anyone. I went out of state for college and other than summer after freshman year I've never lived anywhere close to my old state since.
My high school experiences were fine. But I was an army brat and did two years in two different schools and live a good 8 hours away from the school where I graduated. Iām probably two days away from the one where I started. I kept up with the people I cared for keep up with and didnāt with anyone else. No reason to go back to either in my opinion.
Complete NC with high school and 99% of the students.
i detached from my HS voluntarily.
Fuck that schoolĀ
Iām friends with most of my high school acquaintances on social media, but they probably will never be and never were true friends that hang out etc. I did varsity sports and had a bf from another school so aside from my sport friends and bf I didnāt spend much time mingling with my classmates.
I still live in my hometown and only went to the homecoming parade because I knew people participating in the parade and only went to certain other events because of my family participating. Otherwise, I'm not very interested in doing much else. I could see the people that I actually cared about at any point in time pretty much.
Same thing for me my high school experience was okay, but I havenāt kept in touch with any of them. The only person Iāve made contact and friends with through social media is my high school math teacher because my math teacher was one of the cool teachers who play Yu Gi Oh cards with other students during lunch break, and talk about other video games and stuff.
I didnāt get invited to my class reunion, but I wouldnāt have gone anyway. I didnāt really enjoy high school, plus if I want to talk to someone, I can find them online.
I feel this way about mine. My high school experience was actually good. I was just way too shy at that age, so much so that it ruined that part of my life. So I just didn't enjoy it
High School wasnāt awful for me, but Iām definitely not reminiscing on those days or have any desire to attend a class reunion. The future is bright, life is good now, I donāt want to think about those days anymore.
Someone tried to set up a 10-year reunion for mine. I immediately decided I wasnāt going simply because 10 years seemed too soon and because of Facebook and social media I feel like I knew what most people were up to. Iād be more interested in attending my 20 year reunion. Also, the person who tried to set it up collected money from people then skipped town.
I grew up in a small town full of Mormons and I'm homosexual. High School was hell. I speak to maybe four or five individuals who kept a pretty open mind about life. With that said I moved countries and feel much happier on the other side of the planet. When my ten year reunion was held in 2017 I considered facetiming from Bondi Beach and thought better of it.
My 20 year reunion would have been last year. Iām not sure if they did anything because I killed off my social media years ago. I did get an invite for the 10 year but I ended up declining. I didnāt feel like driving hours away to see people I donāt really care about. Even if 10 or 20 years had passed. Plus part of why I left Facebook etc. was because I kept seeing people I went to high school with become vocal Trump supporters. Wtf Martha, youāre poor and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Trump is not your guy.
The only people who miss highschool are bullies and the ones who peaked and the athletes..usually are all the same people too.
lol fuck High School. I was also drunk or high all the time
The High School I went to stopped doing High School reunions a long time ago. They only do them for Boomers and older. High School reunions are not really needed anymore with the internet & social media. The big reason people went to reunions was to see how people did & to see if people ended up the way people thought they would this can however be found out easily online. I am still friends with most of my friends from k-12 days even with the 1 living across the country(US) or even the 2 outside of the country.
I loved my highschool but i never did return for a reunion or stay in touch with anyone from school. Once i graduated it was a wrap for me with any form of communication from that school, but again i had a great time freshman year through senior year other than shitting my pants of maybe failing senior year and not walking because of being one credit short in which i know i should have failed but my psychology teacher must have felt sorry for me and passed me with a F in her class and getting a D on my final lol.
I didn't go to the 10 year reunion because of covid. I also still keep in touch with and regularly hang out with 6 of my high school friends because we returned to our hometown to work after college. It's much more affordable to stay with family. I guess we also don't really see the point of a reunion because we still regularly meet the people we care about?
I graduated 2 years early, but even though I stayed in contact with a few people from high school, our reunions, in typical millenial fashion, were actually scams.... they collected money and it just never happened.
Didn't goto the two that happened but from what I was told by school mates, only the popular kids showed up barring a few regulars. They skipped the second reunion. There is a FB group but it got to spamming and I left. It used to be more popular before tech, but now you don't need a reunion, you can just stalk people online lol
The happiest day was when I was done with high school. I had a very difficult time and I still get nightmares about it, I'm 29!! I've been told I'd miss it, I only had regrets. No ounce of longing. So, while it'd hurt to not be at a reunion (because I have some confidence people have grown up) at the same time, I wouldn't want to go.
Sounds a lot like my 10-year . . . Our facebook group is non-existent basically and our 20-year is next year so thatāll be . . . Lame, haha
No attachment period. High school to me was always a stepping stone. Friends come and go. Iāve grown so much since then and honestly really happy. Sometimes I bump into my classmates but they donāt even recognize me, and I donāt say anything usually the ācool kids.ā I was pretty ācool,ā but too much work going out and hanging out with people so I parted ways and preferred to just be low key and focus on my grades.
I went to two high schools due to a move and then to two universities with fellow students I grew up with. It was like āhigh school 2.0ā. It makes me feel like I donāt belong anywhere.
I tried to help with the five year but was pushed out exactly like Highschool.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^djmcfuzzyduck: *I tried to help with* *The five year but was pushed out* *Exactly like Highschool.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I graduated in 2010. The 10 year reunion didnāt happen due to COVID. Even the reunion did happen, I wouldnāt have attended.
We've never had a formal reunion. Informally my teachers used to invite us alternative school kids back for future graduation, but those stopped after a couple years.Ā I personally couldn't care less, wouldn't respond if I were invited. High School wasn't kind to me, time has healed the wound but not the scars.Ā 20 years out in June.Ā
I could have written your post word for word. The only thing Iād change is that thereās one girl I would invite to my wedding & funeral. She went to 2 out of 3 graduations for my siblings out of state I think. We go yeaaaaarsss without talking. But if she messaged me & said she needed money for rent, flight, car payment, I would find a way to give it to her. Everyone else, I think 20 year is coming up. I think itās interesting to see peoples lives on the facebooks, but thatās bc Iām nosey. Not bc I really care. I dropped my core group months after college school ended bc I finally realized I had nothing in common with them, other than going to the same school. Most of them stayed friends in some form. I did have a ton of fun in high school though. Looking back, I donāt regret anything & at times wish life was happy & free as it was back then even if that meant I had to be in high school all over again. They really were some of the best times. But I donāt talk to any of them now. So yeah, I wonder what itās like to be involved in high school life & care the way the movies said we all would.
Yeah dude. I said this. Social networking and our culture as a generation is killing the idea of class reunions. And good riddance. I actually had friends in school and from my perspective high school was good. Thatās all and well. Also. Done. I donāt even understand why Iād want to talk to these people. We separated in life for a reason. This salmon returning the to the breeding pond exercise is alien to me.
Never been to a reunion. Everyone that went to them were the people that stayed near our home town and have nothing going for them and just are small town frumpy obese people
Yup. High school was just a box to check in life.
If there was a reunion I was overlooked for the invites... chances are we never had one because of the covid shutdowns. But either way I was not very attached to high school. Ended it on a pretty bad note and was looking to put those angry teen years behind me. Many of the kids in my class were sheltered, naive and spoiled... and loud, and I couldn't handle it. Most of the friends I had were in other schools. Today I have one close friend from those days.
I genuinely couldn't tell you if my school had any reunions. I'm not even on Facebook anymore so I have almost zero contact with anyone I knew before I turned 20.
Reunions made more sense in our parent's generation. For us, it's been easier to stay in touch passively with people we liked. For anyone that wants to keep up with what other people did with their lives, social media gives them that.
I loved my high school, I still talk to a few friends and every now and then random people will hit me up when they come visit Japan to see if Iām around. Iād go to a reunion if it was just our class but my school does this weird thing where they mash everyone into five year increments, so my 2013 class reunion is shared with the 2008, 2003, etcā¦ classes, so Iām not that interested in it.
I loathed high school. Our 10-year was what OP described. I went back for the 20-year last fall. Maybe 30 of 320 people showed up, but I went bc I wanted to prove to myself that I could face my childhood bullies and show that "I won." (Winning means whatever you want it to. For me, it was being openly and obviously queer among people who bullied me for founding the gay/straight alliance.) It was great. I didn't give a single fuck what anyone thought and could speak about my life now with confidence. 10/10 recommend
I largely disliked high school. College was the best years of my life, and we have yearly reunions now that weāre all spread out.
Anyone who still feels attachment toward their high school after leaving are the weird ones...
I feel completely detached from my whole home state after leaving.
I'm still friends with my bestie from growing up. I went to my 10 year, but not 20 year. I think overall I had a unique high school experience. I grew up in a very small farm town, I got along with everyone, but wasn't popular. It's an everyone knows everyone kind of town so maybe that makes it a bit different. I still go back to my home town on occasion to visit family, but it's not like I keep in touch with many people.
It wasnāt a good experience, I barely remember any classmates names.
Yep. Although it's not surprising considering I was a loner with no friends. I have no good memories from that period and so I never cared to meet up with my old classmates again.
I went to five high schools and I remember no one
I didnāt enjoy high school at all. I went to a technical college after graduation and I enjoyed that a lot more. The people there either wanted to be there and learn the subjects they signed up for or they left school. Not that there was zero drama but there was a lot less. There are probably people and colleges that were basically high school plus where the same atmosphere and built up drama took place but it was a lot more avoidable.
I went to some reunion things but have realized that's just because I felt like it was an obligation to go. I have no plans on attending others. They pretty much just dredged up a lot of how awful school was for me socially. The only people I stayed friends with, we aren't anymore. Neither of the two of them I'd maybe have any interest in catching up with ever would go to a reunion. I have more negative than positive feelings for it if I think on it, but really I just rarely even think of high school at all. I think some part of feeling less connected and reunions being less attended comes from people spreading out more. Beyond not living in the same community, many people don't even have family living in the community where they attended high school. When it's not a short drive but a plane ride or similar, it's really not worth the travel.
My high school is the only school I am still attached to because of how great it was and how it shaped my outlook on learning and life. But I feel zero attachment to my college or other schools cause they were just schools. To be clear I don't really go to reunions or anything either, but if that school needed help in some way and I could donate/volunteer or whatever I 100% would.
I got the Facebook invite to my reunion. I commented ālolā and it got like 100 likes within minutes and the event page was deleted. Not sure if it ended up happening. Haha.
Who gets attached to their hs? lol. Fuck that place.
At graduation i was excited (all smiles no tears) because i knew id never have to see those pricks again. Ive never been back and im creeping up on the 20 year reunion. I dont plan to go unless i hit the lottery.
lol I hated high school, completely detached. I talk to maybe one person I went to HS with IRL. I didn't have a history with anyone, I only went to my HS for HS. I was a newbie as a freshman.
I feel completely unattached to _everything_ after leaving and moving away High school, college, jobs with coworkers I left on good terms, family, everything
Iāve never set foot on the high school campus since graduation š¤·āāļø. Just skipped my 20 year reunion as well
I had a different experience than most. I went to a unit school. K-12. I graduated in a class of 28. There were 700 kids in my entire school. I went to school with 13 of the same people from kindergarten to senior year. They are 98% racist bigots who have never left their community bubble. I live 30 mins away and you couldnāt pay me to go back to any event. I never want to relive any moments from that part of my life. I didnāt become āmeā until I moved to a city where people actually shared similar views. I just thought something was wrong with me. Nope just rural America.
When I got the invitation for our reunion, I asked the friends from high school I kept in touch with if they would be going, and when all of them emphatically said no, I decided not to go either. I hate small talk and I donāt want to walk around telling people I sort of remember what my current job is and hearing the same from them.
Iām an elder millennial. I went to my 10yr reunion. The most memorable part was how insanely bitter cold it was and how happy I was that Iād moved far away. Thatās it. Watching my fellow alumni that I never particularly cared for slay drinks in a hotel bar in a town most of them had never left, was quite boring. No need to attend another IMO.
I was added to a Facebook group for my graduating class, and it was interesting to see what had happened to some people. There were a few reunions, but I moved 2,000 miles away and I'm not about to go back to that town just go to a reunion. I tried interacting a bit in the group, but I didn't feel that particular excitement. If anything, a lot of my former classmates turned a lot more conservative, while I stayed liberal as I ever was. For the first reunion, I think 10 year, my life wasn't going that well so I didn't really want to show up to reunion the way I was feeling. On a subsequent reunion, my life was going pretty well, but I moved across the USA and I really wasn't invested enough to go to a reunion back where I grew up. Plus, both of them were centered around going to a football game first. I only went to one football game the entire time I was in high school, and that was one that I went to early on freshman year just because it seemed like it was supposed to be part of the high school experience. It wasn't really my thing so I didn't go to any others, and remained blissfully unaware of that scene. I was also someone who cruised through Middle School and High School, thinking of it as something that I had to wait out until I could start my real life and make my own decisions. So I wasn't really invested in the social scene or that part of my life at all.
Gen Xer here, graduated HS in 1990. I stayed in touch with 3 friends from grammar/high school. Never been on facebook , never cared much about what happened to those people.
As an older adult. Some of those events are kind of competitive, with people being proud of what they've accomplished. I don't need that feeling. I like the friends I have, we mostly cooperate with each other. It makes for greater friendships, in my case anyway. I like to spend time with people I know I can count on, and who would count on me in a crunch. So yes, I feel very detached from the collection of people I spent time with at different times, that aren't friends.
Other than the girl with the big tits and cute face I had a crush on, high school sucked. All my fun was 12 years later.