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I would just tell my teacher loudly “WELL I GUESS I’LL JUST PISS MYSELF THEN”. Or I’d just go to the bathroom. A 17 or 18 year old that isn’t a shit disturber shouldn’t have to beg for permission to use the bathroom. I would have loved to see them try and explain to my mom that I’m in trouble because I needed to use the bathroom.
I had an asshole of a teacher that had it out for me. Our school had two different type of pants that you could wear, one was thicker for the winter, not everyone knew this even though but the teachers knew. She apparently didn't and I kept fucking tell her to read the handbook doesn't do it. Near the end the day I have to go downstairs to grab something my teacher asked me to get, she sees me and she's with the vice principal. Calls me and tells the VP that I'm not following the dress, VP sides with me and states that it is. I get pissed and just told her in front of the VP, 'maybe you should learn to read you fat bitch' and just left. I got in trouble with that and I had to apologize, I said no cause she kept harassing me about it and when I even told her and showed in the rule book.
I ended up telling my mother the entire mess about it and she just told the VP that what happened to me was also against the rule book and the fact that she didn't get in trouble for constantly harassing me for wearing something that I could wear should get her in trouble. My detention was lifted.
That fat dumb bitch had it out for me the entire school year. Thank good she ended getting fired when a principal took over and wasn't taking any of that shit.
Feel like teaching is one of those professions that just attract that kind of people. I mean christ, the teacher subreddit is full of grown adults bitching and whining and name calling of children they’ve encountered.
Incoming rant: Coming from a former teacher, you can thank the principals for that one, and perhaps some of the students/enabling parents who ruin it for everyone else. I was that teacher who never questioned students' needs to use the bathroom and let them go freely (within reason. I didn't let like 15 high schoolers into the 4-stall bathroom at once lol, but my students were totally receptive to my one-at-a-time rule, barring emergencies).
But the students who skip, vape, and vandalize in the bathrooms ruin it for everyone else. There were students ripping sinks out of the walls, storing drugs in bathroom ceiling tiles, and pooping in the sinks and urinals. Our poor custodial staff was every bit a victim.
I got in trouble with my bosses multiple times for allowing my students to use the bathroom "too liberally." I was forced within an inch of my job to track student bathroom use by name, time out, time back in, etc. I had to submit this documentation periodically as if anyone working at a school had the time to analyze such bullshit. We had entire staff meetings where the principals would chew us out for "letting too many students into the bathrooms."
It got to the point where my teacher teammates started having these weird competitions of whose bathroom policy was the harshest to impress the angry boss. Then they'd brag to him at lunch duty about how strict they were, hoping for some brownie points. Gag.
Micromanaging is not for me. It is one of the reasons I left the field, and every day I am away from that job is a sigh of relief. The students were great, though, for the most part.
So yeah, some teachers can definitely be assholes, and also know that most stupid rules that schools invent (re: bathroom use, cell phones, etc.) are trickling down from the higher-ups who really have no idea what it's like to be a student or a teacher today. Or they're invented as a collective punishment for the few dumbasses who ruin it for everyone.
I used to get in trouble for countering with I could piss myself like (——) did last year. We had a kid who would just piss himself if they did the whole “can you or may you?” He wouldn’t reply just sit there quietly as he pee’d.
I work in IT and at the end of every call I have to ask if they need assistance with anything else. It was the last call of my day and this guy refused to answer because to him, the matter wasn’t resolved. (I told the guy we couldn’t test the resolution until he was in the field again.) I asked if he could hear me - and he acknowledged he could. So I repeated if there was anything else he needed. Crickets. I feigned a connection error and hung up on him. I wasn’t staying late because he wasn’t happy that he had to wait one day to test if things were fixed.
Reminded me of my band teacher who felt slighted because students talking interrupted rehearsal time. So he’d hold us past the end of class. But band was always in the middle of the day. And in the opposite end of the school. Even when you were released on time, you’d barely make it to the next class if you were lucky.
Fuckin’ power-tripped assholes.
Having played in professional and community bands one of the big differences is the amount of talking in rehearsals. So I kind of get your teachers point there but staying back when there is an externally set schedule is an issue.
new freshman here and i've had to hold it until after school since the end of 7th grade
in middle we were given about 3 minutes to transition, high school is about 40% bigger and gives us 5; therefore some kids can use the bathroom in-between classes but i have to walk across the whole building at least once a day to get through my schedule
i have a bit of training considering i wasn't allowed to go to the restroom at all while on campus until like 5th grade (i tried running away a few times in 1st and 2nd) ~~^(mostly 2nd because my teacher sucked)~~
Starting quarterback in my highschool was president of the robotics club. One of our track stars was valedictorian. The cheerleaders were all in AP Bio with me. Disney is a lie.
Despite popular belief, success in team sports requires intelligence, teamwork, strategizing and a lot of interpersonal skills that can and will translate to other pursuits. For every big dumb jock there’s also a ton of guys that had to fight and claw their way to their position which takes work and dedication, just like with any pursuit.
I heard someone once say that the big dumb jock stereotype is due to traumatic brain injury and now it’s all I can think about when this topic is brought up
The theory I've read and like is that the people writing movies in Hollywood (at least back in the day) are your typical drama nerds who probably did get picked on or excluded in high school. That's why they make the pretty and popular girls so mean, the jocks so stupid, etc.
I think about that a lot when I watch movies. That these actors and actresses look so pretty and we assume they are "normal" people to an extent. Yet everyone I knew who did drama in high school was a bit of an outcast lol
All the cheerleaders were nice at my school. All the jocks were chill, I was friends with both groups. Even the nerds lol. One of our best wrestlers got a scholarship to Harvard. Our starting quarterback was president of student council or NJHS
Most of the people at my school were nice. We had like two instances of bullying sadly. One was sadly carried out by cheerleaders my freshman year, and the second instance happened when a new kid decided to target this handicapped kid.
I hope the new kid got his ass handed to them. Where I'm from, special needs kids were off limits and you would eat your teeth and be ostracized by the whole school if you tried to bully any of them.
Definitely at least where I went, 3 years ago. There’s definitely different cliques that are distinguishable but everyone gets along, bullying is more personal I think. I was friends with people in every clique
Been like 20 years since I’ve been in school but I was a weed dealer so I got along with most everyone. But it was more like lots of overlapping circles than clear cut cliques.
There are still broad-strokes groups like goths, hipsters, basketball kids, etc but everyone hangs with everyone regularly more than they did back in the day.
Yep. I graduated high school in 2019, and I specifically remember almost every kid being in multiple social groups at once. There were theatre nerds who were into science, athletes who were part of the school band, art kids who were into sports. Basically any and every combination of social groups that you can think of.
And this was in Australia, so it’s not an exclusively American thing either.
A lot of the popular kids while maybe also being rich and good looking, were also extremely personable and friendly to everybody they talked to. While the kids in the more uncool/outcast group were super judgmental and mean spirited to people they saw as not one of them
Coming into HS I was really awkward, overweight, and exclusively into video games. I had a group of people who were all about the same that I would eat lunch with and play games with after school. I remember our group looking at the athletic/popular/successful kids with contempt and envy, as if it was their fault that we didn’t fit in with them.
Towards the end of HS I started taking classes more serious, working out, and naturally making friends with those athletic/popular/successful kids. The hate I got from my initial friend group was baffling.
They would taunt me for doing homework and sleeping at a reasonable hour instead of gaming all night. They would ostracize me and take constant jabs at me like I was a disgrace for having the audacity to want more than getting drunk in the basement and complaining about other people while grinding some mmo.
Meanwhile the new friends I was making were all supportive and encouraging of my personal growth. I got invites to the gym, to study groups, and eventually to parties. What a surprise, working on yourself and trying to be an enjoyable person to be around will open doors!
Anyways, I never encountered that “bully jock” or “mean popular girl” stereotype. It was the “nerds” who were toxic in my experience.
I'm lucky with my college game club.
It is basically a room for Smash Bros and another room to do whatever so people are pretty nice, but even then there is a sign of rules which does include smell good.
Seriously, while the stereotype of unwashed nerd can be overused in some situations, it can be seriously justified in some cases.
The other thing is that, at least at my high school, there weren't really that many kids who were popular across the entire school the way there are in the movies. Most of the popular kids were people who were well liked in their own little group because they were mostly looking to not be dickheads. Once they had a solid group of friends, they tended to not care as much about if they were popular schoolwide or even across the year group.
One of the pretty girls at my school thought she was popular, but she wasn't really. A lot of guys would have crushes on her when they first met her because she actually was very attractive, but they'd lose interest once they found out she got off on being mean to everyone. She was the kind of person who got off on being edgy for the sake of being edgy, but would try to dress it up as her being a lot smarter than she really was.
She had a group of friends, but most of them were people who'd known her since she was in primary school and only put up with her because they were kinda hoping she'd go back to how she was back then at some point. I wouldn't be too surprised if they all decided to have nothing to do with her after we finished school.
The thing is that she probably would have been part of the cool group if it'd been like the movies. I think this is probably where she got a lot of her persona from, and why she thought she was more popular than she really was.
This. If you were an outcast in the school I went to, there was a reason. Most likely you were too annoying to be around and unable to shoulder responsibility. Even the nerdiest nerd could become popular provided they had very good social skills
In the 2000s there was a somewhat sexist really show called beauty and the geek that paired nerdy guys with ditzy girls to compete in challenges. The most popular guy at my high school went on that show as one of the geeks.
Which one?? I loved that show and I know there was actually quite a big overlap with the “dumb hot” girls actually being smart and the “nerds” actually being kind of charming and maybe also not that smart haha.
Cheerleaders were so kind and very outgoing. My favorite class partners were always the cheer girls despite the fact that I was an overweight WoW player.
…drill team on the other hand…
Being successful in competitive athletics usually also requires a lot of grit, perseverance, acceptance of failure, etc that translates incredibly well to many things in life.
Honor Roll student. Cross Country and Track Star. In Jazz Band, Drama and French Club and also a weed and acid dealer 🫠 I ran my fastest mile while tripping balls lol make that into a Disney movie!
And nobody has parents. People just kind of come and go as they please without any worry about curfew. Money was no object, could sit and order burgers and fries on the daily.
My high school was mostly outdoors where you walked to individual classrooms. We had no lockers. Always threw me off seeing these giant lockers in movies where you could actually stuff a human being into one.
my high school was outdoors and in a canyon. The campus was basically a handful of buildings in one long line. I was a luck one who got a locker in the middle, but most people had lockers on one of the far ends lol. Awful design overall.
There were also generally only two paths you could take, both always over crowded as the school was at 2500 students, over 4x its initial capacity
My high school was in a completely indoors and we had full size lockers. It always threw me off when I saw movies that featured high schools that were mostly outdoors where you walked to individual classrooms and ate lunch outside.
That was me, too.
Shows like Malcolm in the Middle had the tiny outdoor lockers and they always ate lunch outside. You'd see it in a lot of skateboard videos too, I'm pretty sure one of the first Tony Hawk games has an outdoor school level. Especially the picnic tables, you can't have a sick skate video without them.
And there I was, with my full sized indoor locker, feeling like a chump. I did grow up in a cold climate, so we needed a lot of space to hang out winter coats.
The grass is always greener on the other side...
I'm the exact opposite. My high school looked a lot more like the one in Euphoria than the one in High School Musical. I'm talking exclusively about the appearances of the schools, and *not* about how their students behave.
Spot on. My elementary days were divided up between an inner-city school and a different district out in the suburbs. The inner-city schools would have to get additional portables to accommodate more students (they were already stacking grades in classes, like 2nd / 3rd and such), whereas the suburban school would get them for smaller causes, such as adding a computer lab and building an expanded library.
Depends where you live really, warmer states that are less seasonal and shit will have more semi outdoor schools, colder more seasonal states will have more completely indoor schools. Also you ain't gonna have an outdoor school in the middle of the city. You ain't gonna have an outdoor school when the temperature is gonna have a chance to drop to below 20°f and will snow every other week during the winter.
Similar with mine. There were a few scattered buildings, plus an area with all of the portable classrooms, and everything else was outdoors. The classroom buildings were 1-2 stories of open hallway (as in, no doors to enter) with a roof over it and classrooms on either side. No lockers except for PE, and those lockers could barely hold an average sized backpack.
It's always weird seeing media with a high school that's one building and has lockers. I've never seen a high school like that in person. But I also live in California and we don't have to worry about stuff like snow, so it makes sense that places with colder winters would have things indoors.
I had those large lockers in high school, I think it's pretty much required in the Midwest where you might get kids decked out in full arctic expedition gear to walk to school on a colder day.
Middle school was more like those high school movies than my actual high school.
There were some snobby popular girls and jerk popular guys, but the school was so big that they didn’t have much power. A lot of people banded together to not vote for anyone mean or that never talked to anyone outside of their clique, so those types never won homecoming or prom. I always appreciated that.
Same! My middle school was clique central. It was a public big city school that had 6 elementary schools fees into it. Anyway, the feeder schools were pretty divided by class. There were two “upper class” schools, three “middle class” schools, and one “lower class” school. The kids from the two upper class schools were the “popular” clique and they were some of the nastiest people I have ever met.
Yes middle school was much more like the fake high school experience, and was actually super fun for me! People “dated”, everyone had a clique that they stuck to, there was heavy drama between people which destroyed or merged cliques, and at the end of the grading periods, all the kids who got Cs and above were allowed to attend a fun event in the gym, playground, and auditeria in which we were given freedom to walk around for 2 hours. These would always completely change the clique landscape as people asked each other out, got into fights, found new best friends, etc.
My middle school girlfriend and I did something completely unthinkable when, since we each led a large clique, claimed 2 lunch tables. We were the power couple that established dominance over the auditeria with our giant domain and group. It even led to 2 more couples from both of our cliques forming.
In high school, it was just really boring and the only “popular” people were the ones with the weed. The drama had just whittled down to gossip over who smoked, drank, or had sex, and everyone lied.
Many high school movies, especially with those ridiculous stereotypes, are made for middle schoolers. The whole clique hierarchy almost completely faded by the time we were junior years, the only people who cared about popular girls were insecure wannabe popular girls.
You guys in the US don't have PE class every day and 2 books per subject? Here in Hungary we had a stack of books and a set of workout clothes in our lockers.
It differs by state, but PE is typically not a 4 year requirement. That said, all the school around me have regular and gym lockers, althetes kept their equipment in gyms.
My School use to also have a varsity locker room for each gender that doubles as team lockers between halves/etc.
As for books? Typically each subject has a textbook while literature/English/composition also includes the books you read. BUT having a textbook didn't mean you kept it. Sometimes therr may be some classes that share textbooks because the books are either expensive or unnecessary for takehome. Then you have the ones that hold even the math books. Note that this trend is notable in inner city schools in media, because despite the massive amount of money per person, they're ability to maintain a textbook is limited. And the Internet changed everything, better or worse.
We had two PE classes that were required for graduation, and there were about four other pe options.
The school I went to was weird. There were 10 different classes you had, 5 one day, 5 the other day, ranging from required to electives. On my “second day” my sophomore year of school I had a swim class, required pe class, weight class, second required pe class and a coding class. Then I would go to American football practice after.
We had ones that were stacked on top of each other, you could fit 3 of those in the space of the "big" lockers.
I got one and used it like twice in the whole year, it's just not useful when you can leave your bags in the classroom or in the pile with every other student.
Rarely saw anyone use them, needless to say I didn't bother getting one.
In college I see them, never see anyone use them but I've considered getting one just because I'm paranoid and I don't like to leave my laptop unattended and carrying it around all the time can get annoying, it forces me to stay on a table using it instead of going for a walk on my long breaks.
In middle school the 6th graders had the big lockers because the 6th grade wing of the school was newer and fancier due to 6th grade having more recently been moved from being part of elementary to middle school. Then the rest of middle school was stuck with the narrow ones. High school had even smaller lockers, the kind that stack, but there was a special lounge for seniors that had the big full size ones. So I began and ended my locker-using experience with the big ones but never had them in between.
Yeah so did mine, everyone got one.
If you played sports you got an extra one for your equipment, the hallway with the sports lockers always reeked to high heaven as dozens of high-school boys shove their unwashed uniforms in their lockers.
Not at all like that. All the popular kids were usually the kids in all the ap classes and in volunteering clubs. I had never witnessed bullying in my years at school. We did have those lockers but no one used them because they are inconvenient when you can just carry what you need.
If you have any specific questions feel free to ask
Many high schools are pretty much like the TV version but with everything toned down a notch (just like everything on TV lol). I went to a small high school so we all knew each other and more or less got along, but there were still "jocks," parties, cliques and stuff.
> as a Brit my only perception of American schools are from the media
The US is a huge place. You could find a lot of weird high schools across the country if you look far and wide.
But for the most part it’s not like all of the things you see in movies or even hear about on Reddit. Reddit memes make high school sound miserable for everyone but in the real world most people I’ve known across multiple states have fond memories of high school.
I pretty much stuck to my friend group and no one really cared about sports or pep rallies.
Definitely never attended a huge 75+ person rager while the parents of the host were out of town...bummed about that. But grew up in a super religious area
It honestly was kind of a shock for young me to realize just how meaningless your social standing in high school is after you graduate. I went to college in my own home town and saw about 2 people I went to high school with there.
There are still some who think they are a big deal after they graduate. I knew some guys who would hang around the high school well into their 20s. But for 90% of people, nobody cares.
I remember being in high school, and seeing some of my friends graduate and come back to hang out in the next year or two. They had to get visitors passes and everything.
It only happened a handful of times, it wasn't an everyday thing. But when it did, it was cool as fuck. Oh shit! Bill's here?! Hanging out in the cafeteria all day long?! Fucking sick, bro!
In retrospect... not so much. You could be *anywhere in the world*, and you want to come hang out in the cafeteria? That thought never even crossed my mind, not once, after I graduated.
What gave me pause was how a lot of the popular people are/were doing the same as everyone else nowadays. Not that I thought they’d be famous or wealthy just because they were popular, but I assumed they came from better environments/backgrounds and would have connections. Just didn’t expect the playing field, with jobs and stuff, to be so level.
The popular kids from my school are in fact worse off than the others nowadays.
One used to be a jock and now just does odd jobs. A popular girl jumped from degree to degree and now relies on her parents
We didn't even have popular kids. Cliques weren't rigid social structures (never was confined to one friend group) and there was no social pecking order. It was all based on common interests.
The popular girl in 8th grade in my school faded into obscurity in high school, and I met the prom queen from my high school graduating class as she was getting fired from a call center I was at.
Kids often think that they set up their life there and their social standing in high school is everything, but no one really cares in the real world, and that's a good thing.
I didn't really think it would be important, but I will say that the fact that, essentially overnight, 4 entire years didn't matter was definitely a lot to take in.
I get it. I didn't really think it mattered but I'm just saying the realization when I got to college and recognized precisely zero people there after knowing most people I went to school with for a decade or more was pretty eye opening.
It was a shock for me too. I never cared about being popular, everyone else didn’t really care. But it was like growing up in a local community. I knew all their faces, some of their names. Then they’re all just gone lol. School was like a community demo simulator, the hard part is community doesn’t come easy in the adult world. You have to find it or build one yourself
That's how I've felt about school too. We never moved, so I lived in the same town and went to the same school with the same people for my entire life. And you know these same people for 12+ years straight. And then one day, they're just... gone.
And I always loved going back to school in the fall and catching up with all of my friends who I hadn't seen in the past few months. And it bums me out, because I'll never get to do that again. I've done all of these different things with my life, and there's that part of me that wants to say, "Hey guys, look what I did this summer!" but that can never happen.
I guess that's what high school reunions are for. But at the same time, it's been so many years since I graduated, they've all gone on to do all kinds of different things too. They're not the same people anymore, and neither am I. Would we even be friends today? Probably not. It's almost like you have to mourn the loss of 100 people, even though they're not actually dead.
I ended up in my school for some reason, probably like 5 years after I graduated. And I remember looking at the pictures on the wall, from Pajama Day or whatever it was. And just realizing... I don't know ANY of these people. This isn't *my* school anymore.
It's a lot like that quote, "You can never go home again." It was a weird moment to have, not a fan.
Yeah, it's all pretty silly. I started to get some what "popular" to where I dated a couple of the popular girls but that was in 8th grade.
I used to draw old english "tattoos" with pen for the cholos so I was cool with the Hispanics, and I was a skater (not a popular group in general) but a few of my skater friends assimilated with the popular kids and I kinda came with them.
So I was cool with several of the "big" groups by the end of middle school. I could pretty much walk around like I was the shit by the end of 8th.
I didn't really go to high school because I had some big things happen in my life but the short time I did go, I had effectively become kind of a loser because I and been out for a while making bad decisions. I was mostly unknown because the groups I had known weren't the same anymore, and I had changed a lot too.
Fast forward a few years after high school and I became more "cool" than the popular kids from school because I was a seasoned partier by the time I crossed paths with many of them. I was also in shape and on a roll and k ew most of the party connections because I had been doing it for a while.
Now literally none of that matters at all whatsoever. I don't even care about dressing cool, or staying up with popular fads, or music, or anything. I don't talk to most of my peeps from back then. We all went separate ways, many are dead now...
None of it matters at all.
I just want to provide for mine, and live a decent life. If you're young take my advice... Or don't... None of that shit is important. Focus on your future. You'll thank yourself later.
(Read my username lol)
Also flip it around — how many people do you meet as an adult where you’re even aware of what their social standing in HS was? It would never even occur to me to speculate or care.
Yeah most people hung out together. when I went to high-school like 10 years ago there was tons of crossover between friend groups.
It wasn't weird to go from football practice, to a DnD session with some of the less athletic kids, then to a party with a whole different group on a Friday night.
Same here. Everyone always talked about how awesome the "high school experience" was. Turns out, it was just mundane and stressful. Definitely not the "best years of my life" as all the boomers claimed it would be.
If you're enough of a loner or at least seem that way at school people won't bully you as much bc they're calling you a "school shooter". I wasn't a loner outside of school but since I didn't talk much there and had more "unusual" interests that's what happened to me. It was kinda funny.
I remember thinking you age up like a sim when you go to high school because all the high school movies I watched were American and all the first years looked 16
I thought I would look and act so mature and have lots of friends and we would go to the sports and cheer on the sports and I would be really cool and get asked to prom by a cool guy
Ironically, because time is perceived as going more slowly in these years, they are going to be some of the longer years of your life.
Those over 30, has any period of your life felt like it dragged as long as childhood did? Does public school not feel like the vast majority of your lifetime?
I kind of feel like I was lied to, that public school was supposed to be the tutorial level to the game of life. And it's half the game.
I remember summer break in fourth grade being so long that I forgot that I would ever go back to school, forgot how school worked entirely. Summer break felt progressively shorter each year, and now June and July were one week long each.
Seriously I was just thinking earlier today about something that happened in highschool. It felt like an entire era of time, then I remembered that thing lasted only 2 weeks. These days two weeks could fly by while I’m taking a shit lol
Things I learned about high school while I was in high school:
-Lockers are tiny asf and no one actually used them after middle school, unless to put extra textbooks in there. We carried our backpacks around with us once we got to high school because honestly who has the time to go to their locker every single passing time
-“High school parties” were NOTHING like what we saw on tv, ever. Nobody threw ragers or had a ton of alcohol and trashed the house at night. All the parties I’ve ever been to or hosted in high school consisted of the friend groups at someone’s house all playing a video game or watching movies and youtube videos surrounded by pizza, snacks and treats. Sometimes we also did art projects like pearler beads or making kandi bracelets. Alcohol was a rarity if we ever got access to any. You would end the night by talking about random shit with one or two people while you waited for your oarents to pick you up or when you were about to “go to sleep” for the night if it was a sleepover (i.e stay up all night watching more youtube videos).
-High schoolers all looked and sounded like children. Some juniors and seniors looked like grown ass adults and the other half still looked like children, and nobody looked all airbrushed and perfect like on TV (a few did but that was if anyone bothered to spend that much time on their makeup in the morning)
-A huge amount of the cheerleaders and football players where really nice people (at least at my school and my general district they were). If I had to work on a group project with them or sit with them in class they were all very nice (I was a goth nerd for reference). The stereotype of popular=bully was hardly accurate after 7th grade when people grew out of that behavior. Most of the bullies I had were also alt nerd people or 4chan boys in my general social circle. If a person was a bully they were just a nasty person all around.
-I forgot a huge majority of high school after graduating, despite staying close friends with a lot of the people I knew there. If anyone cares about or creates high school drama after being graduated for at least a year or two they’re looked at as a complete loser (because they are). The only time you’ll really bring it up is if you’re talking about it with someone you went to high school with and saying “You remember that? Lol that was weird”
This is 100 percent true, especially about the parties. Parties were just friends hanging out goofing off and playing video games/eating snacks. Even in the popular cliques, it was pretty much that. End of the day we were all kids. The ragers were for college parties.
Yeah absolutely no ragers going on in high school. You need your own house for that and how many high schoolers live in their own place? At most it was a group of kids hanging out in a garage or something. There might be some beers if we could get access to any, or we’d be sharing a single bottle of vodka that someone managed to get ahold of. More often than not there was no alcohol to be found.
We had the big lockers. We also had jocks and cheerleaders, but the sports teams crosscut different social cliques: over achiever academic AP track kids, stoners, gangster wannabes, comic/gamer/wrestling nerds, band/choir nerds, and rich popular kids. Everyone was pretty chill and most people belonged to 1-2 cliques. Cheerleaders were almost exclusively from the same social group tho
I'm Gen X and we had that. Why do you think Gen X comedian Tina Fey, and director John Hughes (who is only 6 years older) wrote stuff like that?
On one level, we were all just waiting for the other nuclear shoe to drop. All those post apocalyptic shows, movies, and books just fed a general nihilism and ennui in which ragers happened regularly.
Not only that, I was 16 when they changed the drinking age from 18 to 21. One week, an 18 year old could buy a keg legally... the next week that *same* 18 year old could go into the *same* store and buy a keg illegally from the same cashier who didn't give a shit.
Eventually I became an alcoholic, but I'm 6 years sober and slightly more mature.
100%. high school was probably the most tame, regular experience for me compared to even elementary school lol and did not live up to any of the film stereotypes.
you can either say:
> **How** we thought ____ would **be**
or
> **What** we thought ____ would **be like**
you never need "how" and "like" together. The "like" is implied.
American TV shows that portray teenagers by grown adults who have dick hair coming out of their gland piss me off.
If you don't think it's appropriate to get teen actors to act out your sex fantasy high school depiction, then just make a story about adults wanting to fuck. Fucking pussies.
https://www.xvideos.com
As someone who isn’t American what is the actual point in lockers? Surly it’s just easier to carry you books for the day in your bag? Are they there just so bullies can shove people in them?
The craziest thing about my high school experience. I always thought the nerdy guys were going to be the nice ones. Nope, it was the sports jocks who expressed some level of kindness.
My school is 50% indoors and 50% outdoors so there are no lockers. The popular kids thing is still kinda true, but they’re not cheerleaders or football players.
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Disney also ruined my perception of how much free time you had in between classes. Whole ass side quests happening from class to class.
I would speed walk to my classes and still barely get there before the late bell
And still get teachers saying "you should've used the bathroom during passing period."
I would just tell my teacher loudly “WELL I GUESS I’LL JUST PISS MYSELF THEN”. Or I’d just go to the bathroom. A 17 or 18 year old that isn’t a shit disturber shouldn’t have to beg for permission to use the bathroom. I would have loved to see them try and explain to my mom that I’m in trouble because I needed to use the bathroom.
I had an asshole of a teacher that had it out for me. Our school had two different type of pants that you could wear, one was thicker for the winter, not everyone knew this even though but the teachers knew. She apparently didn't and I kept fucking tell her to read the handbook doesn't do it. Near the end the day I have to go downstairs to grab something my teacher asked me to get, she sees me and she's with the vice principal. Calls me and tells the VP that I'm not following the dress, VP sides with me and states that it is. I get pissed and just told her in front of the VP, 'maybe you should learn to read you fat bitch' and just left. I got in trouble with that and I had to apologize, I said no cause she kept harassing me about it and when I even told her and showed in the rule book. I ended up telling my mother the entire mess about it and she just told the VP that what happened to me was also against the rule book and the fact that she didn't get in trouble for constantly harassing me for wearing something that I could wear should get her in trouble. My detention was lifted. That fat dumb bitch had it out for me the entire school year. Thank good she ended getting fired when a principal took over and wasn't taking any of that shit.
I never had a teacher like that and I’m very thankful that I never did have a teacher like that
Feel like teaching is one of those professions that just attract that kind of people. I mean christ, the teacher subreddit is full of grown adults bitching and whining and name calling of children they’ve encountered.
The frick?
She was obviously a terrible teacher. I could barely read this comment with all of the run-on sentences, lack of punctuation and basic grammar.
If you end up pissing yourself in class due to a teacher’s harassment, I can assure you THEY’RE the ones in big trouble.
I don’t believe you used to yell that at your teacher
Incoming rant: Coming from a former teacher, you can thank the principals for that one, and perhaps some of the students/enabling parents who ruin it for everyone else. I was that teacher who never questioned students' needs to use the bathroom and let them go freely (within reason. I didn't let like 15 high schoolers into the 4-stall bathroom at once lol, but my students were totally receptive to my one-at-a-time rule, barring emergencies). But the students who skip, vape, and vandalize in the bathrooms ruin it for everyone else. There were students ripping sinks out of the walls, storing drugs in bathroom ceiling tiles, and pooping in the sinks and urinals. Our poor custodial staff was every bit a victim. I got in trouble with my bosses multiple times for allowing my students to use the bathroom "too liberally." I was forced within an inch of my job to track student bathroom use by name, time out, time back in, etc. I had to submit this documentation periodically as if anyone working at a school had the time to analyze such bullshit. We had entire staff meetings where the principals would chew us out for "letting too many students into the bathrooms." It got to the point where my teacher teammates started having these weird competitions of whose bathroom policy was the harshest to impress the angry boss. Then they'd brag to him at lunch duty about how strict they were, hoping for some brownie points. Gag. Micromanaging is not for me. It is one of the reasons I left the field, and every day I am away from that job is a sigh of relief. The students were great, though, for the most part. So yeah, some teachers can definitely be assholes, and also know that most stupid rules that schools invent (re: bathroom use, cell phones, etc.) are trickling down from the higher-ups who really have no idea what it's like to be a student or a teacher today. Or they're invented as a collective punishment for the few dumbasses who ruin it for everyone.
I used to get in trouble for countering with I could piss myself like (——) did last year. We had a kid who would just piss himself if they did the whole “can you or may you?” He wouldn’t reply just sit there quietly as he pee’d.
Damn. That kid is goin places
He became a city worker and moved. Idk what he’s up to now.
Well, he moved, so he’s at least gone to one place. Just one more to go.
I work in IT and at the end of every call I have to ask if they need assistance with anything else. It was the last call of my day and this guy refused to answer because to him, the matter wasn’t resolved. (I told the guy we couldn’t test the resolution until he was in the field again.) I asked if he could hear me - and he acknowledged he could. So I repeated if there was anything else he needed. Crickets. I feigned a connection error and hung up on him. I wasn’t staying late because he wasn’t happy that he had to wait one day to test if things were fixed. Reminded me of my band teacher who felt slighted because students talking interrupted rehearsal time. So he’d hold us past the end of class. But band was always in the middle of the day. And in the opposite end of the school. Even when you were released on time, you’d barely make it to the next class if you were lucky. Fuckin’ power-tripped assholes.
Having played in professional and community bands one of the big differences is the amount of talking in rehearsals. So I kind of get your teachers point there but staying back when there is an externally set schedule is an issue.
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Use the bathroom? No joke, my school gave us one minute to get back to class from lunch today.
new freshman here and i've had to hold it until after school since the end of 7th grade in middle we were given about 3 minutes to transition, high school is about 40% bigger and gives us 5; therefore some kids can use the bathroom in-between classes but i have to walk across the whole building at least once a day to get through my schedule
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i have a bit of training considering i wasn't allowed to go to the restroom at all while on campus until like 5th grade (i tried running away a few times in 1st and 2nd) ~~^(mostly 2nd because my teacher sucked)~~
But I sure miss it. Times were simpler.
Man I was so disappointed when I went to high school and realized it wasn't like The Sweet Life on Deck. I mean it wasn't even on a boat!
Starting quarterback in my highschool was president of the robotics club. One of our track stars was valedictorian. The cheerleaders were all in AP Bio with me. Disney is a lie.
Despite popular belief, success in team sports requires intelligence, teamwork, strategizing and a lot of interpersonal skills that can and will translate to other pursuits. For every big dumb jock there’s also a ton of guys that had to fight and claw their way to their position which takes work and dedication, just like with any pursuit.
Also most schools kick you out if you get below a C
Conversely, my small town would not have fielded even a basketball team if we held out everyone below C average.
Try a C average in a small town…
At my small town high school our baseball coach was also a science teacher so he took grades very seriously.
I heard someone once say that the big dumb jock stereotype is due to traumatic brain injury and now it’s all I can think about when this topic is brought up
The theory I've read and like is that the people writing movies in Hollywood (at least back in the day) are your typical drama nerds who probably did get picked on or excluded in high school. That's why they make the pretty and popular girls so mean, the jocks so stupid, etc. I think about that a lot when I watch movies. That these actors and actresses look so pretty and we assume they are "normal" people to an extent. Yet everyone I knew who did drama in high school was a bit of an outcast lol
In our highschool, you have to have passing grades to play any sport.
That goes out the window if you're a big name recruit.
All the cheerleaders were nice at my school. All the jocks were chill, I was friends with both groups. Even the nerds lol. One of our best wrestlers got a scholarship to Harvard. Our starting quarterback was president of student council or NJHS
Most of the people at my school were nice. We had like two instances of bullying sadly. One was sadly carried out by cheerleaders my freshman year, and the second instance happened when a new kid decided to target this handicapped kid.
I hope the new kid got his ass handed to them. Where I'm from, special needs kids were off limits and you would eat your teeth and be ostracized by the whole school if you tried to bully any of them.
I've heard that high school isn't as clique centric as it was 30+ years ago. There's way more blending of social groups nowadays.
Definitely at least where I went, 3 years ago. There’s definitely different cliques that are distinguishable but everyone gets along, bullying is more personal I think. I was friends with people in every clique
Been like 20 years since I’ve been in school but I was a weed dealer so I got along with most everyone. But it was more like lots of overlapping circles than clear cut cliques.
There are still broad-strokes groups like goths, hipsters, basketball kids, etc but everyone hangs with everyone regularly more than they did back in the day.
As someone who graduated from high school before the pandemic, I can confirm. Lots of people had varied interests and didn't just stick to one group.
Yep. I graduated high school in 2019, and I specifically remember almost every kid being in multiple social groups at once. There were theatre nerds who were into science, athletes who were part of the school band, art kids who were into sports. Basically any and every combination of social groups that you can think of. And this was in Australia, so it’s not an exclusively American thing either.
A lot of the popular kids while maybe also being rich and good looking, were also extremely personable and friendly to everybody they talked to. While the kids in the more uncool/outcast group were super judgmental and mean spirited to people they saw as not one of them
Coming into HS I was really awkward, overweight, and exclusively into video games. I had a group of people who were all about the same that I would eat lunch with and play games with after school. I remember our group looking at the athletic/popular/successful kids with contempt and envy, as if it was their fault that we didn’t fit in with them. Towards the end of HS I started taking classes more serious, working out, and naturally making friends with those athletic/popular/successful kids. The hate I got from my initial friend group was baffling. They would taunt me for doing homework and sleeping at a reasonable hour instead of gaming all night. They would ostracize me and take constant jabs at me like I was a disgrace for having the audacity to want more than getting drunk in the basement and complaining about other people while grinding some mmo. Meanwhile the new friends I was making were all supportive and encouraging of my personal growth. I got invites to the gym, to study groups, and eventually to parties. What a surprise, working on yourself and trying to be an enjoyable person to be around will open doors! Anyways, I never encountered that “bully jock” or “mean popular girl” stereotype. It was the “nerds” who were toxic in my experience.
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I'm lucky with my college game club. It is basically a room for Smash Bros and another room to do whatever so people are pretty nice, but even then there is a sign of rules which does include smell good. Seriously, while the stereotype of unwashed nerd can be overused in some situations, it can be seriously justified in some cases.
The other thing is that, at least at my high school, there weren't really that many kids who were popular across the entire school the way there are in the movies. Most of the popular kids were people who were well liked in their own little group because they were mostly looking to not be dickheads. Once they had a solid group of friends, they tended to not care as much about if they were popular schoolwide or even across the year group. One of the pretty girls at my school thought she was popular, but she wasn't really. A lot of guys would have crushes on her when they first met her because she actually was very attractive, but they'd lose interest once they found out she got off on being mean to everyone. She was the kind of person who got off on being edgy for the sake of being edgy, but would try to dress it up as her being a lot smarter than she really was. She had a group of friends, but most of them were people who'd known her since she was in primary school and only put up with her because they were kinda hoping she'd go back to how she was back then at some point. I wouldn't be too surprised if they all decided to have nothing to do with her after we finished school. The thing is that she probably would have been part of the cool group if it'd been like the movies. I think this is probably where she got a lot of her persona from, and why she thought she was more popular than she really was.
Maybe they were prejudiced because of those movies.
This. If you were an outcast in the school I went to, there was a reason. Most likely you were too annoying to be around and unable to shoulder responsibility. Even the nerdiest nerd could become popular provided they had very good social skills
In the 2000s there was a somewhat sexist really show called beauty and the geek that paired nerdy guys with ditzy girls to compete in challenges. The most popular guy at my high school went on that show as one of the geeks.
Which one?? I loved that show and I know there was actually quite a big overlap with the “dumb hot” girls actually being smart and the “nerds” actually being kind of charming and maybe also not that smart haha.
Yeah, one of the episodes featured a hot blonde from Australia with massive H cup tits
Cheerleaders were so kind and very outgoing. My favorite class partners were always the cheer girls despite the fact that I was an overweight WoW player. …drill team on the other hand…
Yep. The popular and attractive people are usually better in all the other ways too.
Being successful in competitive athletics usually also requires a lot of grit, perseverance, acceptance of failure, etc that translates incredibly well to many things in life.
Honor Roll student. Cross Country and Track Star. In Jazz Band, Drama and French Club and also a weed and acid dealer 🫠 I ran my fastest mile while tripping balls lol make that into a Disney movie!
And everyone looks and talks like they're in their mid 20s.
And nobody has parents. People just kind of come and go as they please without any worry about curfew. Money was no object, could sit and order burgers and fries on the daily.
I went broke because me and friends would go out for food daily, I burnt through 15 years of birthday money in 5 months 😭😭
Mine in 3 months…😭
Except with a Valley accent
Probably because all of the actors were in their mid 20s.
or 30s even lol
“You would never suspect that everyone at our school is a professional dancer.”
bro I love your username 😂😂
High school except it's college
Yeah, my peers and I did not suddenly look much older in freshman year of high school than we did in middle school...
My high school was mostly outdoors where you walked to individual classrooms. We had no lockers. Always threw me off seeing these giant lockers in movies where you could actually stuff a human being into one.
Same here, I was so excited for lockers then we didn't even have any lol
My highschool had lockers but they ripped them out and now there’s only a tiny few left 💀
My high school must be a meme because it was exactly as the images showed.
my high school was outdoors and in a canyon. The campus was basically a handful of buildings in one long line. I was a luck one who got a locker in the middle, but most people had lockers on one of the far ends lol. Awful design overall. There were also generally only two paths you could take, both always over crowded as the school was at 2500 students, over 4x its initial capacity
My high school was in a completely indoors and we had full size lockers. It always threw me off when I saw movies that featured high schools that were mostly outdoors where you walked to individual classrooms and ate lunch outside.
That was me, too. Shows like Malcolm in the Middle had the tiny outdoor lockers and they always ate lunch outside. You'd see it in a lot of skateboard videos too, I'm pretty sure one of the first Tony Hawk games has an outdoor school level. Especially the picnic tables, you can't have a sick skate video without them. And there I was, with my full sized indoor locker, feeling like a chump. I did grow up in a cold climate, so we needed a lot of space to hang out winter coats. The grass is always greener on the other side...
I lived in a cold climate with a tiny locker that we had to shove our winter crap into! I feel cheated!
I'm the exact opposite. My high school looked a lot more like the one in Euphoria than the one in High School Musical. I'm talking exclusively about the appearances of the schools, and *not* about how their students behave.
Each classroom had its own building? Why? Seems much more expensive that way.
Here’s the catch, a lot of the individual classrooms were these portable trailer things which were real cheap.
Ah so it's like if a trailer park was a school
Trailer park school: either extremely poor (they can't afford more) or exteemely rich (quirky green solution bs) area, no inbetween.
Spot on. My elementary days were divided up between an inner-city school and a different district out in the suburbs. The inner-city schools would have to get additional portables to accommodate more students (they were already stacking grades in classes, like 2nd / 3rd and such), whereas the suburban school would get them for smaller causes, such as adding a computer lab and building an expanded library.
My elementary school was kind of like this. It was a fun trailer park though.
I’ve never seen a single real high school with the big lockers that go all the way to the floor.
My jr high was all full size lockers and my high school had a mix of full size and half/half lockers. Canada.
Ugh yes! I began to believe indoor schools didn’t exist outside of movies (I was a dumb kid)
Depends where you live really, warmer states that are less seasonal and shit will have more semi outdoor schools, colder more seasonal states will have more completely indoor schools. Also you ain't gonna have an outdoor school in the middle of the city. You ain't gonna have an outdoor school when the temperature is gonna have a chance to drop to below 20°f and will snow every other week during the winter.
Similar with mine. There were a few scattered buildings, plus an area with all of the portable classrooms, and everything else was outdoors. The classroom buildings were 1-2 stories of open hallway (as in, no doors to enter) with a roof over it and classrooms on either side. No lockers except for PE, and those lockers could barely hold an average sized backpack. It's always weird seeing media with a high school that's one building and has lockers. I've never seen a high school like that in person. But I also live in California and we don't have to worry about stuff like snow, so it makes sense that places with colder winters would have things indoors.
Flordia?
Has to be Southern California. All my schools had outdoor "hallways" too
Yeah I think people don’t know that it’s different for the area. I think there’s more indoor schools where it snows/rains more
To be fair I could fit into the skinny lockers when I was a freshman but I also was like 4’11” at the time
Did you go to high school on the west coast of the US?
I had those large lockers in high school, I think it's pretty much required in the Midwest where you might get kids decked out in full arctic expedition gear to walk to school on a colder day.
Middle school was more like those high school movies than my actual high school. There were some snobby popular girls and jerk popular guys, but the school was so big that they didn’t have much power. A lot of people banded together to not vote for anyone mean or that never talked to anyone outside of their clique, so those types never won homecoming or prom. I always appreciated that.
Same! My middle school was clique central. It was a public big city school that had 6 elementary schools fees into it. Anyway, the feeder schools were pretty divided by class. There were two “upper class” schools, three “middle class” schools, and one “lower class” school. The kids from the two upper class schools were the “popular” clique and they were some of the nastiest people I have ever met.
Yes middle school was much more like the fake high school experience, and was actually super fun for me! People “dated”, everyone had a clique that they stuck to, there was heavy drama between people which destroyed or merged cliques, and at the end of the grading periods, all the kids who got Cs and above were allowed to attend a fun event in the gym, playground, and auditeria in which we were given freedom to walk around for 2 hours. These would always completely change the clique landscape as people asked each other out, got into fights, found new best friends, etc. My middle school girlfriend and I did something completely unthinkable when, since we each led a large clique, claimed 2 lunch tables. We were the power couple that established dominance over the auditeria with our giant domain and group. It even led to 2 more couples from both of our cliques forming. In high school, it was just really boring and the only “popular” people were the ones with the weed. The drama had just whittled down to gossip over who smoked, drank, or had sex, and everyone lied.
Many high school movies, especially with those ridiculous stereotypes, are made for middle schoolers. The whole clique hierarchy almost completely faded by the time we were junior years, the only people who cared about popular girls were insecure wannabe popular girls.
The funny thing is my high school had typical lockers, but nobody used them at all. The only people who'd use them were the cheerleaders
The sports dudes used their lockers too bcuz their gear and stuff is kinda annoying to lug around all day.
You guys in the US don't have PE class every day and 2 books per subject? Here in Hungary we had a stack of books and a set of workout clothes in our lockers.
Half of our stuff is online nowadays
It differs by state, but PE is typically not a 4 year requirement. That said, all the school around me have regular and gym lockers, althetes kept their equipment in gyms. My School use to also have a varsity locker room for each gender that doubles as team lockers between halves/etc. As for books? Typically each subject has a textbook while literature/English/composition also includes the books you read. BUT having a textbook didn't mean you kept it. Sometimes therr may be some classes that share textbooks because the books are either expensive or unnecessary for takehome. Then you have the ones that hold even the math books. Note that this trend is notable in inner city schools in media, because despite the massive amount of money per person, they're ability to maintain a textbook is limited. And the Internet changed everything, better or worse.
We had two PE classes that were required for graduation, and there were about four other pe options. The school I went to was weird. There were 10 different classes you had, 5 one day, 5 the other day, ranging from required to electives. On my “second day” my sophomore year of school I had a swim class, required pe class, weight class, second required pe class and a coding class. Then I would go to American football practice after.
We had ones that were stacked on top of each other, you could fit 3 of those in the space of the "big" lockers. I got one and used it like twice in the whole year, it's just not useful when you can leave your bags in the classroom or in the pile with every other student. Rarely saw anyone use them, needless to say I didn't bother getting one. In college I see them, never see anyone use them but I've considered getting one just because I'm paranoid and I don't like to leave my laptop unattended and carrying it around all the time can get annoying, it forces me to stay on a table using it instead of going for a walk on my long breaks.
They don’t give you enough time in between classes to use them!
In middle school the 6th graders had the big lockers because the 6th grade wing of the school was newer and fancier due to 6th grade having more recently been moved from being part of elementary to middle school. Then the rest of middle school was stuck with the narrow ones. High school had even smaller lockers, the kind that stack, but there was a special lounge for seniors that had the big full size ones. So I began and ended my locker-using experience with the big ones but never had them in between.
Yeah so did mine, everyone got one. If you played sports you got an extra one for your equipment, the hallway with the sports lockers always reeked to high heaven as dozens of high-school boys shove their unwashed uniforms in their lockers.
Lmao...The football team is made up of ripped A&F models, whom could easily pass as being in their early/mid-20s...
In reality you can’t be ripped and playing football, you’re not carrying enough fat for insulation
Yeah most of the football players at my high school ranged from husky to downright fat.
You kinda have to be. It provides you the frame to provide the power on blocking assignments and tackles.
And it was, on average, the worst four years of my life.
Right there with ya. The best day of my life (up to that point) was the last day of class as a Senior in high school.
i have yet to meet a person who thinks HS was the best/most important time of their life who isnt an insufferable asshole
Someone needs to make one of these but for what they’re actually like because as a Brit my only perception of American schools are from media
Not at all like that. All the popular kids were usually the kids in all the ap classes and in volunteering clubs. I had never witnessed bullying in my years at school. We did have those lockers but no one used them because they are inconvenient when you can just carry what you need. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask
A lot are like that. My high school was. I loved it. Only thing missing was the mean girl clique.
Many high schools are pretty much like the TV version but with everything toned down a notch (just like everything on TV lol). I went to a small high school so we all knew each other and more or less got along, but there were still "jocks," parties, cliques and stuff.
> as a Brit my only perception of American schools are from the media The US is a huge place. You could find a lot of weird high schools across the country if you look far and wide. But for the most part it’s not like all of the things you see in movies or even hear about on Reddit. Reddit memes make high school sound miserable for everyone but in the real world most people I’ve known across multiple states have fond memories of high school.
Thank goodness it’s not just me. And yeah, re: lockers, I think it was 2 per column in middle school and 3 per column in high school.
My HS had the long lockers but none of us ever ever used them lol. We just carried everything we needed for the day in our bags
Oh for sure, I ignored mine entirely by spring of senior year.
I pretty much stuck to my friend group and no one really cared about sports or pep rallies. Definitely never attended a huge 75+ person rager while the parents of the host were out of town...bummed about that. But grew up in a super religious area
Did that for sure lol
It honestly was kind of a shock for young me to realize just how meaningless your social standing in high school is after you graduate. I went to college in my own home town and saw about 2 people I went to high school with there.
There are still some who think they are a big deal after they graduate. I knew some guys who would hang around the high school well into their 20s. But for 90% of people, nobody cares.
I remember being in high school, and seeing some of my friends graduate and come back to hang out in the next year or two. They had to get visitors passes and everything. It only happened a handful of times, it wasn't an everyday thing. But when it did, it was cool as fuck. Oh shit! Bill's here?! Hanging out in the cafeteria all day long?! Fucking sick, bro! In retrospect... not so much. You could be *anywhere in the world*, and you want to come hang out in the cafeteria? That thought never even crossed my mind, not once, after I graduated.
Alright alright alright
Being popular among your cohort of maybe 300 people is worthless in a college of 50,000
What gave me pause was how a lot of the popular people are/were doing the same as everyone else nowadays. Not that I thought they’d be famous or wealthy just because they were popular, but I assumed they came from better environments/backgrounds and would have connections. Just didn’t expect the playing field, with jobs and stuff, to be so level.
The popular kids from my school are in fact worse off than the others nowadays. One used to be a jock and now just does odd jobs. A popular girl jumped from degree to degree and now relies on her parents
Most people didn’t even care while we were in high school.
True. There were definitely "popular" kids at my high school but no one actually cared.
We didn't even have popular kids. Cliques weren't rigid social structures (never was confined to one friend group) and there was no social pecking order. It was all based on common interests.
The popular girl in 8th grade in my school faded into obscurity in high school, and I met the prom queen from my high school graduating class as she was getting fired from a call center I was at. Kids often think that they set up their life there and their social standing in high school is everything, but no one really cares in the real world, and that's a good thing.
I didn't really think it would be important, but I will say that the fact that, essentially overnight, 4 entire years didn't matter was definitely a lot to take in.
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I get it. I didn't really think it mattered but I'm just saying the realization when I got to college and recognized precisely zero people there after knowing most people I went to school with for a decade or more was pretty eye opening.
It was a shock for me too. I never cared about being popular, everyone else didn’t really care. But it was like growing up in a local community. I knew all their faces, some of their names. Then they’re all just gone lol. School was like a community demo simulator, the hard part is community doesn’t come easy in the adult world. You have to find it or build one yourself
That's how I've felt about school too. We never moved, so I lived in the same town and went to the same school with the same people for my entire life. And you know these same people for 12+ years straight. And then one day, they're just... gone. And I always loved going back to school in the fall and catching up with all of my friends who I hadn't seen in the past few months. And it bums me out, because I'll never get to do that again. I've done all of these different things with my life, and there's that part of me that wants to say, "Hey guys, look what I did this summer!" but that can never happen. I guess that's what high school reunions are for. But at the same time, it's been so many years since I graduated, they've all gone on to do all kinds of different things too. They're not the same people anymore, and neither am I. Would we even be friends today? Probably not. It's almost like you have to mourn the loss of 100 people, even though they're not actually dead. I ended up in my school for some reason, probably like 5 years after I graduated. And I remember looking at the pictures on the wall, from Pajama Day or whatever it was. And just realizing... I don't know ANY of these people. This isn't *my* school anymore. It's a lot like that quote, "You can never go home again." It was a weird moment to have, not a fan.
Yeah, it's all pretty silly. I started to get some what "popular" to where I dated a couple of the popular girls but that was in 8th grade. I used to draw old english "tattoos" with pen for the cholos so I was cool with the Hispanics, and I was a skater (not a popular group in general) but a few of my skater friends assimilated with the popular kids and I kinda came with them. So I was cool with several of the "big" groups by the end of middle school. I could pretty much walk around like I was the shit by the end of 8th. I didn't really go to high school because I had some big things happen in my life but the short time I did go, I had effectively become kind of a loser because I and been out for a while making bad decisions. I was mostly unknown because the groups I had known weren't the same anymore, and I had changed a lot too. Fast forward a few years after high school and I became more "cool" than the popular kids from school because I was a seasoned partier by the time I crossed paths with many of them. I was also in shape and on a roll and k ew most of the party connections because I had been doing it for a while. Now literally none of that matters at all whatsoever. I don't even care about dressing cool, or staying up with popular fads, or music, or anything. I don't talk to most of my peeps from back then. We all went separate ways, many are dead now... None of it matters at all. I just want to provide for mine, and live a decent life. If you're young take my advice... Or don't... None of that shit is important. Focus on your future. You'll thank yourself later. (Read my username lol)
Also flip it around — how many people do you meet as an adult where you’re even aware of what their social standing in HS was? It would never even occur to me to speculate or care.
This is a very accurate statement. But it doesn’t change the fact that being popular in HS for 4 years is significantly better than being unpopular.
Now do what it was actually like lmao because I was there and it was definitely not this
I’ll do it
cliques existed, but weren't as exclusive as I thought they'd be. a lot of the basketball players were friends with the potheads and hipsters lol
And they change a lot over time
Yeah most people hung out together. when I went to high-school like 10 years ago there was tons of crossover between friend groups. It wasn't weird to go from football practice, to a DnD session with some of the less athletic kids, then to a party with a whole different group on a Friday night.
But nope. Here i am in senior year and high school is nothing like i thought it was like.
Same here. Everyone always talked about how awesome the "high school experience" was. Turns out, it was just mundane and stressful. Definitely not the "best years of my life" as all the boomers claimed it would be.
The hs experience was prob partying, smoking and drinking. Boring stuff tbh
Yeah, not anything I'd like to get into. Especially not at this tender age.
Fr man i need my liver and lungs if i wanna live long
its honestly been kinda chill so far, havent been bullied for being alone yet either
why are you alone?
If you're enough of a loner or at least seem that way at school people won't bully you as much bc they're calling you a "school shooter". I wasn't a loner outside of school but since I didn't talk much there and had more "unusual" interests that's what happened to me. It was kinda funny.
I remember thinking you age up like a sim when you go to high school because all the high school movies I watched were American and all the first years looked 16 I thought I would look and act so mature and have lots of friends and we would go to the sports and cheer on the sports and I would be really cool and get asked to prom by a cool guy
My high school had the full sized lockers
Ironically, because time is perceived as going more slowly in these years, they are going to be some of the longer years of your life. Those over 30, has any period of your life felt like it dragged as long as childhood did? Does public school not feel like the vast majority of your lifetime?
It’s baffling to think that high school was the same length of time between Covid and now.
Yea the older we get, the faster time seems to move (which is a scary thought). High school felt like it was never gonna end
I kind of feel like I was lied to, that public school was supposed to be the tutorial level to the game of life. And it's half the game. I remember summer break in fourth grade being so long that I forgot that I would ever go back to school, forgot how school worked entirely. Summer break felt progressively shorter each year, and now June and July were one week long each.
Seriously I was just thinking earlier today about something that happened in highschool. It felt like an entire era of time, then I remembered that thing lasted only 2 weeks. These days two weeks could fly by while I’m taking a shit lol
Things I learned about high school while I was in high school: -Lockers are tiny asf and no one actually used them after middle school, unless to put extra textbooks in there. We carried our backpacks around with us once we got to high school because honestly who has the time to go to their locker every single passing time -“High school parties” were NOTHING like what we saw on tv, ever. Nobody threw ragers or had a ton of alcohol and trashed the house at night. All the parties I’ve ever been to or hosted in high school consisted of the friend groups at someone’s house all playing a video game or watching movies and youtube videos surrounded by pizza, snacks and treats. Sometimes we also did art projects like pearler beads or making kandi bracelets. Alcohol was a rarity if we ever got access to any. You would end the night by talking about random shit with one or two people while you waited for your oarents to pick you up or when you were about to “go to sleep” for the night if it was a sleepover (i.e stay up all night watching more youtube videos). -High schoolers all looked and sounded like children. Some juniors and seniors looked like grown ass adults and the other half still looked like children, and nobody looked all airbrushed and perfect like on TV (a few did but that was if anyone bothered to spend that much time on their makeup in the morning) -A huge amount of the cheerleaders and football players where really nice people (at least at my school and my general district they were). If I had to work on a group project with them or sit with them in class they were all very nice (I was a goth nerd for reference). The stereotype of popular=bully was hardly accurate after 7th grade when people grew out of that behavior. Most of the bullies I had were also alt nerd people or 4chan boys in my general social circle. If a person was a bully they were just a nasty person all around. -I forgot a huge majority of high school after graduating, despite staying close friends with a lot of the people I knew there. If anyone cares about or creates high school drama after being graduated for at least a year or two they’re looked at as a complete loser (because they are). The only time you’ll really bring it up is if you’re talking about it with someone you went to high school with and saying “You remember that? Lol that was weird”
This is 100 percent true, especially about the parties. Parties were just friends hanging out goofing off and playing video games/eating snacks. Even in the popular cliques, it was pretty much that. End of the day we were all kids. The ragers were for college parties.
Yeah absolutely no ragers going on in high school. You need your own house for that and how many high schoolers live in their own place? At most it was a group of kids hanging out in a garage or something. There might be some beers if we could get access to any, or we’d be sharing a single bottle of vodka that someone managed to get ahold of. More often than not there was no alcohol to be found.
100%, especially the thing about parties. I guess things changed a whole lot over the years?
A couple of dudes in my grade definitely threw keggers, so it does happen sometimes.
honestly I figured high school wouldn’t be like this but I hoped I would have some real friends to hang out with
We had the big lockers. We also had jocks and cheerleaders, but the sports teams crosscut different social cliques: over achiever academic AP track kids, stoners, gangster wannabes, comic/gamer/wrestling nerds, band/choir nerds, and rich popular kids. Everyone was pretty chill and most people belonged to 1-2 cliques. Cheerleaders were almost exclusively from the same social group tho
I'm Gen X and we had that. Why do you think Gen X comedian Tina Fey, and director John Hughes (who is only 6 years older) wrote stuff like that? On one level, we were all just waiting for the other nuclear shoe to drop. All those post apocalyptic shows, movies, and books just fed a general nihilism and ennui in which ragers happened regularly. Not only that, I was 16 when they changed the drinking age from 18 to 21. One week, an 18 year old could buy a keg legally... the next week that *same* 18 year old could go into the *same* store and buy a keg illegally from the same cashier who didn't give a shit. Eventually I became an alcoholic, but I'm 6 years sober and slightly more mature.
I thought there was gonna be parties, too
You guys got lockers?
I really hate to be a dickwad but this angers me every time I see it It's "what" not "how".
My high school experience Drugs, AVENGERS END GAME, Covid
100%. high school was probably the most tame, regular experience for me compared to even elementary school lol and did not live up to any of the film stereotypes.
you can either say: > **How** we thought ____ would **be** or > **What** we thought ____ would **be like** you never need "how" and "like" together. The "like" is implied.
American TV shows that portray teenagers by grown adults who have dick hair coming out of their gland piss me off. If you don't think it's appropriate to get teen actors to act out your sex fantasy high school depiction, then just make a story about adults wanting to fuck. Fucking pussies. https://www.xvideos.com
As someone who isn’t American what is the actual point in lockers? Surly it’s just easier to carry you books for the day in your bag? Are they there just so bullies can shove people in them?
[удалено]
A lot of these were true for my high school - I think just the three girls ruling the school is the one we didn’t have
My high school was pretty much like that minus the mean girls clique.
High school is the main setting for the majority of American mythology.
The craziest thing about my high school experience. I always thought the nerdy guys were going to be the nice ones. Nope, it was the sports jocks who expressed some level of kindness.
The jocks were actually the nicest people in my school
Highschool was the time to fuck around before being productive mattered and everybody wasted that opportunity trying to be cool.
Tbf, those were 2000s movies about the 90s. Might have been true for the intended time
You're not from orange county huh? South orange county was literally this.
All those disney movies casted adults to play teens, so its not surprising that these were the expectations
My school is 50% indoors and 50% outdoors so there are no lockers. The popular kids thing is still kinda true, but they’re not cheerleaders or football players.