What Were You Like in High School?

Angela53510 · Mar 4, 2016

This really made me think back!

I started out kind of weird. I was really into sports, books, music and art. I huge out with the French/math accelerated crowd, and we had lots of fun. I sang in the school choir, and read a LOT of books.

But by grade 11, I was going through alienation and severe angst. I got depressed, and kind of dropped out. I maintained my high marks, but was more concerned with impressing people with how alienated I was, than actually accomplishing anything.

Grade 12 was the worst year of my life. I got into drugs, alcohol, left home in January, and basically showed up at school when I felt like it. Except I was actually the Captain of my house league, and I still did well in sports so I stayed involved in sports. Oh yes, and on the school newspaper and literary magazine. It was hard to peg me, I guess. I also lost a lot of weight before I got into grade 12, which I found very hard to handle. I wasn't fat before, but I became very thin, and had a lot of guys after me. Not that I cared.

Oh yes, this was the 60's - I was a hippie wanna-be for a few years in there. After I graduated, I became a real hippie. And somehow I did graduate and with marks high enough to go onto university. My chem final was my favourite. I had a rule that if a chemical compound had more than three syllables in it, I guessed at the multiple choice answer. Final mark: 67. It was my lowest mark in all my schooling, but I was enormously proud -because I had guessed at most of the answers. Sort of perverse!

No, high school is not my favourite time. We had a group of us that used to meet back in my home city about every 6 months. One woman was a doctor, and she asked about what I was doing. I told her about being a teacher and now working on my MDiv at that point. I also told her how well all my grown children were doing. She was totally shocked and said, "You really had a hard time in high school, didn't you? But you certainly have straightened your life around." Well, it was God who totally turned my life around, but that is the next decade!

PANCAKES · Mar 4, 2016

Stupid, and I annoyed people. I liked getting yelled at by teachers and I thought rick rolling people was the bomb so I did it to one of the school labs during class. Also played pranks in the apple store with my younger brother, and various other sorts of stuff. Anyway, I was and still am a little rascal.

Yahweh_is_gracious · Oct 23, 2016

I was "that kid" that almost everyone else in the school delighted in picking on, playing practical jokes on, and generally antagonizing. I brought a great deal of it upon myself because even back then, I was more than willing and able to shoot my mouth off and tell someone what they could go do with themselves.

I was a late bloomer, and I was quite short compared to my classmates. I was also very, very skinny. I kept to myself most of the time, and unless I was arguing with some bully, I was for the most part silent. I was the kid who never did his homework, yet still got nearly 100% on every test and quiz. I would usually blow any curve we were being graded on...and that didn't make me any friends either. I smoked a lot of marijuana in HS because I was a dirtball.

I was very conflicted in HS. I didn't like many people, so I had very few friends, but even those I did have I wasn't close to. I thought for a couple of years that I might be gay because I wasn't chasing girls like the other guys were, but I didn't like guys, so I was really confused.

All in all, I was someone you wouldn't have wanted to get to know.

Lenardzw · Oct 23, 2016

I was an introvert. I had friends and did fairly well academically, but I also played on the school basketball team and was an outsider on the team. I could never really connect with those guys. Generally I was a quiet person and kept to my rather small circle of friends who were mostly people who lived on my street and some friends i'd known from 1st grade (a few of whom are my closest friends today).

I was terrified of girls. So if I liked a girl she never got to know about it. Needless to say I didn't date in High school. I had friends who were girls but I was terrified of dating. It was in High school when my self esteem was so low that it had donned a hard hat and started digging. I suppose many of you can relate to this last part. Our self esteem gets into the limelight in high school.

I started working just out of school and then paid for my own college studies which I attended in the evenings. I was still fairly quiet and still shy even at work but I was treated as an equal so it helped my self esteem somewhat. When I was saved EVERYTHING changed. Over a few months I became more confident and outgoing. I found my voice in Christ. Now they can't shut me up.

Socreta93 · Oct 23, 2016

seoulsearch said:

Hey Everyone,

This is something I've wanted to ask for a while:

* What were you like in high school? What groups/clubs/cliques did you belong to?

* Who were your friends? Who were your favorite teachers, and why?

* What were your favorite subjects, and what did you intend to do after high school? (Did it go as planned?)

1-I was shy and awkward and bullied (not physical) to all hell but I got through it. Didn't belong to any groups or cliques

2-While everyone sat mostly with their friends from their grade, I sat at the loser table with all the rejects from other grades. To be honest I hated everyone at my school so I felt comfortable with my circle of friends because we were the ones no one cared about but at least I had friends. My best friend smoked weed and was an atheist but he was the first one to talk to me and be nice and always defended me so I always am thankful.

3-I liked gym to a degree, but I loved history classes and remember acing my U.S. History class because it was so easy and my teacher was very nice. For the most part my teachers were nice but I can tell they favored the popular kids even the jerks.

Did I mention this was a Christian High School. Don't be fooled think you'r sending your kids to some holy of holy school where everyone is nice.

G00WZ · Jan 2, 2023

I was popular because i was pretty much nice to everyone that plus i was one of the tallest kids in school. I already looked and sounded like i was a 12th grader when i was in the 9th. I didn't belong to any exact group because i was cool with literally everyone and vice versa. I went to public highschool school in the late 90s to early 2000's so back then so all the kids were hyped up on Mountain Dew and too much MTV.

I literally had all kinds of friends jocks, nerds, preppies, stoners, if you were alive we could hang out. I remember people weren't using emulators in the computer lab so me and some of my friends went around putting snes emulators and roms on all of the computers. At lunch the entire place was full of kids, all you could hear were hadoukens, "finish him" and mario coins. We used to do a lot of interesting things, i used to steal the teachers hall pass stacks and i would write them for people sometimes. One of our friends was the hall monitor and one of his jobs was to take the attendance rosters to the office for the other teachers, he would "correct" our absences for us while we'd be out ditching classes and running away from the security guards... Running the halls and hiding in the restrooms from the security guards eventually i'd be in there hiding with new and different characters like the weed-heads and the taggers so it's like more friends and we used to look out for eachother.

Highschool to me was basically a real life role playing game because all i did was literally go around collecting new friends and developing my character. I had fun evolving as a person and making tons of interesting memories to remember in the process. Back then i figure if im somewhere that sucks i might as well do fun stuff while im here. My sister who was an ultra nerd/ approval seeker back then can't even remember her time in Highschool because all she did was her work.

They called you a nerd magnet back then but what are you calling yourself these days?

TheNarrowPath · Jan 2, 2023

High school was so long ago...I think it was just a place where I got to hang out with my friends. I was good at accepting my peers at face value but not so much the teachers. I really didnt have a trust for them. I can only think of one teacher at high school that made an impact, Ms Pagani was Canadian and tried hard to build relationships in class.
As for my friends I changed them every year I hung out with different people, I dont know if that was boredom or my interests changing. I was never the popular kid but more like the best friend of someone that was popular and thats how Ive always been, kinda like a background singer.
My school report always said I needed to apply myself and that I was shy. Like every year it was pretty much a copy and paste of the year before!
If I was known for anything it might be that I was tall and athletic. People just expected me to win at everything. My PE teacher would get me to show the class how to do particular skillset.
I did well in reading, bad in maths lol. Left school at 17 because I was working. I remember the last day of my last year. We waited for the bell to ring and then we got egged and floured!

notonmywatch · Jan 2, 2023

seoulsearch said:

Extremely shy.

seoulsearch said:

None, really.

seoulsearch said:

Do imaginary friends count? I was basically nice, but I never really had a true friend in high school.

seoulsearch said:

I hated school and pretty much everything else back then. The reason why is simple. I was petrified of death. The first time that I thought about it, it gripped my soul and never let go. It was pretty much all that I could think about. I had no answers. Sometimes you see movies or hear stories about a teacher or a guidance counselor that sort of takes a student under their wing, but I never had that either. I had a pretty big family, but that was rather dysfunctional. My parents divorced, and my siblings were all into partying and other things. I just always had something else going on in my mind. Perhaps you can now understand better why I never had a favorite teacher until I met Christ.

seoulsearch said:

I hated all of my subjects because, in the light, or should I say darkness, of death, it all seemed so meaningless. Now that I'm a Christian, I love the book of Ecclesiastes because it deals heavily with the vanity of life in the face of death. Only that which is done with eternal purposes in mind will matter in the end. What did I intend to do after high school? I didn't have a clue. Did it go as planned? Sort of. lol. Aside from God, I basically have nothing, but he is sufficient.

If you'd like me to, then I can post a P.O. Box address where you can all send your sympathy cards. lol.

Gojira · Jan 2, 2023

seoulsearch said:

Hey Everyone,

This is something I've wanted to ask for a while:

* What were you like in high school? What groups/clubs/cliques did you belong to?

* Who were your friends? Who were your favorite teachers, and why?

* What were your favorite subjects, and what did you intend to do after high school? (Did it go as planned?)

My church denomination had several local lower-level schools in the area, so our Christian high school was kind of like a big community center of all these schools combined. It was a curious thing because once we all got there, some people were already "famous" because they were sports stars, had well-known musical talent, or were the offspring of someone famous in the church community (a pastor or teacher, etc.)

And then there was the rest of us. (My Dad didn't become a pastor until I was an adult and had moved away, and, seeing the pressure other pastor's kids went through, I've thanked him for that quite often.)

I've often said I'm an introvert who can occasionally masquerade as an extrovert, and my freshman year I was eager to meet new people and try to reinvent myself to some extent. Within the first few months, I found myself a part of nearly every activity you can imagine (student body, volleyball, yearbook, choir...)

By my senior year, the reality of typical teenage despair and angst had set in and I had withdrawn from almost everything. The popular girls had given me the title of "The Nerd Magnet" (because they said I'd talk to any nerd within a 10-mile radius), and I embraced their label and all its negativity wholeheartedly. I could talk to most anyone fairly easily, but conversation does not equal inclusion. I have always felt most at home with others like myself who don't really fit under any label.

My best friend in high school was a guy who was nearly 6'4" (seeing as I'm 5'1", we were quite the duo), had long hair, and always dressed in black, including sunglasses (he wasn't even trying to be cool or mysterious, he just had extremely sensitive eyes) and a black trench coat. (I, on the other hand, had fully embraced the "neon colors in every shade... all at the same time" fad.) Jocks only talked to me when they wanted answers to their homework or dates with my friends (I'm not trying to stereotype here--I'm just speaking from my experience), while everyone at school people whispered that my friend, because of his appearance, surely worshiped Satan (one of the things that drew me to him was how well he knew the Bible.)

What were your high school years like for you? (Everyone is welcome to answer, including marrieds and those who are still IN high school.)

For me, high school seems like just a blip now, but back then, it was everything. Sometimes, when I get tired and frustrated with this life, I can hear God telling me that someday I'll look back, and this life will be a lot like high school--it seems like such a big deal at the time, but someday, it won't really matter.

Well... I put up with mess from other students I'd never put up with today.

I did well in high school, grade-wise. And, I have two friends in my life from high school still to this day. Sadly, neither are saved.

I was not popular with girls, and didn't have my first real date till my 20s.

I did gain a bit of short-term appreciation from some of my peers though when, during a gym-time whiffleball game, I hit two homers in a very difficult playing area. That was probably the height of my fame LOL

Then... my true self came out, and I developed into the 400' beastie the world knows and loves today.

Gojira · Jan 2, 2023

G00WZ said:

I was popular because i was pretty much nice to everyone that plus i was one of the tallest kids in school. I already looked and sounded like i was a 12th grader when i was in the 9th. I didn't belong to any exact group because i was cool with literally everyone and vice versa. I went to public highschool school in the late 90s to early 2000's so back then so all the kids were hyped up on Mountain Dew and too much MTV.

I literally had all kinds of friends jocks, nerds, preppies, stoners, if you were alive we could hang out. I remember people weren't using emulators in the computer lab so me and some of my friends went around putting snes emulators and roms on all of the computers. At lunch the entire place was full of kids, all you could hear were hadoukens, "finish him" and mario coins. We used to do a lot of interesting things, i used to steal the teachers hall pass stacks and i would write them for people sometimes. One of our friends was the hall monitor and one of his jobs was to take the attendance rosters to the office for the other teachers, he would "correct" our absences for us while we'd be out ditching classes and running away from the security guards... Running the halls and hiding in the restrooms from the security guards eventually i'd be in there hiding with new and different characters like the weed-heads and the taggers so it's like more friends and we used to look out for eachother.

Highschool to me was basically a real life role playing game because all i did was literally go around collecting new friends and developing my character. I had fun evolving as a person and making tons of interesting memories to remember in the process. Back then i figure if im somewhere that sucks i might as well do fun stuff while im here. My sister who was an ultra nerd/ approval seeker back then can't even remember her time in Highschool because all she did was her work.

They called you a nerd magnet back then but what are you calling yourself these days?

Why does this sound like an 80s movie...

G00WZ · Jan 2, 2023

Gojira said:

I wish it was because that would be like totally radical dude!

Gojira · Jan 3, 2023

G00WZ said:

*snort* ya dude

HealthAndHappiness · Jan 3, 2023

Part I

In Jr High was developing autonomy and establishing who I was. I decided to not conform to a click.
My friends from 11 years on to high school were college students in medical and law school. My best friend smoked a pipe, so I took up occasional pipe tobacco use but always despised addiction, so I eventually got rid of it after I got saved. I'm glad that I never got hooked. So I was the guy who wore brown leather and smoked a pipe you'd see walking around the high school and college campus after my classes.

I had already started a successful business and really needed vocational training to learn how to run my Dad's shops more than most of what was available in the classrooms. Interests my Jr year brought me back to school Saturdays for college level classes taught by professors at the HS..

The senior jocks picked fights when they got their egos hurt. Football and basketball players were in the same gym classes with me as a sophomore. Growing up, I had formal training in martial arts, flexibility and strength training, so their coach would pick me to lead certain units. The seniors were bigger and injected steroids. The classes I taught went ok until it led to their challenges after gym classes. He didn't like his star players hurt and suspended from games. When I'd get sucker punched or eyes gouged by huge guys, I was forced to open the can of spinach. This led to grudges and me going after them off school property. That was an area of my life that I had to learn early on that there would be plenty of injustices where evil bullies would try to get away with murder. The Lord always protected me. Some of the jocks played college football and were capable of killing a man.

God taught me to forgive and to let things go to Him and He would see that justice would be done. I let the lost friends go too. He replaced them with mature Godly adults that I followed. They trained me to lead and help others since. Those skills trumped any academic classes in high school.

seoulsearch · Jan 3, 2023

G00WZ said:

You know what's funny, I think I'm pretty much almost exactly the same -- it's just that my outlook has shifted. Back then, of course, the stigma around being called a "Nerd Magnet" was negative, and some might still think that -- but now it's a moniker I wear proudly.

Through the years I've had several times when I had to start my life over in completely new surroundings, and at first I wondered if my image/label would change. We've all heard of that nerd in high school who suddenly had a "glow up" and is now seen in a completely new light.

Not me! Lol. In every single incidence, people settled into seeing me exactly the same -- boring, not into partying at all, someone who settles into the background and is often overlooked (which I like,) good to talk to when someone wants a distraction from work or their life, but not much else. Oddly enough, I also now seem to attract people who were the "cool" ones in high school and still have one foot in the party world, but half of the other foot longs for solid ground.

Even in the time I've been on CC, there have been a slew of people who come and go under different usernames, and occasionally people write me and say, "I know it sounds strange, but seeing that you're still here, and still using the same username, gives me a sense of stability even though my life is very unstable." I never realized that might mean something to people, so I've decided that unless something apocalyptic happens, I'll always keep the same username as long as I'm here. That's not a criticism to anyone who changes their name -- different things work for different people -- and even if I did change my name, people would Know It Was Me as soon as I posted.

I enjoy meeting and hopefully becoming friends with a wide variety of people from all different backgrounds and circumstances.

The one thing that's really changed for me is that I've realized I will always be my own definition of a "nerd" to my own self (not applied to anyone else, just the way I see myself) -- a bit OCD about things others might not care about, quirky and offbeat, known for thinking, living, and speaking outside the box, and often not always in ways that are welcome to the mainstream. But that's ok, because I've come to realize that I think that's how God made me.

I am forever a misfit, and proud of it, because everyone feels like an outcast at least now and then, and we all know the sorrow and grief that it can come with. But God helps us through.

And if God connects me with others who see themselves (or others see them) as being the same way?

All the better.

Thanks very much for sharing and asking!

Lanolin · Jan 3, 2023

High school ugh!

I think I was stressed out a lot. I fell off a chair while painting a mural in one of the classrooms and got concussion and was never the same lol

I remember being in the 'brainy' class. There were more boys than girls. There were two cliques in this class, the 'loud' group and the 'quiet' group. The rich kids that knew each other also tended to hang out with each other and looked down on the poorer kids.

I was in the quiet group. I imagined high school to be kind of like Grease or Sweet Valley High but of course it wasnt. One year the school DID put on Grease the musical. But I wasnt in it and couldnt afford to go anyway. Even though the year before I did wardrobe for A midsummer Nights Dream and voted to have Grease as I knew those words off by heart. lol

There was never anywhere to sit in break times so we just sat around on the concrete or the steps. The uniforms were hideous. I had a cold the night of the school ball. There were some parties but I dont remember a lot of them...I did have one though.

Our Dean was a body builder and I remember being abit afraid of her like she could beat me up. One English teacher was a strange one and I really did not get why she was so mean to her students. It turned out she had a few personal problems with two husbands. Otherwise I didnt connect much with the teachers, they were there to teach (often the curriculum was so outdated you wondered why we were even learning it) and then go home. I didnt choose to hang out at school and do extra curricular things after the bell rang for the end of the day except for the musical. My sister had enrolled ahead of me and I hardly saw her.

I stayed on pain of death to the end but at the time I wanted to leave as soon as I was old enough and get a job haha. But no, I ended up getting a Bursary and going on to university like I was expected to.

Krumbeard · Jan 3, 2023

seoulsearch said:

Hey Everyone,

This is something I've wanted to ask for a while:

* What were you like in high school? What groups/clubs/cliques did you belong to?

* Who were your friends? Who were your favorite teachers, and why?

* What were your favorite subjects, and what did you intend to do after high school? (Did it go as planned?)

My church denomination had several local lower-level schools in the area, so our Christian high school was kind of like a big community center of all these schools combined. It was a curious thing because once we all got there, some people were already "famous" because they were sports stars, had well-known musical talent, or were the offspring of someone famous in the church community (a pastor or teacher, etc.)

And then there was the rest of us. (My Dad didn't become a pastor until I was an adult and had moved away, and, seeing the pressure other pastor's kids went through, I've thanked him for that quite often.)

I've often said I'm an introvert who can occasionally masquerade as an extrovert, and my freshman year I was eager to meet new people and try to reinvent myself to some extent. Within the first few months, I found myself a part of nearly every activity you can imagine (student body, volleyball, yearbook, choir...)

By my senior year, the reality of typical teenage despair and angst had set in and I had withdrawn from almost everything. The popular girls had given me the title of "The Nerd Magnet" (because they said I'd talk to any nerd within a 10-mile radius), and I embraced their label and all its negativity wholeheartedly. I could talk to most anyone fairly easily, but conversation does not equal inclusion. I have always felt most at home with others like myself who don't really fit under any label.

My best friend in high school was a guy who was nearly 6'4" (seeing as I'm 5'1", we were quite the duo), had long hair, and always dressed in black, including sunglasses (he wasn't even trying to be cool or mysterious, he just had extremely sensitive eyes) and a black trench coat. (I, on the other hand, had fully embraced the "neon colors in every shade... all at the same time" fad.) Jocks only talked to me when they wanted answers to their homework or dates with my friends (I'm not trying to stereotype here--I'm just speaking from my experience), while everyone at school people whispered that my friend, because of his appearance, surely worshiped Satan (one of the things that drew me to him was how well he knew the Bible.)

What were your high school years like for you? (Everyone is welcome to answer, including marrieds and those who are still IN high school.)

For me, high school seems like just a blip now, but back then, it was everything. Sometimes, when I get tired and frustrated with this life, I can hear God telling me that someday I'll look back, and this life will be a lot like high school--it seems like such a big deal at the time, but someday, it won't really matter.

I'll admit now that I didn't read through the book long OP. 😜

But I'll answer the question.

I was odd, had a bad attitude till my senior year and complained about most of my classes.

I had a few close friends, was never popular nor cared to be so.

Did well in my classes without much effort (if I would have applied my self...???)

And, I certainly was glad to graduate and never missed it after being gone!

Lanolin · Jan 3, 2023

I just wanted to add that at the time it was the 90s for me. Grunge was in. I remember girls crying over Kurt Cobains suicide. i liked more urban music Rand B hip hop etc but my high school was mostly white and so they didnt really get a lot of music that I liked. Moshing was 'cool' but to me it just looked like people jumping up and down cos they didnt know how to dance!

Alanis Morisette was popular. But you wouldnt have known it cos we werent allowed to listen to music in class or have walkmans (this was before ipods and smartphones) . I cant remmeber any class I really liked except for the Reading Room. This was just a room with books all displayed around and where you could just read anything you liked for a whole period with no teacher yelling at you. Bliss.

Gojira · Jan 3, 2023

HealthAndHappiness said:

Part I

In Jr High was developing autonomy and establishing who I was. I decided to not conform to a click.
My friends from 11 years on to high school were college students in medical and law school. My best friend smoked a pipe, so I took up occasional pipe tobacco use but always despised addiction, so I eventually got rid of it after I got saved. I'm glad that I never got hooked. So I was the guy who wore brown leather and smoked a pipe you'd see walking around the high school and college campus after my classes.

I had already started a successful business and really needed vocational training to learn how to run my Dad's shops more than most of what was available in the classrooms. Interests my Jr year brought me back to school Saturdays for college level classes taught by professors at the HS..

The senior jocks picked fights when they got their egos hurt. Football and basketball players were in the same gym classes with me as a sophomore. Growing up, I had formal training in martial arts, flexibility and strength training, so their coach would pick me to lead certain units. The seniors were bigger and injected steroids. The classes I taught went ok until it led to their challenges after gym classes. He didn't like his star players hurt and suspended from games. When I'd get sucker punched or eyes gouged by huge guys, I was forced to open the can of spinach. This led to grudges and me going after them off school property. That was an area of my life that I had to learn early on that there would be plenty of injustices where evil bullies would try to get away with murder. The Lord always protected me. Some of the jocks played college football and were capable of killing a man.

God taught me to forgive and to let things go to Him and He would see that justice would be done. I let the lost friends go too. He replaced them with mature Godly adults that I followed. They trained me to lead and help others since. Those skills trumped any academic classes in high school.

That's quite a story.

HealthAndHappiness · Jan 3, 2023

Gojira said:

I lived near a university at the time, so there was more violence than the average town.
Looking back, I think that the Lord was allowing those challenges to motivate and prepare me for bigger ones. Before highschool there was also a psychopath who married into the family who tried to kill me a couple of times and make it look like an accident. God was protecting me throughout life and certainly from an early age. Many chapters of the book are written. I still have a ways to go.

Lanolin · Jan 4, 2023

eek I havent written much about high school I have to start with primary school first. It would be interesting to find out what people were like in primary school...as that's your formative years.

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