what were you like in high school?

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I didn't want it to just be exclusive to the extra-curricular kids. What clique were you in? I bumped around cliques a lot in high school until my senior year. I don't know what I was looking for. I always felt like everyone was younger than me. I was always in love. I was always writing.

What were you always doing? Did you feel alone? Were you popular? Were you popular and alone?

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

Answers

My friends were all people who were in pain somehow. The pain of being overweight, having an eating disorder, never getting a date, or just being misunderstood. I don't know how we all made it out alive.

We were kind of the freaky people I guess. We colored our hair all different colors with the vegetable-based dye that you could get from the Alley in Chicago. We wore Doc Martens and dressed in black. All my money from my part-time job was spent on albums by the Cure, Morrissey, Nine Inch Nails, and any other mopey band I could get my hands on. I, too, sat in my room writing god-awful poetry to relieve myself of "the weight of this world." I can remember staying up way too late on Sunday nights to watch 120 Minutes while on the phone with my friend Jane discussing the latest Cure video.

Ah, those days where I thought I was so very cool. I wasn't always unhappy, though. Even with all the problems we had, we managed to have a good time. Sneaking off downtown to see a band at the Vic or just to hang out on Clark and Belmont. My mother hated every bit of the Salvation Army Thrift shop clothes I would bring home. Hee Hee.

High School wasn't too bad, but I did a lot of things that I wish I hadn't, too, Pamie. Sometimes I would like to take the teenager I was and give her a good shake. "You're too good for him! Spend some time with your girlfriends. You don't always have to have a boy in your life!" I had the WORST taste in boys. Thank God that's over with.

Now I'm all mopey. I think I'll pull on a black beret and go listen to The Smiths.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999


Up until my Junior year, I played out that whole depressed teenager/writing bad poetry thing. I partied a lot, did things I'm sorry I did; I was super melodramatic and made everything a hassle for my mom. (I'm so sorry mom!) Around my Junior year I got my act together. I realized that being smart wasn't so bad; so I dusted off my pocket protector and was proud to be a nerd again. I was lucky enough to meet 6 other people who I totally connected with; I was so lucky to have so many best friends. We all became friends because we didn't belong in any one clique, but some inbred jock at school dubbed us the 'Smart Alterna-Kids', we thought it was funny as hell so we started referring to our little group as such. On the weekends I hung out at my friend John's house. We'd watch X-Files and stay up all night talking about how much we hate Republicans and then we'd all pile into the S.A.V. (Satanic Assault Vehichle, actually it was John's mom's Dodge Caravan) and we'd drive around harassing people. On Halloween one year we drove around our town, stopped at the houses of all the popular people who were mean to us, took the pumpkins out of their yards, put them in the street and ran over them. It was so messy! We'd steal lawn ornaments (I don't know why), loiter at Denny's til we were too tired to even pretend we're awake, and have co-ed sleepovers. I've been reflecting a lot on my high school years a lot lately and there's so many things I miss about it. I had so much fun and I didn't even realize how much I'd miss it. I really liked a lot of my teachers; they were more like mentors than someone just doing their job. I really wish sometimes that I was 17 again. I don't want to get too sappy so I'd better shut up now.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

i was just like you, pamie. i finally found "my people" my senior year, and before that, i'd just hung around with whatever class of seniors, feeling so much older than the kids my age. i slept through classes, spent senior year AP english doing my fingernails & showing up my classmates & being the teacher's pet without trying, wrote in my journal constantly and when i wasn't supposed to, and loved every boy to whom i was ever close. i was a mess and i was lonely. senior year, i sat next to an old old classmate in calculus, and things fell into place for me. i wasn't popular - i was an enormous band geek - but i was loved and that was what mattered.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

I don't think I ever found my "place" in high school. I came close -- newspaper geek, drama freak, Honors Track nerd -- but I never quite felt like I totally belonged anywhere. I tried to be like my friends. I tried really hard. But I always ended up doing, or wearing, or liking something that was considered "weird." There was always something about me that just kept me a little bit apart from the rest of the kids in those groups. I never met any one person that I could look at and think, "Yeah, they're -like- me. We understand each other."

I suspect there was this one kid, Bruce, and that he and I were very alike. But, you see, by the time I figured that out, we had both kind of shut off from everyone, closed off pieces of ourselves from the world, and we never really had a chance to connect. God, when I think about that, I realize how sad it is. How lonely I was. How lonely he was. How different we both were.

But, in the end, I wouldn't change my experience. I learned a lot about being myself, about not going along with the crowd (any crowd -- even if it is the newspaper geeks) and doing what you want and like. I was lonely, sure, but I learned how to be independent and think for myself.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999


When we went to our high school's 75th anniversary reunion last year, anyone who I recognised knew my wife immediately, but drew a complete blank on me.

I guess I was vanilla boy.

None of the people I used to hang out with showed up at the thing, which was mildly disappointing. Our former principal (who recognised me) said the next reunion for the school's 100th will be when all our crowd will be there, when we're all olde phartes.

I suppose being in the Tech Club (lights/sound in the auditorium) and Strategic Diplomacy Club (wargames) contributed to my status as a nerdlinger.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999



Wow, what a great question. Even though I am 'old' now (29) I still reflect often to my high school days and ask myself that very question. What was I like in high school? I can tell you very easily what I wasn't like, I wasn't a nerd, I wasn't a hood, I wasn't a cheerleader, I wasn't a rich bitch, I wasn't a slum girl, I wasn't a redneck, I wasn't a freak, I wasn't a perfumey dingbat glamgirl, I wasn't a gamey earth child. So what was I? None of the above? Or maybe a little tiny bit of all of the above? The weird thing is, I had friends in each and every one of those groups.

I was selfish, I think. My whole world was me. I wanted everyone to like me, which is probably why I never drifted into any particular social grouping and stuck there. I couldn't bear the thought of anyone not liking me so I tried to be everygirl to everyone, which of course only resents in resentment from the pure, hardcore members of each group.

I was a ridiculous Def Leppard fan for a while. Then I went through a Van Halen phase. Then I was into Pink Floyd. Then I was into U-2. Then I was into Beastie Boys. I spent 2 hours each morning fixing my hair and face for school (2 hours?!?), dressed up every day (stuff like blazers, taper legged slacks and pumps. Our school was like a fashion show every damn day, and I have no idea how my parents managed to afford all the nice clothes that I pitched a fit to have. I don't dress as nicely for work now as I did in high school, but hey, that was the 80's and it was a very different era). I loved to smell pot, and would always hang out with people while they smoked it, but I never smoked it myself until Senior Year, and it didn't take. I made good grades, but was embarassed by them, and tried to come off as less intelligent than I was. Which was a very stupid thing to do. Anyone else see the irony here? I went off with groups of the redneck people sometimes, and they were a blast, so nice, but I hated (and still hate) country music, chewing tobacco and gun racks. I looked just like the girls on the cheerleading and drill team, hair, make-up and clothes-wise, but I never tried out for either and secretly hated all that shit. I went to every football game, but never watched a minute of it and to this day don't understand the game an ioda.

I was terrified of boys up until Junior Year, so I had crushes from afar (complete with bad soul-baring poetry) that would come to a screeching, abrupt halt if the object of my affection found out and made the mistake of asking me on a date, or showed any interest at all. I got a reputation for being fickle, but I wasn't - I was scared out of my mind. I thought that if I went on a date, even just one, they would expect me to have sex with them, and I was terrified of sex, and basically just a scared rabbit-type chick in general. So I ran away all the time, and later found out boys thought I was aloof, snotty and fickle. Ha!

I was a walking contradiction. Afraid of everything but trying really hard to come off like I knew it all and didn't give a damn. So, I probably looked like a bitch a lot, just because people didn't understand what was going on in my head, least of all me. I look back and think, I had a lot of friends, very few real conflicts, a lot of laughs, plenty of great memories. High school in general was a decent experience for me, but it could have been so much better if I had gotten a grip on myself and relaxed a little during 8th thru 10th grade. I actually had to eat plain yogurt for weeks because I developed a stomach ulcer in the 9th grade due to worrying about whether or not I was normal and doing everything right. Thank goodness I am no longer anything like the person I was then.

Whew. That was a lot of reflecting to do on a Thursday afternoon. It felt kinda good.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999


ugh...i was a dud with few social skills, and these were limited to the "class participation" domain. i was truly better at talking with and picking up cues from teachers than in my own age group. lots of mad crushes on unattainables.

even so, i was constantly trying to improve myself, be it a nose job at thirteen, collecting hunters run and forenza trinkets of fashion from the Limited, mall makeovers by the month, oh, and then there was the eating thing ... where i tried to shrink into the 'in' scarecrow physique ... by eating nothing but raw lettuce (by the head), broccoli and cauliflower ... contrary to my concerted efforts to fit in with the beautiful people, i didn't ... in fact, i would have hated to sit anywhere near me in any enclosed space (phew!).

don't know how i did it, but somehow i navigated myself into the speech and debate world where things started to turn around a bit ... at the very least i had something to do on weekends, but better yet, i was involved with a group of people similarly geeky, similarly smart, and fun in peculiar and interesting ways ... it became okay to be the me i'd been trying so heartily to gloss over ...

but all in all, high school stunk for me (no pun intended), and i honestly am happy to be halfway across the country from the whole experience (and any reunions) ... it was college where i blossomed and college i truly enjoyed.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999


I was the girl who was thought of as weird because she didn't go along with the crowd. I was always reading, writing and going to New York City. I realized that these were selfish, narcissistic people and not only did I want nothing to do with them, but I feared I would become one of them. So I ostracized myself and hated everyone and it made high school really rough. I can relate to a lot of things you said Pamie, because I experienced things like that too. I think you said it best as, "I was a Sylvia Plath in a world of John Hughes." That was me. (I read The Bell Jar at least six times in high school.)

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

High school was a pain for awhile. I was always falling for girls that I should have been "friends" with. Stupid stuff like that.

I remember I had asked this girl to a homecoming dance and this was the first girl that I had met that was not in my circle of friends.

She was a cousin of one of my best freinds but we ran in slightly different circles. So our team had just scored a touchdown and everybody is excited and I turned to her and the follwing scene happened..

Me: (Yelling looking up..she was tall) Hey! ...you want to go to home come ing with me?!!! HER: (Eyes examining the men on the field..biting index finger nail) Ummmmm I don't knowww.....

I spent homecoming night playing tennis with my best friend and it rocked. From that point on I realized all that stuff was a bunch of hooey. Good freinds got me through high school...and I had a great time.

As for the girl I asked out. She went stag to the dance and met some guy that she fell in love with. So much so that by the time they were seniors they were wearing shirt that had puffy paint enscriptions like "Tweedle-Dee" and he would where one that said "Tweedle-dum". That is no shit. As a matter of fact, I even saw her pick his nose for him at a party. It was like a reflex to her. They broke up the day after graduation.

I think I made out ok...all things considered.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999


"I remember the really bad times-- when I'd get so mad at myself and feel so horrible that I'd hurt myself. How I'd take a lighter and make the metal all hot and then press the metal against my wrist. It hurt. I wanted it to hurt."

What the!?? Pamie? Are you alright? Silvia Plath? The oven lady? This is a side of Squishy rarely seen. One wonders what else lurks in the drawers....

Hmm. Well, I'm 23 now, I've lived other lives since highschool... Clique? None. Sure I was a band geek, hell, I even become one of their leaders, but I never spent time with any other band geeks outside of band. Never went to band camp, heh. But I also played two sports. Not sure what I was...

So what was I always doing? Yeah I was in love too and I wrote a lot. Alone? Yeah, but only in the off seasons. Popular? No, although I might have had a shot at popularity.

If Pamie was tame, then whoa, I was a putty tat.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999



oy was i a dork in highschool! at least from grade 9 through 11. i was really really a complete... well - i was sheltered, unaware, totally clueless... my parents were really strict so just going to the mall was a battle. i always had friends though...

i started 9th grade with friends from elementary school, hung out with two different groups of people. i've got one close friend left from that bunch that i'm still in contact with. which is pretty surprising since i moved to f*&%ing australia in 11th grade!

anyway - but when i got back from australia, the guy i had a crush on before i left ended up "asking me out" as the saying went. and he was in a band, and a mod, and really really cool and i was of course, cool by proxy. yup... i was the girlfriend of the lead singer. woohoo!

then i moved into my own apartment (at 17!!!) and of course, you're instantly pretty damn hip if you're a teenager in a small town with your own apartment. i'd also clued in a little bit thanks to my boyfriend, did the vintage shopping thing and presto - a life.

even after he and i broke up, my roommate and i moved into a house with these two guys (roomies), and we lived in THE party house and well - i had the time of my life for a year or so. and i met the people who are now my closest friends. and i did very badly in my last year of highschool... we would skip class to go and watch ren&stimpy

but early highschool was a bad scene. i've got the pictures. *ick*

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999


Well, I got to tell you that what you people are writing here gives me some real good points to tell people who think that US high schools (read: general schools with all the kids in them) are better than slovenian (and most european) high schools (read: specialized high schools with less people).

when I was in high school, I was two years younger than everybody else (a psychologist thought I was really smart, so I skipped third grade) and weirder than all of you together (btw, I'm still weird, and I don't particularly care). anyway, at a high school like yours, I would have died. but here, it was generally only "smart" kids, so we didn't really have cliques. when I come to think about it, we had more popular and less popular kids, but nobody called it that, and we, the "populars" never had any problems with other kids hanging with us. I don't think I ever heard anybody say "don't invite him/her to the party, because he's a geek/nerd/dork/whatever". And all the "popular people" were into plays, band, computers, and most into sports. hell, our "smart" school was still kicking ass in all athletic competitions.

oh and of course, it made for a really interesting school. to be cool you had to be either a goth, a punk, a rocker, a hippie... whatever. the only uncool thing was the general fashion of the day. and of course, all music was cool except kylie minogue/jason donovan/rick astley/debbie gibson junk. even listening to mozart or wagner was considered cool.

so, whenever we meet (and I'm still hanging out with those people), all we talk about is high school and how we all agree that it was the best time of our lives. and it's been 10 years since we've finished it.

hell, i gotta call some friends. we gotta get drunk tonight and listen to some Pixies albums.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


Ditto on everyone else's answer.. I never had a "grouyp" I fit in either, but knew plenty people in all. Yes, had a fashion show everyday as well, shop at Sally Ann, and listed to all the Bands NoOne Heard Of (which are now quintesential 80's)... add to that the stupid idea that sex=love...(read=I-was-a-slut) and getting pregnant halfway thru grade 12... well now I want to go back in time and smack myself up the head... I can't believe who I was! I recently caught up with my best friend from back then, and she says I haven't changed a bit! Ha! I thought I was soooo cool, so trendy so hip. Now I have 3 kids, live way out in the country and play housewife (well, it felt like play- acting for the first 5 years or so, it was kinda surreal, I kept waiting for the "real" parents to show up) *eckh* time to move on... I'm getting depressed.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

I was a typical teen in high school. Sometimes quiet, sometimes shy, sometimes loud and sometimes in trouble. I had a lot of messed up stuff happen but my overall memories are quite fond. Even so, I couldn't wait to graduate and move on. I felt stuck, not in who I was, but in who others THOUGHT I was. The urge to post was more in response to the lines where you state ..."It get's better... It's amazing. What happens to and around you in high school can control your every thought and emotion. You graduate and two weeks later it hits you. "What the hell was I thinking ? None of that sh*t means a damn thing." And your life becomes what you want it to be. It gets more than better. It gets real.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

I was a completely different person in High School than I am now. I was the biggest bully. I had a small circle of friends, all bullies, and we tortured everyone. Our most enjoyable tortures were performed on the stuck up "rich" kids who were in the National Honor Society but (mind you ) CHEATED their way there. We each had different seperate and collective friends from all different cliques that we associated with but mostly it was us that we stuck with. I was part of the "Burn Outs": heavily into partying w/ drugs, not frat type keggers, and skipping classes to get stoned or roam the halls, trash the bathroom, etc. I had a very low self image and I felt empowered by the amounts of attention being this bad created. Everyone knew us, everyone feared us. We really believed we were invincible.

I was different from the rest of the clique in that I was in mainstream classes and excelled at schoolwork when I applied myself. I loved reading novels and would cut classes to sketch something or scratch in my journals while smoking a half pack of cigarettes in the bathroom. Walk down the hall, stop at the locker to take a swig from the Absolut I had on the top shelf, and then outside to hit a roach or do a bong hit (nice that we had woods surrounding our school).

I was lucky I was smart enough to reach out to my Mom when the drug use became an addiction and I had lost thousands of dollars (that was supposed to be for college) on cocaine and hotel rooms. With her support I quit the drugs, gave up my loser friends and moved on. I would like to think that I am nothing like my past self. I am friendly and cheery and although I do still toke once in a while, I haven't touched another drug since. I worked my ass off Senior Year and attended College Courses in the evenings to get credits to graduate. I did, and even though I couldn't motivate for College, I have a great job that's leading to a career and I'm doing great!

ooo said too much, sorry

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999



Chalk me up as another geek-in-training. But the funny thing was that my senior year in high school was incredible. For one thing, my parents were living two thousand miles away...they moved to L.A. and I was still in the Chicago burbs attending New Trier (home to Liz Phair, Lili Taylor, Hal Sparks, and that white supremicist who killed two people in July). I lived with a friend's family.

And I belonged, all right--to the music crowd (I played viola), to the Monty Python and Dr. Who and gaming crowd, to the Shakespeare Workshop. I wasn't popular, but NT was large enough to have many many groups, and I'm grateful to have found mine. To this day I'm glad I stayed that year.

I'm going back to visit next week--primarily to see the English teacher who knew me better than I knew myself, knew I'd blossom in college rather than high school. I only keep in touch with one person from high school; the others vanished along the way. It's all right. They were there once.

The irony is that the north shore is John Hughes country. I was hardly pretty in pink either.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


[ what was i like in high school? ]

i re-met a high school alum when i transferred schools in my third year of college. after a lengthy chat, she admitted to me that all through high school she thought I was a hippie, drug-using, pseudo-intellectual.

[ cliques? ]

i hung around with a bunch of relatively sensitive guys who also happened to be in the top of our class. being the emotionally immature guys we were, most of our spare time was filled with role playing games, cruising around town, and playing unhealthy amounts of super nintendo.

[ what was I always doing? ]

i was always drawing. doodling. thinking. designing. building. my parents were worried because i was more interested in hacking linux and working with guided diode detectors than doing homework and meeting girls.

[ did i feel alone? ]

once. i think i ended up scaring a girl because i placed all my aloneness on her.

[ was i popular? ]

heh. a skinny korean guy with no fashion sense in a school full of white, middle-class yuppies?

high school was a fun time for me, no matter how bad of a picture I paint. nowadays it serves as contrast for a much richer life.

-edward

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


I dunno, I think high school was a pretty dark time for me. I think it hit a low during junior year, although it could've been sophomore, I can't remember now. I half ass tried to kill myself with a dull razorblade.... I remember for a while it was so bad, I would sit in the back of class, and be incapable of concentrating on anything going on becasue I was too busy weighing the pros and cons of different methods of suicide in my head.

I did a bit of what you describe as self mutilation, although I don't really regret it. Of course, I'm into tattoos and peircings, so I see it a little differently I suppose. Durring my junior year, I pierced myself six times, I still carry four of those peircings. The only thing I regret is that I could have done a better job at cutting the chinese charater for my last name into my arm.

Yeah, high school isn't the best of times. I'm not sure if it just seems worse because everybody's growing up, and there hormones are in flux, or if it's bad becasue of that. I've never had a whole lot of friends, just a few close ones. That bothered me much less in college I suppose.

noise

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


Ooop, it was such a good topic, I wanted to contribute right away, and then went back up to read. Forgot a few things....

Cliques were really bad in my school. I ended up kinda in between cliques. I got along well enough with the really smart geeky kids, but hung out more with the strange appathetic hate the world kids becasue despite all the depression, they seemed like more fun at the time. I think that a lot of the depressed thoughts I had were because I felt really unpopular. In retrospect, I think that at least part of this sense of unpopularity was self engineered, I would push people away becasue I thought they were too cool to enjoy hanging out with me.

Towards the end of junior year, cliques seemed to dissolve, and I think that everyone was getting along a bit better. I missed out on senior year because I went the geek route, and headed off to college early for a free year through a nifty state program we've got in Minnesota. Sometimes I wonder if I missed out on anything, I didn't really stay in touch with anyone from my class once I left.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


I'm with zocky on this one... I went to a very non-tradiontional school. Just about everyone was "cool," or at least not an outcast. Most of the kids at other schools in the area thought we were a bunch of pregnant lesbians and druggies. We had so many unique people...

It was good to be smart, good to be weird. I acted in Antigone, taught my own drama class (yeah... we could teach classes, as students!), and generally had a great time. It was really cool because the students were for the most part really mature. The student government had real power in the school. I painted a mural in the art room, MC'd a talent show, did a screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show in the girl's locker room during a school-wide sleepover.

I miss high school.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


ah, pamie, how you have resurrected some bitter and beautiful memories. from ninth grade to mid-junior year, i tried on many different hats (read "cliques") but none felt genuine or real. i eventually found some real friends and caused quite a bit of trouble, but i regret nothing. we listened to grunge, skipped school and went downtown to museums and look at sculptures in downtown houston, bought all clothing at value village, and made enough money in my part time job to...experiment with a couple of mind-altering substances. my beloved circle of friends was centered around a band and we loved each other and partied together without a care in the world. that is what i miss--the feeling of invincibility. i would not re-live that time now, it belongs in my past. but i have no regrets. i had the best friends in the world and although soul searching late nights at the kettle were bonding experiences at the time, i'm glad i let my curiosities run wild before leaving for college.

okay, this is waaaayy tooo long...thanks for the walk down a quite fuzzy memory lane.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


I, too, spent many evenings at the Kettle.

The Kettle is where we went after rehearsal, after school, after a movie. We'd do homework, talk, try cigarettes, play Street Fighter-- we stayed and they let us stay because no one else was coming in.

They would make me a special grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and tomato. I've never gotten a restaurant to make something similar since.

Sometimes, when I'm feel nostalgic, I just want a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato and bacon and a never-ending cup of coffee.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999


just as a sidenote, anyone else remember a song that came out a couple of years ago by nada serf called 'popular'? i dug that song, captured a superficial slice of high school angst, it made me laugh.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

I guess I was lucky...I moved to my "home town" as I was entering the 9th grade...so I sort of got the chance to start over...no one knew me, so I could be whoever I wanted to be. I suppose I just got lucky and fell into the popular crowd and stayed there. I was friendly with everyone and can honestly say that overall I had a blast. Surrounded by friends can still be a lonely place...and even though on the outside it looked like I had it all, I still felt lonely sometimes and worried constantly about what other people thought of me. It sounds funny now. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would not take myself or my friends as seriously as I did. Weekends consisted of parties and tons of underage drinking..it still baffles my mind how we were able to come across so much alcohol. We thought we would live forever and nothing could hurt us...I'm suprised that none of us got hurt doing the stupid things we did, from driving too fast and recklessly to staying out all night at places we had no business being. Kinda makes me wonder what kind of Mom I might be one day knowing whats really out there.....

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

well, i was just outside the inner circle. i was in student council but i wasnt a cheerleader. i was a drama fag. i was in the honors classes, but only the ones that didnt conflict with my activities. so i wasnt quite an intellectual either. i was in tons of clubs and had crushes on the nerdiest guys, though i never admitted it to anyone who "mattered". when i was a freshman, my best friend was a junior. i never really hung out with the ppl my own age until i was a senior, which is weird because now, most of my friends are at least 4 years younger than me. i dated the capitan of the baseball team, but i didnt like him much because i was pining for the mock trail lawyer and the debate team guy. i was able to be included in all circles because i was funny. i could always lighten the mood by making a a stupid joke out of the situation. i was known by pretty much everybody, but i wasnt KNOWN by anyone. it was like they had heard of me but they couldnt remember what for. i was friends with some of the teachers, but not in a brown noser way. i was also one of the few hispanics in my predominately white school. so i had to claw my way up to the top, though i never quite made it to the tippy top. i was a chubby girl with a pretty face and a good personality. i did ok. my students ask me if i could go back to high school and do it over, would i... i have to say no. it wasnt fun then and even though i have all this hindsight, i learned a lot of lessons that make me who i am today. so no. i wouldnt do it again.. wait .. make that HELL no.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

Oh man. To know what I was like in high school you have to understand what I was like in 7th grade. Picture a slightly chunky kid from Alabama who just moved to Ohio with spiked up hair and a jean jacket. I would wear that damn thing everyday. I thought everybody hated me, so I always thought it was a trick if someone told me that a girl liked me or when I was invited to a party. Now take all of that self-doubt and bitterness, take away the accent, and move that kid back down to Alabama to go to a private school.

At first I was just in the nerd herd, then I tried to distance myself from that. I started hanging out with the very few skater/artsy kids. Somehow the popular kids decided we were cool. I know now it was just an insidious way to infiltrate us and change our sense of fashion (I actually wore turtlenecks!).

I ended up not really belonging to any group. I was on the speech team and in plays, so that took up a lot of time and gave me a group to belong to, but I was also accepted by the popular kids, maybe because of the parties I had or because all the girls thought my brother was hot and that I would eventually look like him (a girl once told me that she should probably ask me out before anyone else realized that, then she turned me down when I asked her to homecoming. If anybody saw the Real World finalists, she was Lisa, the crazy blonde from Alabama) But they like me well enough to make me prom king and "Best All Around" in the yearbook.

I drank before almost anyone I knew and soon tried other things, so that gave me a sort of weird reputation. It also led to my own special brand of self-mutilation. I'd get really drunk at a party, go off into a corner or a field spouting off poetry as I made it up, and then put a cigarette out on myself. In my twisted teenage head I thought that meant I could overcome fear and pain, so I could do anything.

I guess although I was accepted, I felt like nobody knew the real me- they just liked crazy-drunk-stoned Andy. That's something I've only just recently gotten over. It's weird. I actually had a girl come up to me in college and tell me that I had changed her life, made her become more open-minded and accepting. Maybe I wasn't such a freak. I just remember one guy telling me I was "mysterious" once. I thought that made me so cool. Ha!

-- Anonymous, September 05, 1999


I had an obsessive compulsive disorder when I was a kid, so high school was a real treat for me. The pressure to fit in is so great that I learned to stop licking buttons or tapping my feet in this specific pattern non-stop but I found other things. If I could not get my locker open without the dial moving past the number in the combination even a little bit, I'd start all over with ten turns to the right, so I was late for class all of the time. And when I was taking notes in history, I had to write on every inch of paper. No skipped lines, paragraphs, or headings-pure European History notes. And my handwriting had to be perfect. I did most of that stuff in college, we just didn't have lockers. Socially, I was totally mercenary. I had three great friends, but I did everything. I couldn't stand having a moment that wasn't scheduled. Aside from theatre though, none of those activities interested me. It's really funny to think about myself in some of those clubs or sports where I really shouldn't have been. Like Model U.N. What the hell? I'm the worst diplomat ever.

-- Anonymous, September 05, 1999

In high school I was the smart kid. I was a nerd. I didn't think anyone could see me in any way but as the smart kid or as a nerd so I had terrible self image problems.

I had a stutter and had no confidence socially. I hung out in a group of social outcasts, among whom I didn't have any close friends. I think a lot of people in the group secretly disliked each other, but stuck together because they had no one else. After graduation I stopped seeing all of them. As a group we knew very few girls and went on even fewer dates. I didn't get invited to parties and got taunted by some of the more popular kids.

I was resentful of the popular clique. I gave up trying to be accepted but still desperately wanted to be. I got up the nerve to ask a few girls out and was always turned down.

It was a rough time. I would get very depressed and couldn't sleep. I was lonely. Being alone made me feel even more depressed. I was fortunate to be athletic - I found some relief throught sports. I was on a team every fall, winter, and spring season of high school and ended up with six seasons at varsity. I rarely felt like I was part of a team, but at least I could sublimate.

Mostly, I just felt like I was waiting for things to change. Thankfully, I went away to college and found a life.

-- Anonymous, September 05, 1999


My high school years were a nightmare, largely because I was so completely clueless about everything. I was pretty and that must have driven my mom nuts because she was overweight and always bought me clothes that were 3 sizes too big, though I didn't figure out I was a size 3 until my junior year. Actually, I must admit that now, as a fat chick myself, I often think clothes are smaller than the actually are. I once tried to give a size 6 friend a very lovely petite size 12 dress that no longer fit me. So never mind. I never knew that I was pretty though. I would look into the mirror and see all these weird angles. A chin like Jay Leno, googly eyes that weren't large and liquid and beautiful but somehow big and weird looking. Hair that frizzed and was forever torturing me because I had somehow forgotten that my hair was actually wavy/curly and kept trying to straighten it in that perpetual teenage "If I wish for it hard enough it will happen" haze. So instead of working with my fine, chestnut hair that waved all over the place, I had straight, flat, frizzy hair with peacock bangs. I was friends with a fairly large group of brains that were too poor and brainy to be popular and too tame to be popular in the alternative way. I, for instance, would never wear cool vintage clothing or shave my head. I had a horror of second hand clothing because that what I received for most of my childhood and I was far too chicken shit to shave my head. I also had social pretensions, aspirations to be one of the Shiny Happy Girls about campus. I even went to one pep club meeting but it never worked out. Only later did I realize I was beautiful, that I looked good in vintage clothing, and that despite every effort, I would never attain the alterna credibility or the straight moneyed popularity I longed for. I was, and am, too tame for the alternas out there. I am too well dressed. I wear khakis, I have regularly worn color. As to the straight, well adjusted, moneyed popularity? I'm not well dressed enough, now I'm fat, and my skin is behaving weirdly. I have red marks that aren't scars after almost every pimple I get because fat girls often get breakouts. (Fatty tissue= more estrogen=way more zits than in high school). I haven't the energy or the confidence to fake either. I am as I am, still very much like I was. A little too easily frustrated, bored, feel slighted when I'm not taken in by the clique at work, nice but too self deprecating. But at least not willing to give up my friends to become what I wanted to be then, and probably would still like to be now, a show pony, a riot grrl.

-- Anonymous, September 05, 1999

Oh, man. This is great.

I just graduated high school this past year, but already I can look back and laugh at myself. Man, what a complete idiot. Let's take a look at the pictures, just to give you an idea on how ultra-cool I really was. We'll begin with my sophomore year.
 
 
 

Look at this. I mean, come on. What the hell was up with my hair?? Nice bangs. Nice braces. Love the outfit. Oh, and you have to love the eyebrows - I was scared of the tweezers. All this time, I sat around wondering why I couldn't get a date to save my life. Now I know. I was a dork, plain and simple. I really hope I didn't pass this picture out to anyone.

Moving right along to my junior year..


Okay, so we got a little better. But can someone please tell me why I didn't iron my shirt? And why my part starts a few inches above my ear? And why didn't I cut my damn bangs before I left the house that morning? Oh, yeah, I was growing them out. I forgot.

Finally, the moment of truth. The senior portrait.


 
I'd say I improved just a little bit. I found the tweezers. My bangs are an acceptable length. I got my braces off after 6 long years. Oh, and I learned how to put on makeup and wear clothes that didn't make me look like a big dork loser. Go me.


-- Anonymous, September 08, 1999

Hey Amy Not comfortable giving your last name, Don't worry, the zit thing happens to guys after high school, too. Maybe it's the fact that Billy has me sweating rivers 3 times a week, but I'm recovering from a bout of breakouts much worse than anything I ever experienced in high school. I mean, I actually went to the doctor about it (although since I'm in an HMO I still have to wait another month to actually see a dermatologist). It's better, but still not as good as my skin was at 18. In fact here's a little snippet of conversation from a few weeks ago with one of my troupe members.

TM- Hey andy me- Hey (name omitted so I don't make anyone feel bad) TM- Oh, your skin's really cleared up.' me- Yeah I finally went to the Dr about it. TM- No, I mean it was really bad there for a while. me- Yeah, I know. They gave me some antibiotics. TM- Good, 'cause that was scary. It was pretty gross. me- Thanks, but I'm using Retin-A now. TM- Thank God! I mean, I wouldn't have left the house if I were you. Much less get on stage. Jesus! That was some nasty shit! me- Shut up.

See? Some of us were cool in high school only to be geeks today.

-- Anonymous, September 09, 1999


I was a hood.

I grew up in an ethnic bluecollar tough neighborhood but in high school I was in the college track advanced classes with an entirely different group of kids.

Here's a scene: high school guidance office, an admissions/recruiter from a college is there to meet students... I have been called down to the office to see him but I have no idea who he is or why he wants to see me. My shirt is unbuttoned more than halfway down, sleeves are rolled up, shirt collar is turned up in the back. Hair is long, combed back d.a. style, long sideburns. Very tight black denim jeans. Engineer boots with both heel and toe taps (great for making very noisy progress down a school corridor). (Ancient history fashion note: once upon a time wearing taps on shoes was almost mandatory for any high school hood.) We exchange a series of "May I help you?" and "Yeah, whaddayawant? You guys called me down here."... I have no idea why I have been called down to guidance but the secretary pointed me into this office and he is there to speak with college-bound students and not with this scruffy delinquent who obviously has been brought to the office for some disciplinary infraction.

Finally, quite annoyed, he explains that he is waiting to speak with a student named James Lawrence.

"Yeah, that's me."

This is, however, a fairly large school, around 2400 students, and there obviously could be more than one student with this name and he is really getting ticked off to have to waste his time with this hoodlum instead of the star pupil he wants to meet.

"No, no... The James Lawrence I want to see got a score of nnnn on the SAT exam." [Let's just say it was an above average score.]

"Yeah, that's me."

"Uh, and who has just won a National Merit Scholarship?"

"Yeah, that's me."

Suddenly, big smile, hand extended to shake my hand: "Well, Mr. Lawrence, I'm here to tell you all about C.W. Post College!"

I dressed like a hood throughout high school, straight out of the supporing cast in "Grease" but I gained enough intellectual pretension to attempt to cultivate a bit of beatnik bohemianism as well. In the last half of my high school career there came to be a gap separating me from the guys in my neighborhood -- once we hit age 16, they began to drop out of school until there were only three of us left to graduate. But I also felt separated from the kids in my classes: they were the "country club" set and I thought they probably looked down on me, certainly I felt an aloofness. Years later, at a high school reunion, one of them told my wife that they had been afraid of me, not physically (well, maybe a little, they were made nervous by some of my friends) but intellectually. I had never suspected that. (Of course I also had a somewhat sarcastic big mouth so...)

-- Anonymous, September 09, 1999


Wow, after reading through all of these postings, I'm feeling a little better about my own high school days.

I did ninth grade twice. That sucked. Both times. It was that fucking algebra class, I tell you. And the fact that I liked to skip gym, which I thought was useless anyway, since we had classes that were way to large for any sport, so we'd have fifteen people in the outfield for softball and I'd disappear into the willow trees with some friends and we'd smoke cigarettes for the period.

I hated almost every aspect of high school. All five years of it.

With this Y2K thing threatening to erase computer records, you never know...we might all have to go back and do it again. If that's the case, don't tell the coach where I am. He never caught on the first time around.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 1999


Talk about never fitting in anywhere . . . I always had friends, but I was never part of any organized group or activity, even though I wanted to be. Most of my friends were involved in music, but I couldn't sing or play an instrument. I had no athletic ability, so sports were out. I was interested, sort of, in drama, but I couldn't act, and the thought of staying after school to set up props or paint scenery just didn't occur to me. I lived really far away from my high school, so getting rides was a challenge. I felt like the proverbial (wo)man without a country. I was very shy, usually quiet and always well-behaved, as well as one of the better students in my grade, so if I was known or remembered for anything, it was as one of the "smart kids," I guess.

I was at least 20 lbs. lighter (I was VERY skinny). I had shorter hair in the same hairstyle as I have now. Generally, I dressed well, in the preppy fashions that were so popular at my school. My friends told me I was pretty, but the lack of male attention told me that I had no sexual appeal whatsoever.

I was INCREDIBLY lonely . . . I never had a real relationship in HS, and thought that if only I could find a boyfriend, all of my problems would magically vanish. I "dated" a guy for a few months in my senior year, but we broke up before we ever even kissed, which only seemed to prove that I was the most repulsive-looking creature in school. I was convinced that all of the boys hated me, which made it pretty hard for me to talk to them.

I spent a lot of time in my room, listening to music, crying, and writing in my diary . . . but I also had some of the most fun times and best laughs I ever had in my life. I wish I had appreciated my friends more back then . . . I haven't even talked to some of them in years, and the ones I'm still friends with I don't see often enough. I was so wrapped up in myself and my own angst that I know I was not as good a friend as I could have been. Despite my self-inflicted misery and selfishness, there are times I miss the girl I was back then. Outwardly, I've barely changed since high school (it WAS only six years ago), but inside, I feel less vibrant, less passionate, less exuberant. I don't laugh quite as easily. I have a harder time talking to girls . . . but an easier time talking to guys. Yeah, in some ways, high school sucked, but it's the only period of my life that I truly, truly miss and wish I could relive.

-- Anonymous, August 27, 2001


I was an outsider in high school. I had no friends.

That was probably because I loathed high school and thought it was a total bore. To me, it was nothing more than a penal institution, a petty dictatorship where conformity was all and the slightest deviation from it invited persecution; especially from your classmates.

At one point, I tried to be a part of this system. I made an effort to have friends and fit in the different cliques in my class, and wasn't accepted in any one of them. Everything I did and said was wrong. No matter how hard I tried to be like the kids in the cliques, I could never get them to like me. Perhaps they saw right through my act.

After a while, I gave up and completely withdrew myself from them, and from the whole high school social scene. I decided that if I was going to treated like I wasn't a part of it, then I wouldn't be. I made every effort to carry out this new policy. I started coming in late to classes, risking a few notes sent home to my parents. I stopped contributing to discussions in classrooms. I didn't join or participate in any clubs or extra-curricular activities unless they were outside the school and not connected with it in any way. I never attended any high school dances - not only because the guys in my class never asked me to any of them. I ate lunch alone in the school cafeteria; which I had always done anyway since none of the other students wanted to sit with me. If anyone at the school tried to "draw me out," to make me a more integral part of the student body, I responded with an icy silence. I still studied and did my schoolwork, but only because if I didn't I would be made to repeat a year. I was determined to undermine the system in every way. I treated high school as this place I only attended because I had to, not because I wanted to. I regarded my classmates and many of my teachers with the animosity that an ex-con must have toward his parole officer.

Occasionally I was punished for this stony rebellion of mine. Teachers lectured me because they were fed up with my bad attitude. Sometimes classmates tried to provoke me because my grim silence irritated them. This often led to fights. One time a girl yelled at me in science class and I threw a beaker at her. Usually I was quiet and kept to myself in school, but sometimes I would get real mad and start throwing things and slamming doors real hard. I would scream that I hated this stinking school and I did not want to be there. The other students would look shocked. Eventually they all left me alone.

I got so I had nothing but the deepest contempt for those classmates who rejected me, especially those smarmy girls in the "in crowds" that always acted like I wasn't good enough for them every time I spoke to them. If they hated me for being "different," I felt they were nothing but a bunch of dippy kids. They didn't have much going for them. They weren't talented at music or art or acting or writing or computer programming (and I'm sure you can guess what they call people who are), at least as far as I could see. Many of them were good at sports, but you never heard them talking about trying to make the NFL or any other big-league teams. You never heard them talking about what they plan to do AFTER they graduated. They acted like school was their whole life. What would they do once they graduated? What would there be for them once they had no more school dances and pep rallies and outcasts like me to make them feel socially superior? Nothing. Once they got out into the real world, their lives would become much more empty and doomed to mediocrity, because they could never hope to regain the glory they had in school. The world wouldn't care that they had been the most popular kids in the school. They would probably marry, have kids, work at respectable but unremarkable, boring jobs and age prematurely. When I saw a couple of these ex-classmates walking down the street many years later, that is exactly what happened.

When I graduated, I felt like I had just been released from prison...which I was. And I was not on parole anymore.



-- Anonymous, December 06, 2001


Pamie, I'm a sophmore in high-school now. Right now, it's the "peek" of the "the cliques". So-I went on the internet like my counslor reccomended, I looked for articles related to my "clique problems". I found your page very useful!! I realize that I'm not the only one that has or has had problems like this. Your page was the only page that I found that was not written from a celeberty's point of view. It was different in that your page is "real". Thanks for posting this page!! ~Sarah

-- Anonymous, December 08, 2001

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