I hated high school. HATED. IT. Not in a "Phew, glad that's over!" kind of way, but in an absolute detesting it, dreading every day of it kind of way. It wasn't like I was ridiculed daily, or bullied. I had a few close friends, one of them I still keep in contact with. I tried hanging out with a couple different crowds but I wasn't athletic, wasn't into drinking or drugs and the brainiacs seemed too immature for me.
One of my closest friends my first couple years of high school, Carrie, gradually got in with the cool crowd and was one of the most popular girls in school by the time we graduated. We still hung out senior year, but she always wanted to invite people from the in crowd and didn't understand why this made me uncomfortable. I didn't know how to talk to them, how to relate to them. She always said that they thought I was really nice, but that didn't make me feel like I belonged. Carrie would always tell me that the popular gang was receptive and if I just sat with them at lunch they would start talking to me, I could just show up at their parties and no one would blink an eye. But injecting myself into a group of people with which I had nothing in common didn't seem like it would satisfy a need within me to connect. So much to her dismay, I never did. I think this made her mad, like she had to choose between them and me. There were more of them, and I certainly couldn't get her a date so I don't blame her for spending most of her time with them. In hindsight, I'm a little impressed she stuck with me at all.
So basically, as a high schooler I was hyper-aware that I didn't fit in. Some of my friends didn't care that they were on the outskirts, others never seemed to notice. But I always felt angry that high school had to be so much about being normal. Normal as in sterile, boring, conformist. I felt reminded everyday that your worth in high school was based on your athletic ability, which guys are interested in you, how many people signed your yearbook. So when it came time to graduate, I wasn't really able to look back with good nature and simply think that high school kinda sucked. I really just wanted to forget it all. Put it behind me and start life as a student of the University of Minnesota, where there were 50,000 people. I had to fit in somewhere. And I did. I made great friends there.
But I still feel like there is a chasm between what I feel about those days and what others feel. So many people keep in touch with their high school clique, and it always reminds me that I didn't really have that. As much as I try to pretend those years didn't exist, I'm reminded that for some people, those days were really good. And I get a little jealous.
I have one friend from high school that I still keep in touch with, Jessica. We were close in high school, and both went to the U of MN. We talk much more about the college days than the high school days. She didn't fit in well either, but didn't care. She still likes to keep up with the gossip from the popular crowd and tells me who got married, who got divorced, who has children, who's in jail.
This past summer was our 10 year reunion. Jessica desperately wanted to go, even though she lives in California. Ironically, I had no intention of going even though I happened to spend the whole summer in Minneapolis. But Jessica scoured the online newspapers, had her parents look for announcements in the mail and checked the high school website often. Nothing. It seems we weren't having a reunion.
I bring all this up because out of the blue Carrie emailed me a couple months back. She hunted for me on the internets (I'm not too hard to find) and wanted to know what I was up to. I haven't spoken with her since freshman year of college. And rather than looking back nostalgically recognizing the awkwardness of that time period, I still wanted nothing to do with it. I wrote her a short note back telling her I was married, a physicist, living in Florida. She told me what was going on with her, how she still kept in touch with the popular crowd (not surprising) and was disappointed not to see me at the reunion, which was apparently by invitation only. Not announced publicly. Reading this brought back all the feelings of exclusion. And anger for poor Jessica who went out of her way to find a reunion, only to not be invited. I never returned Carrie's second email.
So if you could stand to read this much of my whining about something that happened ten years ago, give me your input. How did you feel about high school, and do you still carry those feelings with you? I recently both read Prep and listened to an episode of This American Life where people were still pissed off about high school and I felt like I related a little too well. But in both these stories, it is stressed that so much of those feelings are perspective, not necessarily reality. Carrie is probably right, if I would have just tried to fit in, my experience might have been better. Do you agree?
One of my closest friends my first couple years of high school, Carrie, gradually got in with the cool crowd and was one of the most popular girls in school by the time we graduated. We still hung out senior year, but she always wanted to invite people from the in crowd and didn't understand why this made me uncomfortable. I didn't know how to talk to them, how to relate to them. She always said that they thought I was really nice, but that didn't make me feel like I belonged. Carrie would always tell me that the popular gang was receptive and if I just sat with them at lunch they would start talking to me, I could just show up at their parties and no one would blink an eye. But injecting myself into a group of people with which I had nothing in common didn't seem like it would satisfy a need within me to connect. So much to her dismay, I never did. I think this made her mad, like she had to choose between them and me. There were more of them, and I certainly couldn't get her a date so I don't blame her for spending most of her time with them. In hindsight, I'm a little impressed she stuck with me at all.
So basically, as a high schooler I was hyper-aware that I didn't fit in. Some of my friends didn't care that they were on the outskirts, others never seemed to notice. But I always felt angry that high school had to be so much about being normal. Normal as in sterile, boring, conformist. I felt reminded everyday that your worth in high school was based on your athletic ability, which guys are interested in you, how many people signed your yearbook. So when it came time to graduate, I wasn't really able to look back with good nature and simply think that high school kinda sucked. I really just wanted to forget it all. Put it behind me and start life as a student of the University of Minnesota, where there were 50,000 people. I had to fit in somewhere. And I did. I made great friends there.
But I still feel like there is a chasm between what I feel about those days and what others feel. So many people keep in touch with their high school clique, and it always reminds me that I didn't really have that. As much as I try to pretend those years didn't exist, I'm reminded that for some people, those days were really good. And I get a little jealous.
I have one friend from high school that I still keep in touch with, Jessica. We were close in high school, and both went to the U of MN. We talk much more about the college days than the high school days. She didn't fit in well either, but didn't care. She still likes to keep up with the gossip from the popular crowd and tells me who got married, who got divorced, who has children, who's in jail.
This past summer was our 10 year reunion. Jessica desperately wanted to go, even though she lives in California. Ironically, I had no intention of going even though I happened to spend the whole summer in Minneapolis. But Jessica scoured the online newspapers, had her parents look for announcements in the mail and checked the high school website often. Nothing. It seems we weren't having a reunion.
I bring all this up because out of the blue Carrie emailed me a couple months back. She hunted for me on the internets (I'm not too hard to find) and wanted to know what I was up to. I haven't spoken with her since freshman year of college. And rather than looking back nostalgically recognizing the awkwardness of that time period, I still wanted nothing to do with it. I wrote her a short note back telling her I was married, a physicist, living in Florida. She told me what was going on with her, how she still kept in touch with the popular crowd (not surprising) and was disappointed not to see me at the reunion, which was apparently by invitation only. Not announced publicly. Reading this brought back all the feelings of exclusion. And anger for poor Jessica who went out of her way to find a reunion, only to not be invited. I never returned Carrie's second email.
So if you could stand to read this much of my whining about something that happened ten years ago, give me your input. How did you feel about high school, and do you still carry those feelings with you? I recently both read Prep and listened to an episode of This American Life where people were still pissed off about high school and I felt like I related a little too well. But in both these stories, it is stressed that so much of those feelings are perspective, not necessarily reality. Carrie is probably right, if I would have just tried to fit in, my experience might have been better. Do you agree?
