Throwback Highschool

What is high school like?

My niece inquired of me recently.   My first response was an exploitive, which thankfully wasn’t heard, since she had asked via text.   I have been free of the strains of high school longer than she has been alive.  Part of me can still remember where my locker was located and that awkward way the band uniform fit, where it was a half strangle with my neck strap to my saxophone.

I needed more information, before I answered the question. Was she looking for what my entire high school career experience or just what it was like to be a freshmen? Those are two different answers, and both of them are long, and much longer than I would ever put in a text message.  Of course she wanted to know it all, as if I had all the secrets to the universe or just the secret to surviving high school unscathed.  I figured I would take my time and really answer the question instead of answering her that high school is one of the circles of hell, because while it may be partially true, it isn’t the whole truth.

What is it like to be a Freshmen?

A lot of people will attend high school with the same people that they attended intermediate and elementary school. I was not that lucky, or perhaps unlucky.  I hailed from the west coast, the land of sunshine, earthquakes and tacos. Moving to a new school and new state and not knowing a single soul was daunting as a freshman. That first year was awkward and full of me playing catch up, socially and educationally. Core curriculum is not universal and things that were assumed to be taught in previous grades for me had at best been glossed over. I felt like an idiot most of the time. Overall from what I can remember, being a freshman is like going from a big fish in a little pond to a little fish in a big pond. It is a change a perspective that as much as you mentally gird yourself for the change, you will still find yourself floundering from time to time.

What was my high school career like?

The things I learned in high school I didn’t know I learned until I got out of high school.  High school is about the experience and during high school there is the pressure to escape the prison of forced education and peer groups and live your life the way you want to live it.  The friends you have in high school very rarely follow you for the rest of your life once you leave and who you are in high school does not define who you will be the rest of your life, it just add perspective. You will have your heart broken and possibly break someone else’s heart. You will be stressed and things will seem terribly large and important that in hindsight may not be that way and you won’t be able to tell it isn’t important because it is happening right at that moment.  You will wish you died of embarrassment on multiple occasions, between your parents being lame and just not understanding or your friends being lame and immature. I think that Charles Dickens may have described high school most accurately with the first line out of Tale of Two Cities.

“IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

I wanted to be sure that I covered everything without going overboard. I texted my niece to inquire if there was something specific that I should cover about my time in high school. My gut clenched thinking that she would ask me about boys, sex, drinking or pranks that went on when I was in high school. She did have one question.

“How much homework is there?”

My head could have hit my desk with a loud thunk. I have obviously over thought all of this, but seeing as it is already composed and “Throw Back Thursday”, I’ll give her all the answers she didn’t know to ask and answer the one question she did ask.  Homework is going to be there and at times there is going to be a lot of it, but out of all the things that will give you nightmares and daydreams, homework is not one of them.  I hardly remember the home work I did and have no regrets over the home work I didn’t, but am certainly glad for the depth and perceptions that were granted to me with home work I did do.