Yeah, the teachers, the friends, the events and all the shenanigans I did, and the first kiss. I loved it in retrospect. Though I have to say that they made me study a lot of things that are irrelevant to me now, wish they had anatomy classes instead of art or geography.

Fecalfeast

Canada11355 Posts

November 16 2014 23:57 GMT

#27

I stopped bringing books to school in grade 10 and never did any homework yet managed to pass every class by acing tests. I really hated the entire experience of having teachers give me the runaround every time I asked about homework so I skipped a lot of classes.
I never planned to go to college nor do I now so passing every course at ~50% was my goal for my entire highschool career.
I always dated girls from other schools and my friends were either in the alternate program('troubled kids') or older/younger than I so I hardly had any classes with friends. I learned how to game the school's rules pretty well though so that was fun, I only got suspended once.

I voted that I hated highschool because all of the fun things that happened during that time of my life happened while skipping school or during the summer.

Grobyc

Canada18410 Posts

November 17 2014 01:29 GMT

#28

I have some really great memories that I'll never forget, and I experienced everything in terms of the typical high school experience, so I don't feel like I missed out or had a bad experience. I didn't really care for the school itself as I wish I had learned more about certain useful things and not had to spend time learning stuff that was "useless".

I've also grown apart from the majority of my high school friends. When I do see them I don't even enjoy the company for some reason. I don't know how to explain it, it just feels like I've matured a lot more than some of them. At the time it was enjoyable though.

Fighter

Korea (South)1531 Posts

November 17 2014 08:45 GMT

#29

Shit, the amount of responsibility you have during the High School years of your life might as well be zero compared to everything that comes immediately after it.

All I did was goof around at school and play video games.

Sure, couldn't travel, drink, or do lots of other fun stuff that I can do now, but... the COMPLETE lack of responsibility and expectations... YOU WILL NEVER GET THAT AGAIN.

MtlGuitarist97

United States1539 Posts

November 17 2014 10:52 GMT

#30

On November 17 2014 17:45 Fighter wrote:
Shit, the amount of responsibility you have during the High School years of your life might as well be zero compared to everything that comes immediately after it.

All I did was goof around at school and play video games.

Sure, couldn't travel, drink, or do lots of other fun stuff that I can do now, but... the COMPLETE lack of responsibility and expectations... YOU WILL NEVER GET THAT AGAIN.

It's very different for most of my friends and me. We don't have much time to play video games, especially since a lot of our week is taken up by homework and extra-curricular activities. Some days I leave for school at 7 in the morning, and get back at 6:45 at night. Add on top of that the possibility of having 2-3 hours of homework, and I have very full days. Obviously if your goal is just to get by as opposed to excelling, you can play tons of video games and still pass. However, most high-achieving students in today's high schools would argue that there is way more stress than most adults could ever imagine.

There was actually an article just written in the Washington Post about a teacher who spent two days as high school students (one day as a 10th grader, one day as a 12th grader) and found that it was pretty exhausting and that it's no surprise that high-achieving students are stressed all the time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/24/teacher-spends-two-days-as-a-student-and-is-shocked-at-what-she-learned/

I'm not saying that I have financial responsibilities, but for us Americans college is one of the biggest financial decisions we will make in our lives. Imagine being 17 again and having to make a decision about something that costs more than most people's houses. Although it's only four years, it's really expensive and even for upper middle class families it's a burden. I'm nowhere near close to affording it (my parents barely make enough combined to pay for university if they spent literally every single cent they earned on my education), and this also adds a lot of stress to my application process. Not only is it about getting into all the schools that I'd like to go to -- which entails high test scores, good grades, impressive extra-curricular activities, etc. -- but now I also have to worry about how much financial aid I will get to a college, both in merit-aid and need-based aid.

I do have a lot of friends who just basically breeze through high school without doing any work, but I'd say that if you want to be a really great student you can't do that anymore.

farvacola

United States18863 Posts

November 17 2014 12:23 GMT

#31

I did too many drugs, participated in too many extracurriculars, and ate too much food.

SixStrings

Germany2046 Posts

November 17 2014 13:32 GMT

#32

I didn't even go high school.

Quit school after tenth grade to move in with my girlfriend and make money.
Went back to get my 'diploma' (haha) five years later, but that was a school for adults.

Regardless of that, I hardly think Germany's equivalent of 'high school' is close to the American one.

Off topic:

I think I'm one of the last people who really had an easy time during high school.
We did have standardised testing, but that helped us because we had amazing teachers compared to regular schools.

But school kids now have it much rougher, having to complete the same curriculum in two years instead of three, having much more difficult exams, needing better grades to get into good unis etc. They have much less free time, have to be much more aware of their extracurriculars etc.

EJK

United States1302 Posts

November 17 2014 14:03 GMT

#33

edit

Dingodile

4139 Posts

November 17 2014 16:45 GMT

#34

I went to a highschool (11th-13th class) that offered 2 certificates. I didnt gain the important one (entrance to university) certification but obtained the 2nd certification. I didnt repeat 13th class so I went to another class (people with only 2nd certificates^^) that has only one year.
You can gain th 2nd certification too if went to work for 3 years after medium school, so I was the only one without job-experience in that one-year-class^^

I hated my 11th-13th class. The other one-year-class was by far the best class. My deputy headmaster told me that I am the first pupilar that went to one-year-class and not repeated the 13th class.

I am a student now (5th semester, mechanical engineering). From my medium school class, I am the only one that can obtain Bachelor degree

, most of them failed at high school.

Kazahk

United States385 Posts

November 17 2014 18:05 GMT

#35

A time when I didn't give a shit about anything and all I did was skip class and smoke pot. So tbh I didn't have to many experiences there. Eventually got my shit together and yea. Just another state run bureaucratic shit hole.

sabas123

Netherlands3122 Posts

November 17 2014 19:48 GMT

#36

I liked my time in highschool, made some friends played a shit ton of starcraft and had to do absolutly 0 for school.

things changed so fast in one year:/

KelsierSC

United Kingdom10443 Posts

November 17 2014 20:57 GMT

#37

Chess, Magic cards and no responsibility

Looking back it was fucking awesome

Didn't get a girlfriend till I was 18 though. Didn't matter had MTG

Luepert

United States1934 Posts

November 17 2014 21:06 GMT

#38

It was pretty interesting for me. I was home schooled before that so I was able to actually have friends for a couple years which was awesome. But after my junior year all of my friends either left or graduated so my senior year sucked.

Destructicon

4713 Posts

November 17 2014 21:34 GMT

#39

High school was awesome for me, easily one of the best times of my life. I studied at a private high school that was 5 minutes walk from my home. Our schedule was a straightforward mon to friday with 5-6 hours per day, so I never felt overloaded. The teachers were awesome in so many ways, they would regularly joke with us and talk with us but they knew how to teach and because of them I sort of learned to love math and physics. We had a broad curriculum including some history, biology and geography but the homework load was most heavy only for the primary subjects like physics, math and IT.

Now because I had a lot of time on my hands I played a lot of video games, at the time I was into strategy heavily playing tons of Age of Empires 2, but I switched later on to some hardcore CS. Socially it was weird, I was pretty shy and introverted at this point I didn't make many friends initially but the ones I did have were awesome and we kept in touch for years. We had like two camps in my class, the assholes that made fun of everyone and then everyone else, so I kind of got picked on, until I realized if I could trade math and physics homework for immunity

What I loved is that, we all had this sort of friendly competition were the smarter kids in class tried to one up each other in studying and getting good grades. It was a good environment for me because I was always very competitive in nature and I had something to prove. I came in with pretty low grades in primary school and I hated people's initial judgment of my performance.

The later years when I made more friends were the best, parties, road trips, barbecues, LAN parties and loads of fun.

I think I caught the last good years of education, I keep seeing news that our countries education sucks right now and I also hear horror stories regarding our system from close friends with kids. Hehe, good times. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

MtlGuitarist97

United States1539 Posts

November 17 2014 21:37 GMT

#40

On November 17 2014 21:23 farvacola wrote:
I did too many drugs, participated in too many extracurriculars, and ate too much food.

Surprised to hear that from you Farv. I don't know you that well, mostly just superficial stuff, but I never thought high school went like that for you. I'd be pretty interested to hear how you went from that to being a personal trainer/law school student though