How was high school? (mostly geared towards seniors)

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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This is basically a thread for seniors (or anyone, really) to reflect and discuss their high school experiences. Although most students on CC are high-achieving, many of us come from very different schools. I think it could be interesting for people to see what other schools are like (e.g. private school students seeing what public school is like, vice versa). Also, you can rant or gush about your experience, if you so wish.

I guess I’ll start.

I am finishing school at a very public high school in the Midwest. About 75% of the graduating students (not all students, graduating students) go on to some sort of college. The rest either go straight to work or go into the military. Out of a graduating class of about 800 or 900, we generally have one or two people go to “top tier” (Ivy/MIT/Stanford/etc) schools (generally through an athletic scholarship or similar circumstances) and maybe one more go to a school slightly under that (e.g. Duke). We are considered to be one of the better schools in our area, and probably in the top 50 or so in the state (public), so this isn’t like I’m going to a bad school. It’s pretty much average for the U.S. (maybe slightly above).

I learned most things in my classes through studying on my own… the teachers occasionally helped in certain classes, but if I wanted to know something, it was up to me. The older generation of teachers, most of which are/were very good, are one by one retiring. In their places surge very young teachers (like 22) with degrees in education, not the field they’re teaching in. This leads to very friendly but not very knowledgeable teachers, some of whom were seniors when we were freshmen.

Our school is quickly making transitions to online learning. The school issued each student a Chromebook (90% of which promptly broke, students were required to pay for repairs) and actually suggests/forces many teachers to never lecture in class. Yes, you heard right, in class we’re supposed to work on homework and get help from the teachers, and learn the material at home. This has led to a drastic decrease in the quality of education most students get, but a large increase in test scores in grades (since tests are now easier to account for the drop in knowledge). Students at our school are amazing test takers, but have difficulty solving a slightly different form of problems.

Unfortunately, most likely due to the pretty high amount of students at my school, my school does not treat the brightest students very well. Whenever a student goes above and beyond the school, placing in national competitions, the school completely overlooks their accomplishments and makes no mention of them. However, if a student places in a regional competition (2nd place at a potato cannon competition at the local country fair comes to mind), they will be publicized all over the school. Heroes. This proves to be pretty demoralizing for the highest achieving students, who work hard yet see their accomplishments ignored while their friends in other states give interviews for local news agencies. Generally, the kids who get into top-tier schools and place in national competitions are fairly alienated from their peers and harbor some resent towards the school. Despite what it sounds like, I do not harbor any resent towards my school… I understand the mentality.

The Midwest mentality is strongly present at my school. It’s not something you’d really understand if you didn’t experience it… one facet is hopelessness. People don’t see the value in a quality education (especially in STEM) and resign themselves to living the rest of their lives within 50 miles of where they were born. Those that do leave for college often come back afterwards, feeling out of place on the coasts.

I guess that’s my school in a nutshell. Who’s next?

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I go to a very small east-coast private school. 100% of our graduates go on to college, and usually 1-2 students per year (out of graduating classes that range in size from 15-30) go to Ivies. It’s nice going to a small school sometimes, because you know everyone, but other times, it’s a huge pain in the butt. Everyone wants to know everyone else’s business, and random moms and dads will come up and ask you where you applied to college. This doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but this school is ridiculously competitive.

Half the class is usually set on the state school, and the other half is dead-set on the Ivies (until senior year, when we all stop caring…or pretend to, anyway). The most annoying thing is that people get annoyed about other people’s success (or even potential success). I didn’t tell anyone where I applied (that’s another thing, no one shares that info at my school) because then you have people saying crap like “oh, she thinks she’s so great that she’ll get into an ivy” and “she thinks she’s better than us”… variations of that, really.

Our school is pretty good about recognizing achievement, so that’s not really an issue for me. In terms of teaching, most of our teachers are pretty good. A couple just suck, but the administration would never do anything to reprimand those teachers (they’ve been there forever), so no one bothers to complain.

This post sounds negative, but I’m really just concentrating on the bad. At the end of the day, I really do like my school and the people in it.

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I’ve attended three different high schools. Most likely going to graduate with a 3.5-3.6 GPA. For me it’s been pretty average, of course there’s the kids that don’t care about school, there’s the high achievers, then there’s me struggling with mediocre test scores and grades. I’ve attended big high schools and don’t know everybody, so I can’t really speak too much about peoples collegiate futures.

I pretty much see myself attending a state school this upcoming fall. I would be a very lucky kid to get accepted to a UC but ill most likely attend a CSU.
With my selected major, I’m still unsure if I can handle the intense math necessary for aerospace engineering. Time to hit the books!!

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I go to a decent sized public school on the east coast. Within the county, we’re the high school that’s more known for sports and we don’t place as much emphasis on academics as some other schools do. However, my school is big on forcing people into AP classes to try an make us appear more competitive and get funding and stuff.

I think the best part about my school are the teachers. I’ve only had one teacher who I didn’t really like, but she was a good teacher. There are some teachers who I’ve found “difficult” to deal with (like not being too helpful at times, entering report card grades weeks after the deadline, etc) but ultimately I’d say that all teachers I’ve had have usually gone above and beyond to help me, and other students.

I’m also fortunate that my school offers a lot of AP classes, but it’s too bad that foreign language wise, we’re a bit limited (my school only offers Spanish/French, so we have AP Spanish and AP French). Unfortunately, I quit Spanish after 4 years b/c I wasn’t really into it and didn’t think I could survive a Spanish 5 or AP Spanish. And now 2 years later things have really changed - I’m studying Spanish on my own, for fun. I’m looking forward to a huge foreign language department at whatever school I go to, haha :stuck_out_tongue:

Hate to sound so negative, but there are a good number of people in my class who are extremely snotty… They’ll bash anyone who’s applying to anything “lower” than Stanford - I got bashed by one who found out that I was applying to Boston University. And they’ll bash anyone who gets into the schools that they didn’t get into (ex. someone actually got into Stanford, and these snotty kids (who weren’t accepted) made it their duty to isolate this kid and make them feel like trash). I guess that goes into the whole “annoyed at other people’s success” thing that marshmallowpop mentioned.

I remember I got confused during a discussion during one of my AP classes (it seemed to me like everyone was getting off topic) so I asked the teacher to reiterate what exactly we were supposed to talk about. Two guys groaned and one said loudly “miopyon13 is such a dumb b***!” and the other said “she should just kill herself if she’s gonna be this stupid.” I’m assuming that they thought I asked b/c that I wasn’t paying attention - but that wasn’t the case, I was honestly just confused. Either way, their responses really pissed me off and were completely inappropriate, imo. I wish I weren’t so sensitive, but I was honestly really shaken up by that and now I’m afraid to ask questions in any class… *sorry for the mini-rant :frowning:

However - I KNOW that this isn’t normal behavior of high-achieving students. There are a lot of super smart, high achieving kids at my school who are very respectful of teachers, friends, and peers. And they don’t make anyone feel bad. As expected, they’ve been accepted to great colleges and they’ll probably go on to do great things :slight_smile:

Sorry, looking back on this post, some was positive, but I just broke out into a rant midway :confused: yikes. I guess I’m just ready for the year to be over, but I’ll probably be upset when high school is over.