High School Character

[dr_mabeuse]

The late Frank Zappa said that Americans spend the rest of their lives recovering from high school, and I think he was right. I think most Americans suffer from arrested development. Our characters freeze up sometime in high school and we rarely recover.

That’s why our politics are popularity contests rather than issue-driven. That’s why we’re so ignorant and indifferent to things that happen beyond our borders. That’s why we have such a skewed view of the world. We’re stuck in permanent adolescence.

Some of us freeze as freshman and never amount to much. Others just remain perpetual sophomores. I think our president is one of those. A lot of us stop developing in our junior year. John Edwards is a perpetual Junior: just the man to run the homecoming committee. And then there’s the seniors. Kerry is a senior. He’d be the perfect senior class president.

So if you want to understand the American character and American politics and society, I really think you have to understand the American high school experience. It's been years since I served my time (I think I'm a junior), but from what I understand the dynamic is still the same.

---dr.M.

 

[Goldie Munro]

The late Frank Zappa said that Americans spend the rest of their lives recovering from high school, and I think he was right. I think most Americans suffer from arrested development. Our characters freeze up sometime in high school and we rarely recover.

That’s why our politics are popularity contests rather than issue-driven. That’s why we’re so ignorant and indifferent to things that happen beyond our borders. That’s why we have such a skewed view of the world. We’re stuck in permanent adolescence.

Some of us freeze as freshman and never amount to much. Others just remain perpetual sophomores. I think our president is one of those. A lot of us stop developing in our junior year. John Edwards is a perpetual Junior: just the man to run the homecoming committee. And then there’s the seniors. Kerry is a senior. He’d be the perfect senior class president.

So if you want to understand the American character and American politics and society, I really think you have to understand the American high school experience. It's been years since I served my time (I think I'm a junior), but from what I understand the dynamic is still the same.

---dr.M.

Why do you think High School arrests development? Im curious being a Brit!

 

[impressive]

The late Frank Zappa said that Americans spend the rest of their lives recovering from high school, and I think he was right. I think most Americans suffer from arrested development. Our characters freeze up sometime in high school and we rarely recover.

I just had a conversation on this very subject with a friend. I am so frickin' overjoyed to say that "today me" bears little resemblance to "high school me."

Sadly, I believe you're right. So many are stuck there -- with skewed priorities. It's "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" meets "American Beauty" meets "Pretty in Pink" in America.

*sigh* Heaven help us!

 

[Lauren Hynde]

So if you want to understand the American character and American politics and society, I really think you have to understand the American high school experience. It's been years since I served my time (I think I'm a junior), but from what I understand the dynamic is still the same.

---dr.M.

That doesn't really help much. The American high school experience is almost as strange to the rest of the world as American politics and society. Other than through movies and highly stereotyped TV shows, it's a completely alien concept.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Re: Re: High School Character

Why do you think High School arrests development? Im curious being a Brit!

High School is probably the toughest part of growing up. Just when you’re coming to terms with puberty and trying to deal with adolescense—that most unfortunate stage of human development--you’re tossed into this intensely social, teen-age twilight zone with all these strangers at different stages of development. There are bullies and cliques and all sorts of status markers and pressures and threats. You’ve got to adopt a survival strategy and adopt it fast.

Kids are cruel. They can be unconscionably cruel. Social rejection or loss of status can be devastating to a developing personality. Not knowing all the codes—what brands of clothes to wear, what words to use, what music to listen to, what to bring for lunch or whether you should only buy your lunch—can make a kid a pariah. It’s no wonder there;s so much violence—suppressed and actual—and suicide and drug abuse among high school kids. It’s a real presure cooker, and just at the stage where a person is least able to deal with it.

So we adopt a strategy. You join a group (jocks, geeks, cheer-leaders, goths, greasers, whatever. Even non-groups are a kind of group), and taht provides you with a survival strategy. If it works, you tend to stay with that strategy pretty much all your life. Even so, humiliation and embarrassment are always just a word or a glance away. It's a very tough environment.

Personally, I became a beatnik. I was big enough not to be physically intimidated, and I just opted out of the popularity contests, rejecting them before they could reject me. I found my purpose in writing and music, and that’s how I got through it.

And I’m the same today. I’ve matured, but I still tend to use the same strategy of being somewhere while not quite being accessible. I like people, but I'm not a joiner, and cliques still rankle me. I learned all that in high school.

---dr.M.

 

[TheEarl]

The late Frank Zappa said that Americans spend the rest of their lives recovering from high school, and I think he was right. I think most Americans suffer from arrested development. Our characters freeze up sometime in high school and we rarely recover.

That’s why our politics are popularity contests rather than issue-driven. That’s why we’re so ignorant and indifferent to things that happen beyond our borders. That’s why we have such a skewed view of the world. We’re stuck in permanent adolescence.

Some of us freeze as freshman and never amount to much. Others just remain perpetual sophomores. I think our president is one of those. A lot of us stop developing in our junior year. John Edwards is a perpetual Junior: just the man to run the homecoming committee. And then there’s the seniors. Kerry is a senior. He’d be the perfect senior class president.

So if you want to understand the American character and American politics and society, I really think you have to understand the American high school experience. It's been years since I served my time (I think I'm a junior), but from what I understand the dynamic is still the same.

---dr.M.

Seems an odd attitude to take. I'm a completely different person to the boy I was when I left secondary school and I'm only 20. God knows who I'll be in 5 and 10 years time.

The Earl

 

[Goldie Munro]

Re: Re: Re: High School Character

High School is probably the toughest part of growing up. Just when you’re coming to terms with puberty and trying to deal with adolescense—that most unfortunate stage of human development--you’re tossed into this intensely social, teen-age twilight zone with all these strangers at different stages of development. There are bullies and cliques and all sorts of status markers and pressures and threats. You’ve got to adopt a survival strategy and adopt it fast.

Kids are cruel. They can be unconscionably cruel. Social rejection or loss of status can be devastating to a developing personality. Not knowing all the codes—what brands of clothes to wear, what words to use, what music to listen to, what to bring for lunch or whether you should only buy your lunch—can make a kid a pariah. It’s no wonder there;s so much violence—suppressed and actual—and suicide and drug abuse among high school kids. It’s a real presure cooker, and just at the stage where a person is least able to deal with it.

So we adopt a strategy. You join a group (jocks, geeks, cheer-leaders, goths, greasers, whatever. Even non-groups are a kind of group), and taht provides you with a survival strategy. If it works, you tend to stay with that strategy pretty much all your life. Even so, humiliation and embarrassment are always just a word or a glance away. It's a very tough environment.

Personally, I became a beatnik. I was big enough not to be physically intimidated, and I just opted out of the popularity contests, rejecting them before they could reject me. I found my purpose in writing and music, and that’s how I got through it.

And I’m the same today. I’ve matured, but I still tend to use the same strategy of being somewhere while not quite being accessible. I like people, but I'm not a joiner, and cliques still rankle me. I learned all that in high school.

---dr.M.

Ok I get you - its the teenage thing - I thougt you meant it was something to do with the school system per se - or maybe you are saying that!

 

[fogbank]

It's worse going to school in a small community where you're with the same 15 people from Kindergarten to grade 12. You get typecast into your roles much earlier--I got cast as the geek at about grade 3 or 4, and no amount of high-school basketball skill could change that. Another issue was that the small class sizes meant that the smaller groups (such as mine) could really only consist of one person per class. My best friends were people who occupied similar roles in the two years ahead of me and the two years behind me. It was the most incredible thing to move away to college and have the opportunity to redefine myself. Or, perhaps better put, I had really already redefined myself in high-school but nobody had noticed because I was pre-defined by my role.

 

[R. Richard]

I spent my high school years as a whi' kid in an almost all black high school. I didn't have to worry much about my status in the social world of high school. I was inmstantly rejected and, after one exchange that some bad boy thought was going to be a fight. I was left alone for the most part. (Doan be messin' with the whi' kid, it be hazardous to yo' health.)

The problem I had was the almost complete lack of learning available. If a kid wanted to memorize material from a book, fine. However, the idea of training the kid to think was something that I really never encountered. Some of the classes did CLAIM to teach thinking, but any question that went anywhere but straight down the path the teacher wanted was not acceptable.

The only reason I even graduated was that I was the National Merit scholar and they were not willing to give that up.

 

[Liar]

Re: Re: Re: High School Character

High School is probably the toughest part of growing up.

Junior High was.

High School was the best, most positive and easiest part of growing up. This was when the childern we were stopped acting like children, learned to take responsibility for our actions and to actually be decent towards one another. And it was in High School that I found out where I was heading intellectually and professionally too.

I growed and matured more during those years than I ever did before that, and it was the catalyst to the further development as a person that I am undergoing ever since.

I understand that it varies from person from person, or maybe from place to place, but for us, High School was when we matured from petty social ladders, popularism, bullying, in- and out-crowds, and actually started behaving as sensible adults. And many agrees with me here. They don't understand the weird view of the school culture that mostly American movies and tv series provide them with. Apparently there is a cultural difference here.

#L

 

[Quiet_Cool]

A cultural difference? Between the high school you went to and the one I did? Depends. If you think there might be a mild difference between night and day perhaps.

I think I made the freshman classification of what dr. M was describing. I never really even got involved. I'm like that now too. Hell, my girlfriend: She hit on me first. Of course, in the area where I'm living, adult life isn't all that different.

Sad, but true...

Q_C

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

High School was absolutely Heaven. It was fun, challenging, high school sports were the best thing to be a part of, the parties, the girls... mmm.

I very much miss it.

 

[gauchecritic]

Re: Re: Re: High School Character

Kids are cruel. They can be unconscionably cruel. Social rejection or loss of status can be devastating to a developing personality. Not knowing all the codes—what brands of clothes to wear, what words to use, what music to listen to, what to bring for lunch or whether you should only buy your lunch—can make a kid a pariah. ---dr.M.

Hmmm, sounds just like Lit.

All boys secondary school and in with the funny but dangerous gang I went with the funny and just looking dangerous. As it happened we were also the top 5 percenters too. And rebelious, or maybe that was just me.

Upper sixth made me a social recluse (going into pubs in school uniform)

I finally re-designed myself in college and when I thought I was complete I just ducked out altogether.

Gauche

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: Re: High School Character

I finally re-designed myself in college and when I thought I was complete I just ducked out altogether.

Brilliant, Gauche. I hope you destroyed the plans.

Perdita

 

[McKenna]

Yes Mab, the AH is exactly like high school.


Oh wait, that's not what this thread's about?


My bad.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I believe I've covered something like this before:

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=285945

Yeah, there.

I've also noticed how high school rules and divisions seem to characterize adult society and how high school existance to a point shapes who we turn out to be.

I've also noticed to an extent that people I despise personally often have very similar high school experiences. I'm not sure yet if that's a fault of mine or theirs.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: High School Character

High School is probably the toughest part of growing up. Just when you’re coming to terms with puberty and trying to deal with adolescense—that most unfortunate stage of human development--you’re tossed into this intensely social, teen-age twilight zone with all these strangers at different stages of development. There are bullies and cliques and all sorts of status markers and pressures and threats. You’ve got to adopt a survival strategy and adopt it fast.

I've heard a similar pop-psych theory with a wider age range: a child's emotinal growth depends on feeling secure. If there's an incident that makes us insecure to a traumatic degree, like losing a parent at an early age or competing unsuccessfully with a new baby , we retain a lot of the emotional characteristics of that age. Most of us are fortunate enough to reach adolescence before we experience seriously godawful insecurity: the discovery that life is a New Year's Eve party where everyone else is having a fabulous time, while we are nursing a zit the size of the Balkans. "Oh-my-god-my-yearbook-photo-looks-like-alfalfa-from-the-little-rascals" is probably traumatic enough to freeze someone at the 10th grade.

Unrelated but related: Our self-image stops aging at around age 30-35. Which is why you see 40-year-olds acting in commercials for adult diapers. Old people see other old people as old, but in their own hearts and minds they remain 33.

From another source, our taste in music grows more sophisticated until sometime in our 20s. Then it lags behind other developed tastes, and doesn't progress much beyond age 30. At 90, when you're fighting for control of the rec room stereo, you'll still be jonesing for the music you loved at 25. So they say.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Re: Re: Re: Re: High School Character

Junior High was.

High School was the best, most positive and easiest part of growing up. This was when the childern we were stopped acting like children, learned to take responsibility for our actions and to actually be decent towards one another. And it was in High School that I found out where I was heading intellectually and professionally too.

I growed and matured more during those years than I ever did before that, and it was the catalyst to the further development as a person that I am undergoing ever since.

I understand that it varies from person from person, or maybe from place to place, but for us, High School was when we matured from petty social ladders, popularism, bullying, in- and out-crowds, and actually started behaving as sensible adults. And many agrees with me here. They don't understand the weird view of the school culture that mostly American movies and tv series provide them with. Apparently there is a cultural difference here.

#L

Liar, did you go to high school in the US? That's what this thread is about. Social status is the most important thing there, certainly for boys and probably for girls too. Since girls wanted so little to do with me when I was in HS, I don't have much first hand knowledge about them.

Maybe I should have been a jock since I played football and basketball and maybe I should have been a brain. I was neither; I was an outcast, shunned by almost all except when they wanted to copy off me at a test. I have been pretty much of an outcast ever since, stuck in that role.

Then there are the popular kids who sort of peaked in high school. They really enjoyed it but had no place to go but down once they graduated.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

What was everyone in high school? Cliques, that is. I usually ask this of people I know, after a while, because its generally agreed that everyone was in a few that wre pretty obvious.

 

[English Lady]

I was a friend to all. I probably also filled the hole for "religious freak/bible basher/ Christian Union member etc. My group was well everone really. I did fit in with the boys well. I would sit and talk football with them. Other girls were jealous of me in fact; whilst I was wildly jealous of them actually being fancied by guys!

Yeah I was the girl to go to if you needed a spare pen or you wanted some advice or hep with homework or an extra 10p for your bus fare.

I got away with little bullying and what I did encounter i reported and it got sorted very quickly. the more subtle bullying was just left but i had a good core of mates so we all looked out for one another. We were all helper types *smiles*

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: High School Character

Personally, I became a beatnik. I was big enough not to be physically intimidated, and I just opted out of the popularity contests, rejecting them before they could reject me. I found my purpose in writing and music, and that’s how I got through it.

f

Being elected class pornographer must have felt amazing.

 

[impressive]

What was everyone in high school? Cliques, that is.

I was on the fringes of several -- the brainy bunch, the "in crowd," the jock(ettes), the theater/music clique, the rebels. Interestingly, during a discussion at a class reunion, I learned that to those not belonging to any of those cliques, I was viewed as being IN as opposed to NEAR.

At the time, I never felt as though I thoroughly belonged in any setting. I just didn't totally connect with any one group.

Perspective is everything, methinks.

 

[SensualCealy]

I agree with Impressive, I never was in a clique so to speak.
I started out in a bunch of girls that really never fit in.
Then I moved up the ranks to the mid- popular group.
Near the end of that year, I met my now husband, spent alot of time with him, and kind of fell out of the group thing. I had my friends that lunched together in the halls, and the ones that were starting into serious relationships as well.

The last year of highschool (hubby and I) we were discussing the idea of getting married. So out came the Brides magazines and such. Lots of my close friends were there to help pick out what they thought I should have.

By the end of that year, I knew who I could talk to and who I couldnt, it was more of you knew who your true friends were then having a bunch of buddies.

I too live in a small city/ rural area I think it would be different if it were a really big city lifestyle.
C

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

My so-called "clique":

Do you really have to fucking guess?

You know those outcast kids who were fucked over by everyone, who were always in danger of suicide or being watched endlessly by the Principal or had their heads smashed into stone pillars by the "cool" kids? The artists, the brains, the thinkers, the gamers, the metalheads, the queers, the Goths, the geeks, the freaks. If they weren't a part of any clique. If they hung out on the far edge of campus in a desperate attempt to gain some respite from the mindless automotons and drones, from the assholes and the jocks, from the misogynists and the fashion club. If they watched Daria and said "yeah that's about right". If they wrote or were in band or drew or coded for fun, I was there. I also knew the jocks from the other side of the equation, learned the truth behind their cool exteriors. I hated most of their fucking guts. Long live the freaks of this world. The outcasts. The lost refuse on the rock. They're the only people worth knowing.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Wasn't really in a 'clique' although it might have looked that way as my friends consisted almost exclusively of the 30-40 or so 'honors' kids, the brainy bunch. I spent 4 years in a crappy, south side Chicago, black and Latino gang-infested high school with only one unlocked entrance guarded by one of Chicago's boys in blue. It was a cause for ridicule to be brainy in my school, so we stuck together out of necessity and circumstance rather than any true affinity for each other. I only have one friend from high school that is still in my life nearly 20 years later, and I consider her a gift.