Mixed bag for me. I went to a large high school that had a LOT to offer. To this day, I wish I had dropped one of my periods of choir and taken auto shop or some extra science or social studies classes. There were entire hallways I never went down.
Socially, I struggled. I had friends, sort of. I was smart, but not "high-flying" enough to hang with the top students, in several sports but not athletic enough to hang with that bunch, musically talented but not advanced/hot-housed/in-the-local-scene enough to be really close with that bunch.
I had been referred for the district G/T program (full-time classroom cohort model) in first grade (I have come to find out), but my mom refused to have me (or my sister) tested because... who knows? She had her reasons, I guess, but now knowing that bunch of people, I realize that that really could have been a good social group for me. As things stood, I had been kept in the "middle" reading and math groups despite very high standardized test scores. I was missing the background knowledge, as well as plain old high expectations, that the kids in the G/T classroom had experienced.
I was a sensitive, immature kid who cried easily over any little thing, so when I tested into accelerated math for 7th grade (despite having been in the non-accelerated track for my entire elementary career), the teacher recommended I just stick with average-track because "it would be easier and not upsetting to me." By high school, I had figured out how to skate by academically with an A- average and little effort. No one pegged me as one of the "smart kids," nor was I one of the "athletic kids," or one of the "music-theater" kids, though I did all those things.
When my swim coach and choir director tried to play a game of tug-of-war about whose activity I should attend on a certain night, I didn't understand the fuss. I was neither planning to make a career out of singing or swimming. Couldn't I swim my events, dash out early, run down the hall, show up a little late, with wet hair and reeking of chlorine, for choir warm-ups, and sing in the concert? Both adults (and most of the other student participants for whom one or the other activity was "their thing") didn't understand my lack of priority. Wasn't I an athlete/musician (depending on who was asking)? I wasn't a "top performing star" in *insert other activity here*, should I just skip out on THAT and do THIS? No, I was a 16 year-old girl who enjoyed sports and music. At such a large high school, we were expected to specialize, and I was a Jack(Jane?)-of-all-Trades. In a way, I was an everybody and a nobody.
My high school weirdness and immaturity, in a way, saved me from the Freshman year of college "Who am I?" crisis. I knew that I didn't have to be the best to enjoy something. I could do things just for fun. I moved in and out of different social groups during those awkward first years when everyone is still trying to find a group of people "like them" to befriend. I already kind of understood that people didn't have to share all of my interests, or look like me, or have any other characteristics beyond being a person I like, find interesting, and want to spend more time with.
I guess I'll maintain that high school IS a socially norming experience. It is. It's a shared social phenomenon. I'll also maintain that it's not a natural experience, nor is it necessarily one that actually helps develop adult relationships or expectations. The social type-casting (at least not as I experienced it) is not necessarily a healthy norm. While our society is MUCH more specialized than it was in "traditional" societies, very few adults are so one-dimensional (socially or proficiency-wise) as high school kind of guides students to be.
