I'm curious about your experiences. Would you all agree or disagree that high school was a normalizing experience on the road to adulthood?
How about for women? DId any females on this board feel that high school benefitted them "socially and emotionally?" and/or academically. If so, what was your high school like?
If by "normalizing" you mean 'sharing crippling psychological wounds with true peers,' then the answer is a resounding YES.
LOL. In all seriousness, I grew up in a fairly isolated region dominated by a-- well, the term is 'red-neck' I think-- small city and its suburbs. While there was a local regional college, and a cultural bright spot in the small town associated with it, the rest of the area was an intellectual wasteland of blue collar living. If you;ve ever seen the reality television shows "Axe Men" or "Deadliest Catch," you're familiar with the surroundings/culture that I grew up in.
Not a pretty picture for any PG child.
High school itself was a mid-sized (for the area) school with very good academics (one of the best in the nation at the time, truly); I graduated in a class of 270+, and the top 10% of my class went to East Coast Ivies. We had a dozen national merit semi-finalists in that group (I was one of them). Socioeconomically pretty diverse-- everything from upper middle class (well-off doctors and lawyers for parents) to migrant worker families, with a fairly even distribution throughout. My family was in the middle third of that distribution. No private lessons or fancy clothes for me, but I ate lunch every day, YK? There were kids in my high school that got beautifully restored classic cars for 16th birthdays, however.
Academics were not very challenging. I missed over a third of my sophomore year and still graduated no problem, let's put it that way. But there were a fair number of AP offerings, and I took advantage of most. That was light years better, certainly, but I don't really recall much of anything standing out as meaningful.
I worked at a local vet hospital, eventually tech-ing there for several years, I had a MUCH older boyfriend (later first spouse-- what a mistake) because I hated the immaturity of the 'peers' that I went to school with, and I participated in band and orchestra with a passion. I was also involved in local pageants during my last couple of years in high school. I was
not much of a "joiner" in the traditional sense, and my hobbies were fairly solitary. I was not then and never became a "sporty" person. I played soccer for fun, but never competitively. I had enjoyed gymnastics when I was younger, but had developed physically to the point that it was impossible to perform at that level anymore, plus I had sustained a back injury as a middle schooler. I also sustained a knee injury playing soccer, so that put an end to that.
My best friend left high school early (sophomore year) to attend college. I was bereft without her.
I thought that high school was three of the most miserable years of my life, and in my mid-forties, I've still seen no reason to reevaluate that stance.
My husband's high school experience was profoundly different from mine, and we have long hypothesized that this owes MUCH to gender differences in the social culture of high school. He was also a jock-- so the athletic/team thing really made his experiences radically different.
I was
never a "girl's girl" and I had few friends, because it had become
profoundly obvious to all of my male friends that I could no longer be considered just one of the guys. I was reasonably socially compliant and tried desperately to fly under the radar and just be ignored-- but there are some things that you just can't hide. Physical attributes that make you stand out, or intellectual ability that can't be hidden well are top contenders for ways to make yourself a target as a girl.
They are also things that leave you feeling powerless to make your situation better, which is a recipe for disaster in girl culture.
