Rant Incoming: I felt bitter about high school as a graduate, this is a spiel about the philosophy on my time that consists of only my observations I made on the fly.
There's something I found very concerning during my time in high school, and it's that no one in my graduating class really believed in individuality. They would wax poetic about "being my own person" but only within the confines of what their friends or fellow peers considered socially acceptable within their own clique.
I think I did awful things when I was in high school; but socially and emotionally, I was no different from the rest of my peers. I was awkward, not much of a talker, and into fairly niche things. I went to classes with plenty of shy people. The difference was that these shy people were often very easy to be lumped into some kind of friend group.
They were fashionable and were often engaged in lots of mainstream media. A stupid spooky game like FNAF and Roblox or whatever was popular 10 years ago. That really popular Netflix show or that one movie everyone's talking about - this is all I would ever hear them talk about and while it didn't define them.... It made them easier to accept.
If that all sounds very trivial to you, (and I wouldn't blame you) there's something else I haven't mentioned. Because it was really easy for me to fix it on all of the small things while I was alone at school for nearly four consecutive years. But now that I think about it, I can also remember how surprisingly mean they were... I - I mean those guys could not stand being around me. I sat at tables alone, I was left to do extensive group projects by myself, I loved collaborating and yet I couldn't find anyone to collaborate with.
For the first two and a half years, some girl made it her hobby to loudly declare how much she didn't like me - and it all started because she didn't like my voice during a class presentation. Later, I heard her complain to some upperclassmen about me, and when they saw my face she just doubled down! and said "She is the only person I will ever bully in my entire life!"
I befriended a new girl in my junior year, and after we stopped talking on rather amicable terms, she told her friends to make sure that I wasn't sitting at MY table, because SHE wanted to be there. In a classroom where anyone can be anywhere, she felt the need to assert petty control over me.
My classmates would mock and berate me with no shame whatsoever; A girl tried to argue with me for talking to myself and later admitted to her friends that she likes talking to herself. The same girl screamed at me when I bumped into her in a crowded classroom after I apologized.
The SAME girl bitched and moaned to her friends because I didn't hold a door for her after she has long proven that she deserves no common courtesy from me.
I didn't mention any boys because my class had on average one boy for every eight girls, Literally less than 10 in my graduating class. I only had qualms with ONE. And he was a misogynistic homophobic idiot who would swear up and down he was the smartest person in the room; Everyone else tolerated him except for me.
I feel like I've been at the mercy of mean children for as long as I've been in the school system, and it boggles my mind! Everyone only cared about themselves and their pack. I was often looked at with disdain by people who never really got to know me. And.... that was everyone!
My self-esteem was in hell, I didn't have the courage to attempt to make friends because I couldn't think of myself as anything more than a waste of space.
My time in high school was tepid at best. Decent school. Damn near horrid classmates.
0/10.
