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My class was never big on reunions. We had one at 10 years and another at 15 years, then one at 45 years that I didn't go to. I figure we'll have our 50th next year, and I'll go to that, just to see a couple of friends. High school was a nightmare for me, similar to the 12th circle of hell. I don't have many good memories of that time.
I have kept contact with a couple good friends, and one woman whose high school experience was even worse than mine.
Some high school chums are still close friends. Some are not that close, but, we are friendly when attending reunions. There were 60 in my graduating class and 40 are still alive. Someone keeps up and lets the rest know if someone dies. I've attended some of the annual reunions, but generally not unless previous arrangements have been made about being there. Went to college later than others, so even though I had several college friends, none of us have kept in touch.
Wow, so many posters in this thread report having had a terrible time in high school, or remember many of their classmates as unfriendly, snobbish people...so they have no interest in attending reunions.
Here's my own take: I didn't have a good time at all during my sophomore year, largely due to clueless counseling about which classes I should take. I wound up way over my head in three out of five classes and suffered because of it.
I was regularly humiliated by a teacher whom I belatedly learned treated many, many other students as I was treated - at the time, I felt very singled out and was acutely embarrassed and resentful.
Another teacher was a good person, but a novice in the classroom. She taught us as if we were college students. This class had a mix of sophomores, juniors, and seniors, so fourteen year olds (me) were in with eighteen year olds. Not a good idea.
Another was actually a good teacher, but she was faced with sophomores who'd had very poor first-year foreign language instruction as freshmen (in a separate junior high), who again were mixed in with her own junior and senior second-year language students.
I did very poorly in all three of these classes, which did nothing for my sense of my own abilities and embarrassed, humiliated and depressed me. It wasn't for lack of trying.
But - my junior year was much, much better. I was in appropriate classes, had a big role in the class play, and was blessed with one teacher in particular who was a genius at her craft and who took obvious joy in her students' achievements and insights. Perfect teacher for me.
My senior year fell somewhere in between. Adequate to good teachers, decent grades - nothing terribly inspirational. I was in the senior play, but had a much smaller role. The classmate I secretly adored started steadily dating someone else, to my great secret dismay...
Still, senior year was far better than my catastrophic sophomore year, which pulled down my ongoing grade point average throughout my remaining two years so that I never even made Beta Club. But - I had the results of my SATs and ACTs - consistently 98 and 99%iles - and knew my abilities were above many of those who WERE in Beta and the National Honor Society.
Nowadays, I think many schools take SATs into account when admitting students to these scholastic honor societies. The huge discrepancies between my test scores and my sophomore grades should have been a red flag back then. As far as I know, they were not, as nothing was ever done by the school to help me. I doubt if the three problem teachers ever even looked at my aptitude/achievement test scores. I still wonder, had I been in more appropriate classes, or with better teachers - what would my sophomore year have been? And if I'd had more inspirational teachers my senior year, what would that have been like?
But I got by it, and eventually wound up my college career with straight As for my final semester, and a master's degree.
And now, with a big high school reunion looming, it seems unthinkable not to attend that reunion. I am back in my hometown and see various local classmates regularly, in various capacities. Some are lifelong friends, others are friendly acquaintances - a few are simply acquaintances. Other classmates, living far away, fall into the same categories. There are a few I am really anticipating seeing again. There are some I hardly remember. But - each of the past reunions I've attended have produced surprises of one kind or another, mostly good surprises. Several have led to renewed or strengthened friendships. A couple have been revealing in other ways, making it clear that any connection with particular classmates needs to be superficial at best, with boundaries firmly in place - most of these are those few people who've never left high school emotionally and who still view others as they did then, despite obvious changes. I don't have much in common with those folks, so keep it light when around them.
Yes, it's hard to think that classmates are gone or are diminished by poor health or life's sadnesses. But those of us who remain can honor them through our remembrances and support them with our friendship, and poor health or other misfortunes come to most of us eventually.
At this point, almost fifty years on for me, almost all of my classmates are "survivors" of one kind or another. I don't go to my high school reunions to reminisce about how wonderful my high school experience was - there were good times then, but plenty of not-so-good times, too - but to reconnect with those people who shared those three formative years with me, and to discover who they turned out to be. In addition, I've always come away from the reunions knowing more about myself as well. So even if those were the only benefits I took away, participating in my class reunions would certainly be well-worth it.
Didn't go to my first major one because I just didn't feel like it. I'll eventually go. I think it'll be fun to reminisce and be reminded of things and people I forgot for a night, but I didn't have the miserable high school life some people did so it wouldn't be like revisiting hell. That said, the past is the past so I don't actively make any effort to stay in touch with people I knew in high school. If I bump into one of them, I say hi and it's nice to see them and we may (out of politeness but with no real intention of following through) say we should get together for lunch some time and exchange numbers, but that's where it ends.
I've reunited with the only two people I care to. One is a major attendee/planner of HS reunions & keeps me up on "gossip". She knows me well enuf not to force me to attend
Yuk...lol...I went to a small (60 kids in my graduating class)...private school, wore a disgusting navy blue uniform, had frizzy hair, wore braces and was overweight...no desire to relive those memories....lol
Having gone to ALL of my high school reunions, I want to add that the ten-year reunion was a bust. People just hadn't found themselves at that point. Ten years later, and for all subsequent reunions, it was a very, very different story. People were more relaxed, friendly, more open - comfortable in their own skins, with a few exceptions here and there.
So - if it's a ten or fewer year reunion, go if you like, but don't expect much. If it's twenty or more years, by all means, go! (don't ask me about fifteen - we didn't have one that year, so I wouldn't know!).
Yuk...lol...I went to a small (60 kids in my graduating class)...private school, wore a disgusting navy blue uniform, had frizzy hair, wore braces and was overweight...no desire to relive those memories....lol
You call that small ? There were 10 in my class and 5 of them are now gone. The year I graduated there were 120 kids in the school, from Kindergarten thru the 12th grade. And it got smaller after that, until they finally closed the school a few years later. One year there were only 3 in the senior class.
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