Tuesday, November 16, 2010

So, did anyone, like, like high school?

Honest question. I pulled out a draft of a short story I wrote last fall. The main character is a 17-year-old Mormon girl who attends a high school in Utah Valley. I've been trying to do some deeper character development with her and pulled out my yearbook from my senior year of high school, which was at a school in Utah Valley, similar to the one I imagine my heroine goes to. My family moved the summer before, so my experience here was brief. High school was not a good time for me. I was not popular. I didn't give a damn about sports or cheerleading or pep rallies. I suffered from severe depression. I hated high school, hated, hated, hated it.

Yet I look through this yearbook, and so many of the kids look so genuinely vibrant and enthusiastic about all the worthless crap of the constructed culture that is high school. And I remember being around kids who really seemed like they were enjoying themselves in that world and I could not for the life of me understand why. How is it possible that people who actually like high school exist in the real world? It's just completely foreign to my experience.

Part of it is that I've always been a somewhat socially awkward person. Social skills were not something I learned from my parents. (I know I'm articulate and verbally prolific on my blog, but if you meet me in person and try to have a conversation, expect frequent clamming up and awkward pauses.) I just did not fit. I've been in very few circumstances in my life, actually, where I really felt like I belonged, but high school was especially bad.

Anyway, I don't think my character hates high school, so I'm trying to get some perspective of what it's like to be a person who doesn't hate high school. As far as where she fits in the social strata, she's not the cheerleader/prom queen type, but she's certainly liked, comes from a middle class family, does well in her classes, etc. Does this sound like you or someone you know/knew? Can you tell me what that's like?

Also, to help me be more "with it" on what's going on with current LDS youth, I looked up the most recent issue of New Era. Did you know that sleepovers are where kids leave the straight and narrow? I don't condone high schoolers drinking and I think most high schoolers probably aren't ready for sex, but banning sleepovers isn't going to prevent that kind of thing. How about knowing your kids' friends, knowing your kids' friends' parents, making sure time at friends' houses is supervised, having an open relationship, instilling a sense of self-worth and goals for the future so they're more likely to make good choices?

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34 comments:

  1. Sorry, high school was kinda hell for me. I don't think I can really understand people who liked high school. haha

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  2. That was me, almost to a T - email me with what you want to know! michelle3582 at gmail dot com

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  3. Just some random brainstorming...

    Even if the overall feel of high-school is, for your protagonist, hell...perhaps you can make selected parts of it good. To paraphrase from Men in Black, individuals may be good, decent, and fun to be with one-on-one...but put them together in mobs and groups and they can be a pain. So maybe your character finds it relatively easy to get along with most people one-on-one...but not when they are in social groups. Maybe you could throw in a couple of fun teachers who might becomes her mentors so she enjoys extra-curricular activities like band or drama. Maybe she is a talented artist who can draw political cartoons dealing with social justice at school?

    So yeah, I think you can at least makes parts of the school experience fun for the character through a couple of fun relationships or activities. It would probably help if her parents are relatively well off socially and financially...not necessarily rich, but they can afford clothes, books, food, etc. so that the girl in school does not have to worry about such things. It is hard to enjoy school if you are constantly hungry and in a system where you don't get textbooks and computers are something you read about.

    Part of having fun may be simple ignorance, intolerable, and the ability to bully without repercussions.

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  4. I was homeschooled all the way through, but I'm pretty sure that I would have hated highschool. I would have been the overweight, bisexual, goth with good grades.

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  5. I was never popular in high school, nor did I particularly enjoy it, so I can't give you any perspective there. But I'm a lot like you in another way. My mother also saw no need to teach us social skills. I can write very eloquently, so people that read my blog expect me to be well-spoken when they meet me. I'm sure they are shocked to hear that when I open my mouth, I just can't come up with anything good. LOL!

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  6. What about clubs? Art, drama, book, debate, etc. I was one didnt invest a lot in the whole high school experience (it doesn't help when you live in central Florida and the beach is only 40 minutes away.)But clubs are a way for kids who aren't into the whole school spirit thing to get a sense of belonging. Just go ahead and make your story about Mormon teen vampires.

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  7. I enjoyed HS...because it gave me an opportunity to come into awareness. Plus, I didn't have the drama in HS -- I had it all in junior high (that's when I had a major backstabbing incident and broke away from my previous group of friends.)

    I would NOT say I was popular. I would not say I was particularly well-liked or disliked (because I wasn't entirely known). I had somewhat of a niche (honor student, class clown), but I was not in any groups...I was kind of an independent loner in that aspect.

    It was awesome though. I was doing great things for myself and for the school through the quiz bowl team, the academic decathlon, etc., So, I had at least moderate pluses from that (of course, it's not like being a star football player or anything...but it got some recognition.)

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  8. I'm no help either. I hated high school. Went to a Catholic girls school, and never have been to a reunion. What for? No one would remember me anyway. Except for maybe the bullies who picked on me all the time. I never had a teacher I could identify with, or felt any friendliness from. An all around disaster.

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  9. High school was a generally a good experience for me. I wouldn’t say that I loved it but do have many fond memories of it. I was never popular but I always had a handful of quirky friends that I hung out with. I was also the type that enjoyed my classes, not all of them of course, but I really liked a good number of them. I practically enjoyed English, history, science, and programming. I also took a ballroom dance class that I quite liked in place of a regular PE class (I hated PE).

    I never participated in any of the school clubs, but I did go to a few dances with when girls would ask me to go with them. One of the really unique things I did in high school was to put together a pretend country with my friends. I wrote a constitution and was later elected leader by my friends. We could often be found in the library discussing new laws and political scandals (you would be surprised at how many we invented for ourselves). I was generally politically minded even though I thought the idea of student government was ridiculous.

    My high school experience could probably be described as average with the exception of the few unique things I did.

    One of the things I also thought was funny was that while I lived Provo UT two of my best friends were not LDS, on was Wiccan, and the other was Unitarian. I remember learning a lot from them about their religions, and later when I left the Mormon faith some of the things they told me were the first steeping stones in leaving rethinking my own religious views.

    If I were to tell you one of my regrets from high school it would be the story of when a boy I had a crush on in my math class approached me and told me that he loved me. I didn’t react well. Even though I had liked him myself I was too afraid to admit that I was gay at the time. I ended up pushing him against the wall called him a faggot, and told him never to say anything like that to me again.

    It was sad really. We had been friends before that and my reaction kind of ruined it. I had even experimented with guys a little before then; I just wasn’t ready to admit to being gay.

    Anyhow that’s my high school experience in a nut shell.

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  10. I was never popular or into anything like that--in fact, I was pretty tortured at some points--but I did like high school, especially in grade 11 and 12. Maybe it was because I realized that once I was out, life as I knew it would be over (because, really, things may not be ideal, but most kids have it pretty good in high school, in terms of having things taken care of for them). And I never drank or did drugs or anything like that, so I certainly didn't fit in with the "superawesomepopular crowd".

    What makes high school, I think, is a good, fun, and dorky set of friends, as well as being able to do schoolwork easily (so, not struggling with grades). I was always pretty socially awkward, but I did have a group that I always hung out with at lunch and then a couple of stray people from it during my spares. Cool librarians help, too.

    I guess I liked being in high school because I saw it as easy, and I knew it wasn't going to be after wards. I had some good friends who shared my values, eccentricities, hobbies, and humour, and high school gave me a way to hang out with my friends, and I also didn't have to work too hard or struggle with many things.

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  11. I hated high school but I didn't have it as bad as some. There were a few things like band and music classes that I actually looked forward to. But the "pop culture" aspect to it was foreign to me too. And oddly enough, that "pop culture" was heavily influenced by the Mormon culture, which made for a rather oddly sanitized version.

    And of course, the only time I dated is when some girl asked me out to a dance. That alone carried with it it's own level of stigma.

    As for sleepovers being the roots of evil...(this was mentioned in conference last month.) It's more of the same from them. I've written about this sort thing. The church is a profound irony. It really wants people to be instilled with "...a sense of self-worth and goals for the future so they're more likely to make good choices." as you would hope. Unfortunately the way they go about it has the exact opposite effect. They look at the symptoms or actions and then punish those actions as if they are to cause. It's a complete distraction to the reality at hand.
    And further manages to instill insularity, shame, low self-worth, pious-arrogance, and an inability to make the choices that would actually improve ones life, such as eliminating the true causes of shame and low self-worth.

    I once read somewhere: "In the Mormon church you're free to choose, as long as it's the choice they've chosen for you."

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  12. I can't help you -- I was an outcast in high school and despised every moment of it.

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  13. I loved high school. At least probably the last half of it. I was involved with a lot of extracurricular activities and I was good at them. I was captain of the cross country and track teams, first chair saxophonist in the band and lead bass in the choir. I even performed in my school's rendition of The Music Man.

    I had a beautiful girlfriend whom I loved. I got good grades, and I had my whole life ahead of me.

    It makes me feel like I've peaked during high school/college. And that's a terrible feeling to have. I'd rather have hated high school and love my life now than have loved high school and not been very happy now.

    I guess that's what the antidepressants are for...

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  14. Wish I could help, but my high school experience was pretty much exactly like this.

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  15. I loved high school. If you want to know about my experience, I wasn't popular (for example, I never dated) but I felt known and people were nice to me, academically I was an over-achiever, I participated in a couple sports and choir with average skills, and I had a close group of girlfriends with whom I spent my weekends eating ice cream, talking about boys, and watching Jane Austen movies.

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  16. OMG! Kuri, That video you linked to is basically how my life is right now. I had moments like that in jr. high and high school but for some reason, as an adult, I seem to be really living that shit right now almost 100% of the time.

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  17. Yeah, I didn't fit in with the popular crowd in HS, but like simplysarah I had really nice group of friends. -- And we had sleepovers. If you want your heroine to like HS, but are having a hard time drawing her as popular, you might want to write her as somebody who doesn't care about fitting the mold. I imagine you can relate to that.

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  18. I enjoyed high school most of the time, but there were times I hated it. I was kind of in my own world. Very molly mormon, didn't care about what others thought, my friends and I always ate in the same place, I didn't date a ton but I dated. Cheered (feel free to make fun) for my sophomore year...loved parts of it but hated the drama. I traded that in for yearbook and liked it much better. In a word, I was boring/normal/average. 3.3 GPA...didn't try really hard but tried. Haha...wow. Now I'm rambling. I hope this helps...

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  19. I loved high school.... but I don't know if I can help you! I was in a small missionary kid school in the jungles of New Guinea. We got to go to the beach, the mountains, waterfalls, remote villages with naked villagers, AND have sleepovers in which we watched Anne of Green Gables and sighed over Gilbert Blythe.

    Fairly tame stuff. It was wonderful. It wasn't a realistic preparation for life in the Western world, but it was so much fun.

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  20. I hated high school, but then I hated my entire life - which I rather have a feeling tends to be the case with teenagers. I suppose it's possible that there are teenagers who love their lives and hate school, or hate their lives but love school, but I don't believe I've ever met any.

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  21. I liked (public) high school for the most part (Moorhead High School, Moorhead, MN 1989). I was one of those middle-of-the-road types. I got along with most people, played some sports, pep rallies were tedious for me too, and I thought that many of the other kids were pretty immature (popularity wasn’t too important to me). Sure there were things that I wanted to be doing instead of sitting in classrooms and dealing with the teenage mentality all around me, but I can’t say that I really hated high school. I was always cognizant of the fact that high school prepared you (and was necessary) for college, so I looked at it that way. I felt like I was moving forward along the right path, regardless of the environment around me.

    I did see that that there was a social strata, but saw it as superficial and hollow even then. I was picky with who my friends were, and some of them I still keep in touch with. So I enjoyed the time with friends and the sports that I participated in (mostly individual sports btw).

    What is it like to not hate high school? Maybe it is similar to not hating your job. You have to go, even though it would be nice to not have to, but there are some rewards in sticking with it Monday through Friday eight to five, and you always get to leave work stuff at work and go home at the end of the day.

    If yours was a religious school, maybe that had something to do with your experience there.

    In my experience, the socially awkward ones are the ones who are often intellectually a step ahead of the others, but maybe just not cut out to be the confident leader type. And confident leader types are often full of shit and/or full of themselves.

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  22. Except with high school, you didn't really get to "leave work stuff at work and go home at the end of the day." There was always, always homework intruding on my free time. I think that was one of the things that irritated me the most about high school.

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  23. I wasn't a big fan of high school. Ditched all of my sophomore year, then dropped out and graduated on home study my senior year. But funnily enough, I keep in touch with tons of people I knew back then on fb and actually planned my 10-year reunion...

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  24. Enjoying/hating high school is likely a matter of several causes or combinations of influences. And this is a good thing for writers. No single formula. Lots of tension. You can play with a lot of lego pieces and fit them together in all sorts of ways in order to tell your story and create your characters. It's a constructed, artificial environment anyway...

    Chance and physical stuff are important factors, imo. And little moments of success go a long way in the teenage psyche.

    I went to a small high school -- couple hundred kids. A bigger high school and I likely would have had a more negative time.
    I hit my growth spurt early and so bullies found me not worth their attention.
    I was socially awkward but in the harmless sense. That's important. I didn't cause much sh*t for others, if you read me. And I was basically useless to social manipulators.
    My family life was stable so my parents didn't add to the general drama of teenagerism. If you're trying to sort out any home-life chaos then school can start to look more and more like a waste of time.

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  25. I enjoyed high school quite a bit. I was active in student government, theatre, clubs, etc. I think part of it was growing up in Alaska, which is full of completely wacky people and being weird isn't as much of a liability as it is in other places.

    I had a great group of quirky friends, and we pretty much went around in our own little world. I didn't experience any bullying, and I'm sure it happened to other people, but it really seemed like, for the most part, people in my high school got along with each other.

    My teachers were great. I got to do interpretive dances and write songs for my projects, although I learned to write a decent paper as well.

    Seriously though, I think my high school experience was really different in many ways. I had a teacher who used to skip class with us and take us to lunch. There was a kid who used to bring his pet goat to school. There was another kid who dressed up like Jesus pretty regularly, and nobody ever told him not to. My sister's currently attending my old school, and it's changed a lot. All the fun and weirdness got sucked out of it.

    I would say that I got my dose of traditional high school bitchiness from the YW program, not school.

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  26. I actually did not hate high school... but, in my case it wasn't because I wasn't nerdy or that I was popular but because I went to a very small high school that was connected to a larger one. The small high school was essentially just a separate campus or building that was used primarily for IB classes so I was in a very small group of people all of whom were just as geeky as I was and, while our classes had up to 15 people in them, there was a core group of about 8 people that were in ALL of them and we just sort of stuck together along with the less frequent satellites that were only in a few of our classes. There wasn't really any marginalization because of the small group size and our commonalities it just didn't occur to us. And because we were physically separated from most of the rest of the student body no one actively interacted with us negatively.

    My miserable school years were actually Elementary school, well elementary after grade 3 when people started deciding what was "cool". And their consensus was pretty much that it wasn't me.


    My Junior High was okay but much more drama filled than High School (probably much closer to people's normal high school experiences) I had a good group of friends of the "geeks and freaks" persuasion, but the school was again small enough that our group was of comparable size to that of the ones who considered themselves "popular".

    High school I had a lot of fun with good friends, I can't say I keep in active contact with all of them now, but I definitely did throughout much of University (helped by the fact that we were mostly at the same Uni). We were just geeks enjoying being geeks taking classes from the teachers that were already filtered out on the basis of being willing to put in the extra effort and time required of IB teachers. Now I"m not saying that IB is the only way to go... in fact I would argue that doing what I did and going full IB is just ridiculous but if you are actually interested in the subject take it in IB or AP or some other advanced form, if you can because you are more likely to get a good teacher... OR try to get into the regular placement classes with the teachers that also take on the advanced placement. It isn't garanteed but a better chance is, in my opinion, worth it.

    But High School to me was almost the beginning of my University years and both were things I enjoyed immensely even though stress did occassionally rear its ugly head in the form of being overwhelmed. I don't know if that helps at all, but essentially the reasons I enjoyed high school was a good small group of friends, relaxed, interested and interesting teachers who interacted with us as if we were peers rather than peons, and a lack of the negative interactions with people trying to solidify themselves within their own social groups (i.e. social marginilization and/or bullying).

    But really, the choices I made as to which junior and high school to attend were made on the basis of my elementary school experience and deciding that I didn't want to deal with that again and making very careful desicions, that ended with me having a longer trip to make to school in the morning, but what I think was a much better experience overall.

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  27. I look back on h.s. with fond memories. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that my self esteem was through the roof because I was just plain ignorant. We had the money for nice clothes, but I didn't care what I looked like. t-shirts and jeans, ponytail. Looking back, I think of myself as an ugly duckling. Now, I know I'm better than average looking, but I sure didn't know that then (or cared). I did well in classes, but wasn't the super smart geek. I was very good at sports and I know that helped with the self esteem thing. Growing up in the community and having the same friends for a decade helps too I think. I didn't realize what a socially awkward person I was until I got to college. Being around people I've known forever didn't point this fact out to me. Then I went to college and realized being an introvert was not ideal for this big boisterous social life of college. Really, I had higher self esteem in h.s. than I do now.

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  28. I was ambivalent about high school. My senior year there was some sort of snafu with the yearbook department and their advisor being pregnant & forgetful (her excuse), so my picture wasn't in the yearbook. I returned the thing, and for the next two days had to explain every 5 minutes or so why no-one could sign my yearbook. It was the oddest experience -- here I had considered myself a wallflower, barely involved with school activities or my classmates. To my surprise, everyone seemed to know my name and was upset on my behalf about the yearbook.

    Anyway, I graduated and didn't really think much of high school again. It's just one of the stations on the train ride of life -- I had passed through it, it was no longer relevant. So in early (May-ish?) 2008, I was tooling around on MySpace and I received a "friend request" from my old high school. Accept, why not? . . . and then the drama.

    Someone realized we had been out 10 years, but we hadn't planned a reunion. So they tried to arrange a get-together at a local bar, hoping to see at least some of the classmates before deployment (several boys in our class apparently joined the Army and were about to be deployed). Everything was set. I was even considering maybe stopping by for a few drinks and some catch-up. My husband thought it sounded okay, too. Good plan.

    Then our class president (or treasurer? I can't remember . . . somebody in that group) came on, quite upset that an unofficial reunion was being planned and she hadn't been consulted. She hijacked the guest list, required everyone to sign up for classmates.com, and rescheduled the reunion. She said if anyone went to the bar, they wouldn't be able to come to the "real" reunion, because she was class president (or whatever) and it was her job to do the reunion.

    It ended up happening in late October of that year. She charged $75 a head, extra if we wanted to use the provided sitter. Cash bar. At a hotel reception room. Formal dress. I didn't go -- it didn't sound vaguely amusing anymore, just like a major headache.

    The most baffling thing about the entire incident was that 10 years later, that chick was still invoking "class presidency" status like it meant something. And we all just let her. I couldn't believe it -- all I could think was, "Really? High school meant that much to you?"

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  29. I actually did not hate high school... but, in my case it wasn't because I wasn't nerdy or that I was popular but because I went to a very small high school that was connected to a larger one. The small high school was essentially just a separate campus or building that was used primarily for IB classes so I was in a very small group of people all of whom were just as geeky as I was and, while our classes had up to 15 people in them, there was a core group of about 8 people that were in ALL of them and we just sort of stuck together along with the less frequent satellites that were only in a few of our classes. There wasn't really any marginalization because of the small group size and our commonalities it just didn't occur to us. And because we were physically separated from most of the rest of the student body no one actively interacted with us negatively.

    My miserable school years were actually Elementary school, well elementary after grade 3 when people started deciding what was "cool". And their consensus was pretty much that it wasn't me.


    My Junior High was okay but much more drama filled than High School (probably much closer to people's normal high school experiences) I had a good group of friends of the "geeks and freaks" persuasion, but the school was again small enough that our group was of comparable size to that of the ones who considered themselves "popular".

    High school I had a lot of fun with good friends, I can't say I keep in active contact with all of them now, but I definitely did throughout much of University (helped by the fact that we were mostly at the same Uni). We were just geeks enjoying being geeks taking classes from the teachers that were already filtered out on the basis of being willing to put in the extra effort and time required of IB teachers. Now I"m not saying that IB is the only way to go... in fact I would argue that doing what I did and going full IB is just ridiculous but if you are actually interested in the subject take it in IB or AP or some other advanced form, if you can because you are more likely to get a good teacher... OR try to get into the regular placement classes with the teachers that also take on the advanced placement. It isn't garanteed but a better chance is, in my opinion, worth it.

    But High School to me was almost the beginning of my University years and both were things I enjoyed immensely even though stress did occassionally rear its ugly head in the form of being overwhelmed. I don't know if that helps at all, but essentially the reasons I enjoyed high school was a good small group of friends, relaxed, interested and interesting teachers who interacted with us as if we were peers rather than peons, and a lack of the negative interactions with people trying to solidify themselves within their own social groups (i.e. social marginilization and/or bullying).

    But really, the choices I made as to which junior and high school to attend were made on the basis of my elementary school experience and deciding that I didn't want to deal with that again and making very careful desicions, that ended with me having a longer trip to make to school in the morning, but what I think was a much better experience overall.

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  30. I look back on h.s. with fond memories. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that my self esteem was through the roof because I was just plain ignorant. We had the money for nice clothes, but I didn't care what I looked like. t-shirts and jeans, ponytail. Looking back, I think of myself as an ugly duckling. Now, I know I'm better than average looking, but I sure didn't know that then (or cared). I did well in classes, but wasn't the super smart geek. I was very good at sports and I know that helped with the self esteem thing. Growing up in the community and having the same friends for a decade helps too I think. I didn't realize what a socially awkward person I was until I got to college. Being around people I've known forever didn't point this fact out to me. Then I went to college and realized being an introvert was not ideal for this big boisterous social life of college. Really, I had higher self esteem in h.s. than I do now.

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  31. Yeah, I didn't fit in with the popular crowd in HS, but like simplysarah I had really nice group of friends. -- And we had sleepovers. If you want your heroine to like HS, but are having a hard time drawing her as popular, you might want to write her as somebody who doesn't care about fitting the mold. I imagine you can relate to that.

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  32. I was never popular or into anything like that--in fact, I was pretty tortured at some points--but I did like high school, especially in grade 11 and 12. Maybe it was because I realized that once I was out, life as I knew it would be over (because, really, things may not be ideal, but most kids have it pretty good in high school, in terms of having things taken care of for them). And I never drank or did drugs or anything like that, so I certainly didn't fit in with the "superawesomepopular crowd".

    What makes high school, I think, is a good, fun, and dorky set of friends, as well as being able to do schoolwork easily (so, not struggling with grades). I was always pretty socially awkward, but I did have a group that I always hung out with at lunch and then a couple of stray people from it during my spares. Cool librarians help, too.

    I guess I liked being in high school because I saw it as easy, and I knew it wasn't going to be after wards. I had some good friends who shared my values, eccentricities, hobbies, and humour, and high school gave me a way to hang out with my friends, and I also didn't have to work too hard or struggle with many things.

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  33. High school was a generally a good experience for me. I wouldn’t say that I loved it but do have many fond memories of it. I was never popular but I always had a handful of quirky friends that I hung out with. I was also the type that enjoyed my classes, not all of them of course, but I really liked a good number of them. I practically enjoyed English, history, science, and programming. I also took a ballroom dance class that I quite liked in place of a regular PE class (I hated PE).

    I never participated in any of the school clubs, but I did go to a few dances with when girls would ask me to go with them. One of the really unique things I did in high school was to put together a pretend country with my friends. I wrote a constitution and was later elected leader by my friends. We could often be found in the library discussing new laws and political scandals (you would be surprised at how many we invented for ourselves). I was generally politically minded even though I thought the idea of student government was ridiculous.

    My high school experience could probably be described as average with the exception of the few unique things I did.

    One of the things I also thought was funny was that while I lived Provo UT two of my best friends were not LDS, on was Wiccan, and the other was Unitarian. I remember learning a lot from them about their religions, and later when I left the Mormon faith some of the things they told me were the first steeping stones in leaving rethinking my own religious views.

    If I were to tell you one of my regrets from high school it would be the story of when a boy I had a crush on in my math class approached me and told me that he loved me. I didn’t react well. Even though I had liked him myself I was too afraid to admit that I was gay at the time. I ended up pushing him against the wall called him a faggot, and told him never to say anything like that to me again.

    It was sad really. We had been friends before that and my reaction kind of ruined it. I had even experimented with guys a little before then; I just wasn’t ready to admit to being gay.

    Anyhow that’s my high school experience in a nut shell.

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  34. Just some random brainstorming...

    Even if the overall feel of high-school is, for your protagonist, hell...perhaps you can make selected parts of it good. To paraphrase from Men in Black, individuals may be good, decent, and fun to be with one-on-one...but put them together in mobs and groups and they can be a pain. So maybe your character finds it relatively easy to get along with most people one-on-one...but not when they are in social groups. Maybe you could throw in a couple of fun teachers who might becomes her mentors so she enjoys extra-curricular activities like band or drama. Maybe she is a talented artist who can draw political cartoons dealing with social justice at school?

    So yeah, I think you can at least makes parts of the school experience fun for the character through a couple of fun relationships or activities. It would probably help if her parents are relatively well off socially and financially...not necessarily rich, but they can afford clothes, books, food, etc. so that the girl in school does not have to worry about such things. It is hard to enjoy school if you are constantly hungry and in a system where you don't get textbooks and computers are something you read about.

    Part of having fun may be simple ignorance, intolerable, and the ability to bully without repercussions.

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Religion, skepticism, and carving out a spiritual life post-Mormonism