Reflecting Upon My Own School Experiences

I had rather drastically different middle and high school experiences. I went to a little country school for K-8th grade (Lascassas Elementary). We're talking kids used to conjure up Bloody Mary and the Bell Witch of Tennessee (who was a relative of our librarian, she had a genealogy and non-fiction book about her in the library to prove it) during recess and then baptise themselves in the stream at the back of the playground. It was more of a middle-school setting because I graduated in a class of 60 and followed with the same class from 6-8th grade. Since there were so few students, we had very few extra programs, teams, and such. But it was also very personal.

We joined the city kids at one of the large public high school, Oakland High School, after graduating. I had a class of 470 when I graduated. At the time, there were only 2 public high schools in our town and they were extremely overcrowded. In the last 10 years, they have built 2 additional schools. The original two schools were rather diverse. They really just took the kids who came from the two sides of a large town which created two socioeconomically and racially diverse high schools, and I think that was helpful to me. Even though I took honors classes and roamed the halls rather clueless about what was going on in some of my peers' lives, I had glimpses of diversity, and it was good for me. With the addition of the 2 new schools, many of the best teachers from my high school experience left to go one of the new schools, and I have heard now that Oakland is now the "rough" school.

I was a really busy high schooler. I swam, sang in a choir, headed up one of the Christian organizations, took multiple instrument and voice lessons, was really active in my church, and did all of my homework. Perfectly. Because if you haven't noticed yet. I was an over-achiever. Thus, it wasn't unheard of for me to have a day that looked like this--

• 5:00 - swim practice
• 7:25 - meet with my best friend in the parking lot of the school and read. For fun. In her car. 
• 7:45 - school 
• 3:00 - swim practice
• 5:30 - cello lesson
• 6:30 - church activity
• 8:30 - homework
• 9:30 - bed. (Yes, I also went to bed at 9:30 as a high schooler.) 

As you may have gathered from my description of myself, I wasn't entirely "with it" as a teen. I was a bit of a geek. I was in a bubble of achievement, and I had no idea what other kids do after school until they went to bed after midnight. Additionally, I took pretty much entirely honors classes, music, and art, and so even my school time was spent in a bubble of achievement. I sat eating homemade salads and grilled chicken for lunch, and I have *no idea* what our cafeteria served, but I'm suspicious it wasn't salad and grilled chicken.

I remember many quirky teachers who in the end probably taught us well, but I don't have this grand-impact memory about most of them. In retrospect, I don't think I stood out to teachers. I think I was maybe uninterestingly studious. (The same held true for college.) While most people I know have a teacher who connected with them in some way and interested them in the subject matter or life in general, I never really had a teacher who seemed to care about me. So, there are a few whose classes I remember fondly because I liked the content myself or because I felt they taught particularly well - Mr. Gardner (8th grade Algebra), Mrs. Daniels (described in a previous post), Mrs. Frazier (French).

I would love to forget my Algebra 2 class, please. My memory of the teacher is that she was a terribly poor communicator. I don't know if she knew the Algebra 2 content or not, but whatever content she knew was lost in the distraction of her saying "coocolator" and speaking unclearly. Some students openly mocked her, I squirmed through class and wished the painful experience was over, for everyone involved. After that class, I remember taking the textbook home and reading it on my own and doing the exercises over the summer, making sure I had the content knowledge for my Trig/Pre-Calc class. Again, yes, I was that student.

I don't remember much peer or parental pressure. I think one would argue that if my sister and I were both so driven, we had to have had parental pressure, but if we did, it was masterfully subversive. I do remember wanting to have romantic interests and my parents refusing. But I didn't have any particular candidates banging at my door, so even if I wanted to, there was no opportunity to go behind their backs and make out or whatever anyway.

And I just didn't have time to have peer pressure. I do remember my date to prom wanting to kiss me, and I just wasn't into him, and so I started throwing my shoes at the ducks and chasing them to disperse some of the pressure. Smooth.

I think I felt undesirable and isolated. I knew subconsciously that I lived a different life from most of the people around me, and I watched crush after crush go and find more classic girlfriends. But I was also pretty happy and self-confident that I had my future interests in mind. Call it a swan-complex, but I knew that I was a bit awkward and undesirable to teens but that I was talented, smart, and driven and I could make it in the world at large. I also had several good friends and didn't really want from activity. It kept me out of trouble.