I’m with you, Elena — I would NOT want to go back there. For me, high school was actually a tale of 3 completely different stories, as I went to 3 different schools, and was in 3 much different places at each one. The first, where I went for the first 3 years, was an all-boys catholic school that I simply hated, from the first day to the last that I went there. I hated that there were no girls around.

Being the 5th boy, the 4 olders all having gone to the same school and graduated, I assumed it was expected I would do the same. When, after my junior year, I announced I intended to go to the public school for senior year, my parents thought it was a good idea. (I’d really tanked my junior year).

My best class in that school was Typing — I was the fastest, most accurate typist in my class, and that skill has served me better than anything else I learned in those 3 years.

At the public school, I was this nobody that only one person really knew, out of thousands. By the time I left, in March of that year, I’d kind of made a name for myself. I’d thrown a crazy keg party at my house that over 125 kids came to (the reason I had to leave mid-year), dated one of the more popular girls (through a fluke of knowing someone who knew her and catching her on a rebound), and I pulled a few pranks that got a lot of attention (started a food fight in the cafeteria, among other things).

I was tanking even worse there than my junior year, but when my family moved to Connecticut, my mom challenged me to turn things around at the new place, and I did. I was very close to not being able to graduate, but I stopped getting high and drinking, buckled down and pulled all A’s and B’s in the last quarter, just squeaking by.

I’ve never been to a reunion for any of those schools. I felt like life only really began after I graduated. (Well, the summer after graduation I was suicidal, but after that, life began)!