Weekend epiphany # 5
If you’re not in the mood for revelation, look away. I hated high school. It’s no secret; I’ve written about it a few times. Most of those years I remember as an abyss of rage, misery, and loathing. You don’t know how angry I was, I was about two minutes from going Columbine. I don’t blame the school; I probably would’ve been as miserable elsewhere, and my family life didn’t help. I don’t blame my classmates because I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me. I was an angry, alienated teenager—not a unique situation, and not one I relish remembering.
That should be the end of the story, but for the ironies that follow. Anger gave me material. I actually became mildly famous for being angry. (It was the grunge era; rage was in.) This is not how I thought my life would turn out, but on the whole it works. And now because of the fame shit my old school wants to have something to do with me.
Do you know how warped and bizarre that is? I have no school spirit. I can’t get nostalgic for the time I spent seething. When I watched Auraeus’s movie Pisay I wished I had been like those kids, well-adjusted and happy. I can’t feign retroactive bonhomie. Then I realized that no one is asking me to do these things. It’s just a gig for which I’m qualified. I talked it over with my friends, I talked it over with the alumni, and I thought, what the fuck, I’ll do it. It’ll be an exorcism.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 27th, 2007 at 14:37
Oh yeah, the school taking credits for having one smart ass making it big!! Suddenly they want to coin a building after you….or put your name in gold plate on one of your school pillars!! The works!! *applause*
Highschool, no matter how much I hate it though, still holds the best years as far as being educated is concerned. Forget melodrama, prom’s worst dress, Vitamin-C graduation song playing on the background, and whachamacallits!
Fast forward 10 years and i’m looking forward to our own version of ROMY AND MICHELLE’S HIGHSCHOOL REUNION!! I wonder who would claim post-its! *giggles*
August 28th, 2007 at 00:46
Don’t worry. I’m sure some things have changed after all those years; karma would have been mostly served by now. ;)
I can’t say my HS life was a joyride. I got kicked out of PHSA for flunking chem on my 3rd year (more like the teacher flunked me mainly because he did not like me). Imagine the annoying task of looking for a school that would take me in as a senior. A little over ten years after the kick out incident, the horrible chem teacher died of cancer. A lot of students who suffered under his class were finally able to sleep well. :P
August 28th, 2007 at 01:53
Sorry to say but I was one of those normal, well-adjusted, happy kids in high school… i LOVED high school… it was college that got me – the “big pond, small fish” syndrome… till i learned how to swim
“that which does not kill you only makes you stronger”
August 28th, 2007 at 09:30
the very purpose of going through high school is torture. unless you lost your virginity during the senior year, then that would be awesome…
August 28th, 2007 at 16:42
What I hated most in high school was being made to take cooking, sewing, embroidery and other useless arts and crafts things like egg mosaic. I wanted to study calligraphy, drafting and carpentry, Morse Code and electronics. When my mother and I talked to the Sister Principal that I’d rather attend the boys’ arts and crafts lessons because I am already good at the girls’ arts and crafts, I was told by the good Sister that my place was with the girls. And that if I was already good at the girls’ crafts then all the better for me because then was the time to perfect my craft. I never had a chance to perfect my supposed craft. I was never given advanced projects. I was still asked to cook tinola when I could already cook a mean caldereta. I was still made to sew a simple sack pillow case when I could already sew a shirt. I was made to do pencil drawings of flowers when I could already render a person’s face in pencil and water color. And when I submitted advanced projects rather than basic ones I was told I was being arrogant. And if I did not want a failing grade, I’d better redo the complicated project in front of the teacher, or submit a simple one done at home.
Unless one is born a prodigy, high school never was and still is not the place and time to perfect something. It is the time and place to explore.
August 28th, 2007 at 19:50
I’ve also felt the same angst and rage you encountered in high school. I know it’s not worth reminiscing, but it makes us who we are, right? If it weren’t for those traumas, you wouldn’t have written such great essays and sardonic journals/blogs we readers love about you.
I once read that if you cut your finger with something sharp, it will instantly bleed and the pain exceeding in that sudden action will bringforth the cries and outbreaks. But after these, your finger will feel better than it was before you had cut it. The author talks about the latter as “Pain before Pleasure”. “Sometimes, it takes true pain to experience true pleasure,” she says.
I know you’re a pessimist, but what the hay. The author had hit something in the heart, hadn’t she?
(silence)
Now go back to being a pessimist.
August 29th, 2007 at 13:45
I liked the start of my high school. It was towards the end when I sort of awoken to the feeling of alienation that faced me. It was strange. Things just started to gray down as high school was reaching its end.
August 31st, 2007 at 08:49
High school was somehow fun until you started to become different – when all the others girls were starting to grow breasts and you did not and they were menstruating and you did not (yet). The one thing that somehow made you fit was you belonged to the higher 10% (intellect-wise) of the class/batch and that you have creative juices flowing in you, your English & Lit teacher made you her doppelganger (as if it made up for being so skinny to the point of looking not having enough food at home – a classmate once pointed out during health class you were an example of how a person looks if you have marasmic kwashiorkor ).
The bright side of it (you never really get to see it that way until you encounter/get through so much in the next 5 or ten years) is that it made you realize early on that if you are an intellectual life form, you are more sensible than all the curvy and pretty girls combined who can’t even figure out what’s doppelganger or pro bono or juxtapose.
Cheers JZ!
August 31st, 2007 at 11:20
yes that’s right. after all you have accomplishments to be proud of.