Looking back to analyze school daze

Did you enjoy your high school years?


A former classmate asked this on Facebook a few weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since. This has been challenging because my high school memories are growing fuzzy, like a picture viewed through a frame covered in decades of dust.


What I do remember is that I approached school like a job, which sounds harsher than I intend because I like working. Work gives people purpose. So if school was my job, then I enjoyed going there, showing up every day, being a good employee and doing the assigned tasks. Like many workers, I goofed off sometimes and was written up occasionally, but for the most part, I was probably considered eligible for rehire.


I had friends in high school, took some good and not-so-good classes, made memories of both the smiling and cringing varieties, and experienced the four years without much fanfare. (College felt much the same way.)


American society has fetishized school in general and high school in particular through a series of sitcoms, movies and comic books designed to make those years more significant than they already are. “Happy Days,” “American Graffiti,” “The Blackboard Jungle,” “Archie,” and dozens (hundreds?) more have entrenched high school into pop-culture parlance — the jocks, nerds, mean girls, greasers, goths and preps. Everybody had a role to play and a place to play it, be it the science classroom, study hall, Big Game or Big Dance. The really scary kids acted out their roles in the bathrooms or the alley out back, of course, but they too are part of the popular conception of high school.


Most comedy or drama results from people stepping outside their comfort zones, so a jock interacting with a goth in the hallway or a mean girl partnering with a nerd for the science fair is a source of numerous angsty conversations or witty one-liners, depending on the genre. How much this happens in real life is the subject of some debate, especially if those roles are exaggerated anyway.


One unintended consequence of all this media attention is to super-size many teens’ expectations for high school, making those eight semesters the Mount Everest of existence before they’ve even had a chance to experience them. To have a great high school career is to have a great life, and if every moment isn’t absolutely saturated in fun and zaniness ... well, there must be something wrong with you.


Ironically, or maybe inevitably, the other side of that high school mountain is populated by people who reached the peak of life in their teen years and who believe, in the words of the immortal prophet John Mellencamp, that “oh, yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” These are the folks drawn to the past like a hypnotized mark to the swinging watch, seduced by the halcyon days of lettermen jackets and pompoms, where such objects have an almost totemic appeal.


They are attracted by the alleged simplicity of high school, before marriage, mortgage and the other challenges of adult life. They are the bar sitters, the wistful what-if-ers, and the targets of many a weight-loss, hair-growth and sports-car ad campaign.



My own high school memories are complicated, too, by the fact that I’ve spent 20 years of my adult life as a teacher, watching my students navigate the sometimes treacherous, sometimes wonderful, route to adulthood.


In this context, the question “Did you enjoy your high school years?” becomes much more vital, especially with the school year about to begin.


I want my students to enjoy their high school years, not because the time is the be-all, end-all of their existence (it’s not), but because people do better at something that they like, with people they like being around.


Enjoyment doesn’t have to mean unbridled joy at every turn. It does mean that students are engaged in something that they find value in, either because it relates to their life today or to an activity or job they want to pursue tomorrow.


Sometimes — maybe even often — this engagement is hard work. It requires putting off activities that bring instant gratification (an evening of Fortnite) for something that will pay dividends later (an evening of calculus).


In this regard, all of us — relatives, friends, neighbors — can help the young people in our lives to engage with school. We can ask them about their day, classes and the future, and then really listen when they answer. We can help them find the resources they need — academic, social, mental-health, financial — to persevere. We can limit their exposure to negative influences and give them opportunities to grow in positive ways.


And we can remind them, no matter how great or how dismal their school experiences, that these years are just one part of what will be a long and fruitful life.



That way, 20 or 30 years later, maybe they will be able to see past the media-induced stereotypes if they are ever asked, “Did you enjoy your high school years?”


chris.schillig@yahoo.com


@cschillig on Twitter