Saturday, March 25, 2006
Life after high school
I regularly receive e-mail from my High School e-group. I really enjoy walking down memory lane and recalling all the stupid stuff we did back then. The trouble my friends and I got ourselves into were the stuff made for hilarious teen flicks. But I have read again and again, emails claiming that high school days were the greatest, how we were the best batch, how the friends you make there are the friends you have for life, etc. I agree to an extent. But frankly, I can't relate.
It isn't that I didn't enjoy a certain amount of popularity then or that my memories of those days were bad. Oh, I had a lot of fun in High School. I had a great time and as good a set of friends as you possibly can, at that age and level. I just really don't think that my high school days were the greatest in my life, you know.
I didn't realize how much peer pressure there was in High School until after I left. I felt free from the trappings of 'popularity' and being cool. After, the 'selection' I had were more varied too when it came to the things I did, the friends I made, the places I went to. I was freed from wanting to be cool and popular -- to being myself. I didn't need to affiliate myself with a group to feel good or accepted. In college, I even got out of a sorority pledge simply because I felt that I didn't need to kowtow through the inititiation rites to feel accepted by a 'society' -- a bunch of sorority sisters that will try and dictate to me what I should do during all my years in college. Hell, I didn't get freed from the peer pressure in high school only to jump into it again with a bunch of sorority sisters. I remained what the fraternities and the sororities call a "barbarian". I thought I was pretty cool the way I was, and the way I always being recruited to be a pledge told me that thought I was too. :)
I enjoyed High School but that was just the prelude. In College, I felt that the best was yet to come. Yup, I did so much more with my life after that. I had more than my shares of failures and some successes, but it's been one hell of a ride.
High School should be fun and memorable, but your glory days they should NOT be. There's just more to life after, you know.
It isn't that I didn't enjoy a certain amount of popularity then or that my memories of those days were bad. Oh, I had a lot of fun in High School. I had a great time and as good a set of friends as you possibly can, at that age and level. I just really don't think that my high school days were the greatest in my life, you know.
I didn't realize how much peer pressure there was in High School until after I left. I felt free from the trappings of 'popularity' and being cool. After, the 'selection' I had were more varied too when it came to the things I did, the friends I made, the places I went to. I was freed from wanting to be cool and popular -- to being myself. I didn't need to affiliate myself with a group to feel good or accepted. In college, I even got out of a sorority pledge simply because I felt that I didn't need to kowtow through the inititiation rites to feel accepted by a 'society' -- a bunch of sorority sisters that will try and dictate to me what I should do during all my years in college. Hell, I didn't get freed from the peer pressure in high school only to jump into it again with a bunch of sorority sisters. I remained what the fraternities and the sororities call a "barbarian". I thought I was pretty cool the way I was, and the way I always being recruited to be a pledge told me that thought I was too. :)
I enjoyed High School but that was just the prelude. In College, I felt that the best was yet to come. Yup, I did so much more with my life after that. I had more than my shares of failures and some successes, but it's been one hell of a ride.
High School should be fun and memorable, but your glory days they should NOT be. There's just more to life after, you know.
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