Back to High School

As I am home for my spring break, I decided that I should stop by my high school for a day and visit. Despite my love/hate relationship with my high school, I knew that I would return to my alma mater whenever I was in town again, because it definitely had a huge impact on the person I turned out to be. Even if I have mixed feelings about the school itself, some of the best teachers I’ve ever had are still there, as well as some of my friends who were a year or two younger than me, and of course I want to see them as often as I can when I am back in town.

It’s funny how my perspective of high school has changed since graduating. Now that I am 3/4 of the way through my first year in college, I am much more appreciative of some of the classes and activities I experienced in high school, because as corny as it sounds, it did prepare me for college. At the same time though, I wish my high school hadn’t been quite so rigorous, and that we didn’t have a million and one graduation requirements in addition to the standard ones¹. It would have been nice to have some space to breathe between classes and to catch a break when going home for the day, rather than being at school from 8am – 3pm, play practice/sports practice from 3pm – 5/6pm, and then going home and doing homework from 6pm till the wee hours of the early morning, before going to sleep and repeating the cycle all over again. We all got the good grades, the college acceptance letters, and a stellar academic record, but not all of us managed to experience our adolescent years to the fullest.

I like going back and visiting my high school because it’s like getting back in touch with my roots again. Even though I transferred into my high school at the beginning of my junior year, it’s a place I will always feel like I have a connection to, especially when the teachers that taught me are still teaching there. I love going back and talking to all of my teachers, giving them updates on my life in college as well as my life in general post-high school. Most of my teachers have made the transition from teacher to friend, and the friendship I have with them has been invaluable. Teachers are fantastic people, and I am very appreciative of the fact that I know they are there for me both as friend and mentor even though it is no longer their duty to mentor me as I’m not one of their students anymore.

In a few years time, I expect that I will visit my high school less and less, and perhaps stop visiting there once and for all once all of my friends have graduated, and new teachers slowly replace all the ones that taught me. But it’s not necessarily the school building itself I like going back to, that make me want to return and visit again and again. It doesn’t matter whether I see them in my high school building or not, what matters is that I am able to see them and we are able to catch up about all the things that have happened since we last saw each other. It’s why that even when I am on break from school, I find myself retracing my high school steps and keeping in touch with people that I once saw every day in my high school career.

1. Aside from the usual four years of English, three years of math, etc. that most high schools require for graduation, school plays and sports teams were graduation requirements at my high school as well as community service. [↩]

Tags: high school