I had a lot of fun in high school. I also had many miserable times. I had a couple of friends who had my back. Overall, my high school experience was a success, but I wouldn't want to do it again. I have speculated that nobody, and I mean nobody, thinks they were popular in high school. I mentioned this theory to an adult friend of mine not all that long ago. We both agreed that although we both had friends and we weren't the ones everybody picked on, we didn't think of ourselves as popular. My friend then said, "It's not like we were captain of the cheerleading squad." So I had to respond, "Oh. Actually, yeah, I was captain of the cheerleading squad." At that point she completely refused to believe that I wasn't popular in high school. Which kinda proves my point, I may have been the captain of the cheerleading squard, but I did not think of myself as popular.
I did not want to be "popular." I was perfectly happy being in that middle echelon of non-descript students. I had close friends and was friends with others in all groups. The "popular" kids were the snooty snoots from you-know-where, and I really wanted nothing to do with them. What constituted as popular back then, I wanted no part of.
I went to the same school from 7th through 10th grade. I'm sure there were those that were more popular than others but, since the school only had 500 students in K-12, it was hard to tell.
I then moved to a new school (and country) for my Jr and Sr years - there were almost twice as many students in my graduating class as there were in my prior school K-12. There were definitely cliques but I was fortunate to have a group of friends that didn't really care if we were popular or not. I tended to get along with everyone.
I had a great time by sophomore year of HS once I got established with my groups and found my people. It’s pretty crazy to see those folks now and understand a bit more about why they were my people then. My 2 main HS girlfriends grew up to be a research scientist for dementia and in charge of defense policy for New Zealand. Half the other girls in my HS appear to be selling multilevel marketing life coaching on Facebook so I found Waldo, if you know what I mean.
Middle school, particularly 7th grade, was tough. I was brand new and we lived with my grandma while our house was being built. Grandma smoked like a chimney so I was the new kid that smelled like stale cigarettes in 7th grade. Not a good thing to be.
Not to play a game of one-upmanship (yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing), my 5th-8th grade was spent in a K-12 school with 180 kids total. I was in the second-largest grade, and we had 22-25 kids in the class (depending on the year). My brother's high school graduating class was eight students.
I moved directly from there to a high school with ~1500 students (~350 in the freshman class), so you have me beat there.
I was never popular, and I never wanted to be. I was never UNpopular, either. My core of friends and I just hung out together and did our thing while the world swirled around us. We were walking the inevitable high school line of being intentionally non-conformist, but as a group.
We moved to Arizona for my freshman year of high school. From a middle school with about 100 kids in the 8th grade to a high school with nearly 700 students in the freshman class fed by two middle schools. I never was popular nor unpopular, but I also didn't really find my groove in HS*. It may have been worse for my sister who moved after her freshman year in KY. Her grades plummeted but did recover a bit over the last couple years.
*I'm not sure I really found it while I was at Duke. I do think I hit my groove at grad school.
I desperately wanted to move - my father (Duke 68) had a job offer in Spartanburg. We lived in Charlotte. I was in eighth grade, at the height of self-loathing. I was entranced by the prospect of a fresh start.
I was a wildly insecure young person. If I had known I would grow up to have eleven DBR sporks, I'm sure my self-esteem would have been immense.
The best part of the smaller school - I've gone to class reunions for that school. Unfortunately, none of them in the city where the school is located. We had one in Baltimore and another in New Orleans. I've never heard anything about a reunion from the school where I actually graduated.
Your brother "beats" my sister - she had 24 in her graduating class but I can't remember how many countries were represented. Four years later, I graduated in a class of 934. My culture shock was greater moving back to the States than it was moving to Japan in 4th grade.
Four years before her, my middle sibling graduated in a class of around 120 and had 30 countries represented, if I recall correctly.
My parents were in the same high school class, Marshall High School in Huntington, West Virginia. There were a total of 17 students in that class. More than a third of them, 6 total, 3 males and 3 females, married other members of that class. If you include the 2 students who married someone in either the class one year ahead or one year behind (both of those classes were more than twice as big), over half married someone they went to high school with. Yes, there are lots of people who marry their high school sweethearts, but half your graduating class? That's gotta be up there, percentage wise.
My grandfather was the only graduate of his high school in Buena Vista, GA. All his classmates had dropped out over the years.
Of course his family valued education. They moved their house from the farm into town when he was a kid to make it easier to attend, and later his younger sister taught in WV for decades.
-jk
I had the absolute best day yesterday. And dear Lord I needed it. I haven't had a win in a long time and I had two friends show up for me yesterday in a way that is so unbelievably humbling. We had an amazing day paddle boarding on Biscayne Bay and some amazing Peruvian cuisine after. Pretty much just the perfect day.