Note to high schoolers: Cliques are stupid

[opebo]

I wore those glasses in high school and I was in a clique.  We used to go to a teacher's house to eat fried egg sandwiches and watch recordings of Dr. Who after schoo.  Despite all that I was voted 'most likely to succeed'.

And people on this forum actually argue that opebo is not the best. It's madness.

I take a great and forthright pleasure in your approbation, Lief, and I will add that though the other two members of my clique have fallen to horrible demises (one is a computer repairman, the other has reproduced!) I have nothing but fond memories of them.

You know the funny thing was I was the last of the three to lose his virginity - the least uncool of us lost it to a wonderful Joan-Jettesque high-school-tramp type who joined us in our Dr. Who get-together once, only to eschew the Who and drink up the host's pop's whiskey (we'd never noticed it there in the bar in all the months we'd gathered) - and the teacher's boy himself to a fat and frilly girl who he later married briefly (whilst unbeknownst to him she two-timed him with various slugs and lowlifes!).  For myself this transition to 'adulthood' would have to wait till freshman year of college - though bizarrely enough the agent of my transformation was the self-same high-school tramp - she visited me once at the dormitory just to burst the cherry opebo!

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Everything in high school is irrelevant. Thing is, people typically have to graduate before they can appreciate the true irrelevance of it all. I often think that my life only really began when I accepted my high school diploma. Four years from now, I'll probably say the same thing, except about accepting my college diploma.

Not true, high schools are usually like a small town that doesn't get along. It might not be relevant for most of your life, but it makes social interactions for four years in there ing retarded.

     Well everything is relevant in its own context, so that's not what I meant. What I was trying to say is that things that people care about in high school have essentially no value after they graduate.

[opebo]

    Well everything is relevant in its own context, so that's not what I meant. What I was trying to say is that things that people care about in high school have essentially no value after they graduate.

Not precisely true.  All I cared about in high school was 1) avoiding humiliation, and 2) getting laid (this last was a distant, impossible dream at that time).

Nowadays I have fair success with #2, but I'm actually humiliated on a daily basis by paid employment - then I only worried about the possibility of being 'pantsed' (it never actually happened to me, though I witness it many times).

(pantsed - when someone in the gymnasium pulls down your gym-shorts in front of the other fellows and the girls across the gymnasium.  ideally he pulls down your underpants at the same time):

[Mechaman]

    Everything in high school is irrelevant. Thing is, people typically have to graduate before they can appreciate the true irrelevance of it all. I often think that my life only really began when I accepted my high school diploma. Four years from now, I'll probably say the same thing, except about accepting my college diploma.

From my own college experience, sort of true.

You could take a lot of the same attitudes about getting laid before the end of high school and apply it to getting engaged before the end of college.  There is kind of this feeling that if you don't get engaged or don't have a serious romantic relationship while in college you're a loser.  Sure, rarely anybody outright says this, but peer pressure is pretty damning.  If there is one thing that college has taught me it is that the value of marriage is highly overrated amongst young people.  I mean, these kids are like 23 f***ing years old man!  They got all the years in the world to be breeders, at least try to enjoy being single while you can.

Also, there is this expectation that you should know what you're going to be doing with the rest of your life when you graduate.  Wrongo, you only know what your major is going to be.  A large number of college graduates inevitably end up doing a professional job in a field different from their own (like Accounting Majors becoming Museum Curators).  Keep in mind, also the emphasis on staying the hell away from Liberal Arts because "people with Liberal Arts degrees are low wage f****ts who'll spend their first few years working at Wally World!"  With so many kids who possibly could've been Literature or History majors who have had so many adult figures and contemporaries drill in the idea that following their dreams would be akin to a low wage death sentence and thus "settle" for "higher paying" degrees, is it any wonder that a lot of grads now days don't have a funking clue about what they want to do with life?

SO yes, arguably your life really does begin after college.  Sure, in college you had freedom from parent figures or what not, but you had the slavery of education upon you.  You had to go to class, you had to take tests and other sh*t.  If you fail out of college, your life begins even earlier.  Not being in the state of education is the freest feeling anybody can have.  Having a professional college degree may not be a magic key to a professional job (you have to work at it, like I am), but once you have it you will be thankful you do have it.  And if you don't know what you want to do with your life after you graduate that isn't a problem as long as you kind of have an idea of how you want to start out.  Just find a job field you feel comfortable working in and send in your resumes and cover letters.  You got the rest of your life to find out what you want to do with it, college is mostly just insurance that makes finding one easier (if you will).

So remember mostly, that if you graduate and you don't know what you want to do with your life it is not wasted.  Rather, you can use the experience you do have to help you gather more experience that will (hopefully) guide you towards your path in life.  Unless of course, you like living with your parents , which is a fate I consider worse than death.

NOTE: I really like my parents.  They are the coolest parents anybody could have, but the idea of being a leach for the rest of my life is a scary existence.  So don't take this as a "Mechaman hates his parents" comment at the end.

[opebo]

You could take a lot of the same attitudes about getting laid before the end of high school and apply it to getting engaged before the end of college.  There is kind of this feeling that if you don't get engaged or don't have a serious romantic relationship while in college you're a loser.

What the heck?  You mean BOYS feel they should get engaged?  Or are you only talking about girls?  Because I've never heard any male person talk about a 'need to get engaged' - that's just crazy.  Anyway for me the idea of marriage or 'seriousness' in relationship terms never entered my head once during college.

Unless of course, you like living with your parents , which is a fate I consider worse than death.

Isn't living with one's parents after college nearly inevitable nowadays?

[Хahar 🤔]

I think this whole marriage pressure thing might be Oklahoma-specific.

[dead0man]

     Everything in high school is irrelevant. Thing is, people typically have to graduate before they can appreciate the true irrelevance of it all. I often think that my life only really began when I accepted my high school diploma. Four years from now, I'll probably say the same thing, except about accepting my college diploma.

From my own college experience, sort of true.

You could take a lot of the same attitudes about getting laid before the end of high school and apply it to getting engaged before the end of college.  There is kind of this feeling that if you don't get engaged or don't have a serious romantic relationship while in college you're a loser.  Sure, rarely anybody outright says this, but peer pressure is pretty damning.  If there is one thing that college has taught me it is that the value of marriage is highly overrated amongst young people.  I mean, these kids are like 23 f***ing years old man!  They got all the years in the world to be breeders, at least try to enjoy being single while you can.

While I agree with your entire post (life really begins after college, a degree is insurance, you have a lifetime to figure out what you want to do with it, mooching on the 'rents isn't fun), I must stress that getting married young (under 30) is the biggest mistake many people make in life.  It's not that big of a deal for a woman to get preggers for the first time at 30+, unlike in the past where it was a more serious issue.  There is NO (or at least few reasons) to get married young.  I certainly regret it and I've heard that echoed by others far and wide.  Live together if you must, but marriage and kids should wait, in my old man opinion. 

And some people should never get married and there is much less stigma attached to that then ever before, which is a good thing.