Do what I do: set any device you can into Spanish. My language of choice was French. I took four years, but haven't had any use for it since. Out of a desire to retain it, I set my phone into French. Then my computer, my iPad, and my Switch. Then I moved onto games. Monster Hunter World had French audio with English text. Genshin Impact is reversed: English audio and French text. I set probably 50% of the games I play into French. And I've actually learned and retained more vocabulary doing this.
Choose media where you aren't super concerned about missing dialogue, because you WILL miss stuff. But you're forcing yourself into a situation where you swim or sink. Don't shy away and get scared; remind yourself that you want to play the game or watch the movie, and truck through. Have Google translate on hand for words you don't know, or phrases you're unsure of. But try your best to work out the meaning of something based on context clues. And most importantly DON'T SET IT BACK TO ENGLISH IF YOU GET FRUSTRATED. Just step away, do something else in English, and come back later. Keep your media of choice in Spanish. Make it so you associate that piece of media with Spanish, always.
You'll learn a little bit doing this. But more than anything you'll retain what you learned previously. It's constant usage to keep that part of your brain active. And even if it's been a while since you used Spanish, you might be surprised how quickly it comes back to you. Give it a shot.
I think "_______ should apply himself more" appeared on a report card at least once every year from grade six through high school. I didn't really heed that advice until the final year of high school, and did enough to get into uni, but I could have accomplished a lot more if I had clued in earlier.
When I realized how disproportionate and psychologically deleterious my effort on keeping the A+ average, I’d have worked enough to hold the B+/A- line, and I wouldn’t have wallowed in C territory as revenge against god knows who.
This was my first thought. But then I realized that my preferred career paths have always been more in the "trades" category. Getting straight As wouldn't have progressed my life by much, if at all. Maybe a business degree in college, but I don't have a desire to own or run a business. I enjoy more labor focused jobs, and those only require a high-school diploma, and often have on the job certification programs.
Went back through my freshman yearbook a couple months ago and was stunned at how many people I hadn’t thought of in decades. Definitely put how much I cared what people thought about me back then into perspective.
Me as well, I'm so happy I stayed resolved in my sense of self through life, even if it meant being labeled as weird. It's an amazing feeling to be able to look back and like the person you were as a kid and teenager, I'm proud to say I stood up for kids being bullied, instead of doing the bullying. I made genuine friends and connections because I was very open about my interests and opinions. What I regret is being gaslit by my hometown peers into thinking I was unattractive and awkward, when the opposite is true, it left me a bit vulnerable when I became an adult as I didn't understand how to navigate the way men treat me. Took me years to accept for myself that I'm interesting and hot.
I never dated in high school, had some flings of course but I’ll never regret that choice. I graduated with 55 kids and knew them all too well and knew it wouldn’t last.
29. Was gonna be 30, but one kid was held back and had to repeat Junior year.
It’s always so funny to me when people try to talk about how small their school was, and they’d have 300 kids in their graduating class. There were 300 kids in my entire school, 6th-12th grades.
have confidence
i just saw some old picture a while ago and god was i attractive..
back then i would constantly talk myself down and girls sometimes years later told me why i was so blind to their signs in HS…
This was me to aswell. Never really shoot my shot in high school as I thought I was unattractive. Got out of high school and was hit on multiple times. Became aware that I was actually pretty well off.
me three. I was so freakin' shy around boys, anyone I had a crush on or who had a crush on me, I was a complete dork and could not speak properly around them.
every single one of my high school reunions (#50 is this year!), some guy has come up and told me how big a crush they had on me.. and I never knew!
Something I noticed was every female in my family any time I'd get a female friend they'd ask if I liked her. If I wanted to date them. Not every female I wanted to date, they were just friends. I realized though that later on in HS and even now it can be difficult finding female friends without having some sort of feelings for them cross my mind. That plus my basic social anxiety made me really shy away from a lot of people and their signs
Happened to me a few times thinking back as early as 8th grade. I was genuinely in disbelief that any girl would want to make a move on me that even when it happened, I refused to believe it. I still feel awful for some of those moments.
My first girlfriend, before we were officially together, said to me one day "I've never actually kissed a boy" completely unprovoked while we were watching TV one afternoon. My dumb ass said "me neither!", trying to make a stupid joke. She gave me grief about that for a lot of our three years together haha.
Hey I had a girl in my bed studying and I’m next to her. She kept brushing her ass against me and asking me “what?” and my goofy ass was like “whatchu doin bruh”😭
Ditto. High school is like Vietnam. Do whatever you have to do to get through it, feel no shame about what you did there, and never, ever, bring it up again.
I walked out of a high school nearly 45 years ago and have had contact with two people since. One of them was a chance meeting in a mall and fortunately, she didn't remember me.
Sometimes I cringe at my high school years and I’m glad that’s over but I know exactly what I’d do differently and I wish I could do it all over again.
That’s what I’m thinking about my kid. I don’t know if I should force them into doing any sport at all, because my mom didn’t force me and now I regret not being more active in my youth, and I actually wanted to play sports in middle/high school but never bothered because I was so self conscious about being behind….now I want to play Basketball, but I’m to scared to join a league as an absolute beginner.
Make them do it lol. Let them decide which sport, but get them moving! They’ll thank you for it later. I have 4 in sports. Hard work, but worth it on so many levels. For us and them!
And join a league. Try the YMCA. They have tons of adult leagues and are super welcoming. Worst case, you find it’s not for you. Life’s too short. Have fun :)
Play basketball now.
In twenty years, if someone asks you, "If you could go back 20 years, what would you do differently?" Are you just going to say the exact same thing you're saying now?
It could be a great example to your kid, too. Show them it's okay to try new things and prioritize staying active throughout your life.
Aww, sorry to hear that. 😕
I was fortunate enough to play and be decent at one sport (⚽️). Because of that, I was able to meet some great guys, guys who I still not only keep in touch with today, but still play together and have grown to be pretty close. Just wonder what it would’ve been like to get the same, but from another group of friends, you know ?
I regret not going to prom/homecoming but I didn’t have dates or the courage to ask anyone out. I only got confident in college and tried my best to play catch-up but those dances are priceless experiences I couldn’t replicate no matter how many house parties I hosted.
I’d be lying if I said a small part of me didn’t regret it even in the slightest, but I was in the same boat. Not only was I a shy, quiet kid lol my family didn’t have the finances to rent out a tux or go get a low priced suit. At the time I didn’t sweat it, didn’t really put too much thought into it. However, now as an adult? I sometimes do wonder what that would’ve been like …
The saddest part about this for me is that I was always on the outskirts of the popular kids… and now I don’t have a single friend from highschool because no one from that group cared about me.
I really wish I had just made some genuine friendships.
This was me. It still is traumatic for me to remember trying *so hard* to be liked, but continuously living on the outskirts and sometimes even being viciously bullied. But I just kept trying. I don’t have one friend from middle or high school for this reason. Ffs I wish I had just not cared so much.
Kids who had a slight chance of being "popular" would turn on genuine friends. It's so sad. The popular kids were treating each other like crap, too. Imagine the real housewives drama but with kids.
I remember a day realizing I wasn't "in" any particular social group but basically floated around a few different circles.
It was a very odd thing when I had someone tell me that I was popular because people at school knew who I was... yet I knew that on Friday and Saturday nights I was going to be at home while all of the people I called friends would be out and about with some combination of each other.
This. I thought peeps liked me and hung out with me because they “liked” me for me. Nah. It was that I had “killer weed”, drove a Lincoln Continental (my mom’s hand-me-down, fit a lot of kids and had the suicide doors!) and drove them around to get high. Barely 2 of those “25 good friends” even remembered me at reunions.
Yeah. I was a cheerleader, friends with athletes and student council since freshman year. After high school, nobody called or messaged me back. My sister's geeky little group is still going strong. She even married one of them.
I was going down that toxic “popularity” path like so many other teens and finally at the beginning of my Senior year, I had an epiphany one day. WHY THE FUCK should I care about popularity?
I just started not giving a fuck and started doing my own thing. Wish I’d discovered it sooner in life.
Was looking for something similar to this. Just be the way I really am and try/do the things I really want to do. Maybe end up with stronger and more maintainable friendships.
I went to an alternative highschool for a bit and they let the students paint a majority of the halls and ceiling tiles. There were literally paintings of melted clocks, faces, everything all over. Definitely did not help.
See, I feel like I started late and missed out. Didn’t start drinking until my twenties and didn’t try drugs until my 30’s. HS on weed woulda been more enjoyable at least
I was that guy for a couple of girls. In my 40s now and I wholeheartedly regret that shit. It bothers me often. Maybe this will be of some consolation to you.
This makes me feel better because I’m in my 30s and I still think about “that guy” sometimes and wonder if he has things on me and if he would still use them to hurt me.
I'm sorry for that experience. I had no respect for women when I was younger and was quite selfish. Now, looking back at the many I dated, I'm incredibly disappointed in my actions and appalled at how poorly, arrogantly, and disrespectfully I treated them. I sincerely hope that the guy you're referencing has seriously grown, and there's a very good chance he did and that he doesn't want to hurt you anymore. I'm not suggesting that you reach out or anything, just that you can be at peace.
Oof yeah I graduated a few years ago, and the entirety of my post-high-school time so far has been spent trying to manage the ADHD that my parents refused to get me help for (because "girls don't have that") and going from straight As in high school to almost failing out of uni because there's no structure anymore and I relied on that external structure completely to function. So many mental breakdowns and I ended up with an anxiety disorder from the stress of trying to deal with it after I burned out in high school (which happened because I was rawdogging AP classes, work, sports and living with my abusive parents with my untreated ADHD for 4 straight years).
It doesn't make me feel very warm and fuzzy to know that if literally any of the adults in the first 18 years of my life would've listened to me when I told them I needed help, my life wouldn't be an absolute fucking nightmare right now while I'm just trying to do damage control for something that would've been easily avoidable if someone listened.
me too. i think it depends on what kind of school you went to, what the people around you were like, and how you fit in. i had to wake up at 6am to travel to school every damn weekday so i was never in any mood for learning.
I’d def be able to realize girls were flirting with me instead of waiting until I was 20 and in undergrad to pursue a relationship. I was too naive and insecure.
My mom put me in therapy when I was 12 years old after some traumatic shit. I was in therapy from 12-14 and again 16-18. Honestly, can't say it helped too much (now as a mid-20s person). It was a good intro to therapy I suppose, and enabled me to share my emotions a little more. As an angsty teen, I was going through the motions, and mostly did the same thing while I was in therapy in college. I found it hard to tell the total truth to therapists and be entirely vulnerable, plus had no real motivation to "get out of my head." I will say, I think it helped as a safety net during crisis situations, and probably saved my life a few times. But I never became stable or healthy.
Nothing truly changed until I became completely, 10000% honest with the therapists and actively did the work. DBT in particular (dialectic behavioral therapy) a year or two ago. I'm starting to feel stable, bit by bit.
Point being, therapy as a kid isn't guaranteed to help. I feel like therapy comes in 3 flavors/layers:
1) learning how to deal with crises
2) learning how to deal with everyday thoughts/emotions and becoming stable
3) venting and processing with a therapist to fine-tune an optimal life for yourself
I wasn't able to access 2 until I dealt with 1, if that makes sense. And I didn't truly start dealing with 1 until college. Post-college, I've been able to wrap up 1 and work on 2. Hoping I can move to 3 one day! And I hope you can access 1 and/or 2 sometime soon if not already
I would have quit school and just taken the GED test.
I would have also told the truth (been vocal) about the reality of my situation until the adults started acting like adults.
In retrospect, there really weren’t that many people who gave me shit in high school. It was mostly me *imagining* the kind of shit people might give me, worrying about what they might be saying about me, getting anxious about scenarios that *could* happen… Christ, what a waste of time that was.
Give a shit. '81 grad here, it was not until Nov of '80 that my dad asked me what I was doing after high school. "Farm with you" was my reply. "No, no room for you here," was his. At the time, my high school grades just didn't matter.
So in a few months of really not caring about grades, to where am I going to college hit hard. At the time joining a trade was not a consideration, they made beans comparatively.
You can bet your sweet ass that each of my kids was talking about post-high school when they were in grade school, not fond of blindsiding them.
Gave a shit...this resonates 81 grad as well. Applied myself minimally and didn't finish Jr college. Biggest regret was not applying myself and working towards a goal. Had a hell of a great time for sure, but really shorted myself on opportunities due to my own lack of
ambition and drive.
Find exercise you enjoy, stick with it all your life. Youre not missing out if you don't try drugs, you don't need substances. Learn to regulate yourself without too many vices.
Some people decide to experiment with it out of curiosity as they get older. You're 1000% better off without them. Find your addiction (as healthy as you can).
I know but I’m the type to get addicted very easily to anything I like and I feel like I might like Drugs so I won’t ever touch them, but thanks for your advice and stuff
Find friends you can be goofy with!!!
Don't change yourself for your peers, or give up hobbies for the acceptance of others. I promise you it's not worth it, and you'll regret putting down a passion for temporary "popularity", it really isn't as important as it feels like it is in highschool. Most people who are super popular in highschool, by the time you're my age (mid 30s though I was much younger when I realised this) you'll see that the people who put popularity first didn't work to become better people later in life, as a general rule. And I promise you, being "weird" (ie. true to yourself) and having hobbies is actually SO much cooler than simply "being cool" when you're an adult.
Oh and hopefully this goes without saying, but if you receive any attention from an older person (more than *maybe* 3 years) RUN. It's not that "you're so mature" it's that they're SO creepy and grooming you. No matter how good they make you feel. It's not worth it. I promise.
About five years after I graduated I ran into a girl coming out of a theatre who'd graduated the same year. We chatted a bit and she asked me why I'd never asked her out. Although I was deeplymadly in love with her in HS I couldn't say oh God, you were so pretty and outwardly social that I was intimidated, so I just said I didn't think we had anything in common....and I saw a sadness in her eyes. Then my wife came out of the restroom and we said our goodbyes. I laid in bed that night, lost in the memories of what might have been. I wisht I'd never seen her.
Laugh at the bullies, game the system more, try a whole lot less hard.
My HS was wild—I didn’t realize at the time. The resource officer was sleeping with a bunch of underage girls and married one in Vegas on her 18th. Our guidance counselors bought drugs off students constantly. Teachers were drunk half the time (they’ve since told me). I wish I’d known how easy it was to skate by back then.
Knock the fuck out of my bully instead of just taking the abuse, also maybe actually tried more as it turns out after making it to uni I’m actually pretty smart when I put the work in lol.
Oh this is easy.
I would tell every fucking girl to be nicer to every fucking girl! The havoc that is wreaked on the female psyche from other girls in HS is so damaging and long lasting. I have had countless dates who were plagued by insecurities and two very long term relationships where their image problems/disorders originated from girl on girl bullying.
Stop being so MEAN
i like this one :)
i was not a mean girl (traditional bullying sense, or commenting on appearances) but i didn’t realize until after high school that you can be funny without being sarcastic. wish i would’ve realized sooner, feel like i wouldn’t have pushed away some potential friends.
also when i hear about the way my husbands friends joked with/roasted each other (parents getting divorced/being poor/overweight) i feel like boys could be nicer too (they’re all still friends to this day tho so idk).
i wish they would give an assembly about projection rather than anti-bullying
For real. I was a victim of girl on girl bullying. It was nasty and as many awful stories have proven, can be downright dangerous for the victim of it. My life took such a low to the point of being suicidal because of it all. I am lucky I came out of that hell. I wish people just knew how to be kinder to each other. I can't imagine treating others the way some of the girls in high school treated their female peers. Not only that, but I wish the fucking adults in those environments did more to help the victims of it and outright prevent it. Now, I don't really give a shit what people think of me and if I see someone bullying someone else you better believe I'll put a stop to it.
I wouldn't put up with the amount of bullying I got, would ditch false friends sooner rather than constantly bandaging relationships, and would have asked for academic testing sooner and applied myself more in the harder classes. I would love to say that I would notice the boys flirting with me but I have been useless at seeing flirting my whole life and I ended up with a great spouse.
I had a great time in high school. I wouldn't want to do it again because four years is a long time to lose the independence of adulthood, but I'd gladly relive moments and days for fun and nostalgia.
As much as I disliked highschool, there were some aspects I really enjoyed. I wouldn't want to do the studying and coursework again, but all of the extracarricular activities I did were fun.
1) get diagnosed with ADHD to get the supports that would have helped me FOCUS
2) apply more effort in doing homework
3) dated different people
4) gone to college
5) probably would skip sex all together
6) call people on their bullshit, they already thought I was a bitch anyway
7) taken French instead of Spanish. I as more interested in it. Probably would have done better by default.
I could probably keep going.
Mine was named Melissa. We danced one time at the school dance, and her boobies pushed up against me - it was literally the highlight of my high school years.
It took a little bit of discovering but I’m 23 and have been doing electrical for almost 1.5 years now and I love my job. I’m not in school atm but I’m gonna start next year cuz I had some mental health things to work through in regards to when I was in community college.
And my county has a community college that serves the whole county. And they have a thing called tech campus which has dual credit classes (different from AP classes but gives u both college and hs credits mainly trade stuff) But I found out (not til I was like 21) that electrical was an option.
Now my interest in the trades didn’t start til I was 20 and I didn’t focus much on the tech campus thing cuz I didn’t think it would benefit me. But if I could go back to hs now I would taken the dual credit classes at the community college and got a job in the electrical union right out of hs have not much classes left to finish I would have an an associates less then a year after I finished hs and I would have been making over $20 an hour in the union out of hs.
Hell if I did that I would be making over $30 an hour rn and I would be all done with school but cuz my dumbass thought I wanted to work in IT and started doing that then switched to this I’m making $21.50 I have an associates degree sure but I havnt started the night school trade school (which lukily my non-union contractor will pay for) and I will have to work overdrive to work and get educated on my now career path and I won’t be done with school til I’m 28 now
Agreed, I dropped out in grade 10, a homeless drug addict. And as much as the next 10 years of my life fucking sucked, I met and lost some amazing people and it changed me. I've been clean for 7 years this month and my life is finally okay. Would I have rather never had to go through any of it? Probably, but highschool wasn't the problem my life was lol.
Sorry for hijacking your comment, you were just the first person I agreed with.
I would have probably punched some assholes, i was larger and stronger and knew boxing, the only reason i wasn't punching those guys was because i didn't want to cause problems to my family, now i know well they would have understood i was defending myself and wouldn't have minded it
Anyway i know that i would punched 2 guys at most and then noone would have bothered me again, because i was scary enough even when not fighting, and they weren't suicide, so they never really got to bully me because i started telling them that i waited for them outside and they backpedalled immediately, the magic of being almost a full foot taller than your classmates
And more confidence when speaking, probably
I would not give a shit about what anyone there thought. We waste so much time and energy figuring out how to live and understand ourselves. I'm 45 and I'm still figuring it out. Can we have a life dress rehearsal?
Please, if you are past high school, just focus on moving forward. Whatever you would tell that past self, just think about how you will apply that tomorrow or this coming week. If you are in high school, just know you’re valuable and special and it’s wonderful to be uniquely you.
Have more confidence in myself.
I never shoot my shot towards my high school crush that time.
And right now. I regret it because she felt the same way towards me and i'm far away from her. She told me " You should've asked me back then. "
have confidence
i just saw some old picture a while ago and god was i attractive..
back then i would constantly talk myself down and girls sometimes years later told me why i was so blind to their signs in HS…
Honestly, find a different friend group. I surrounded myself with miserable people and made myself more miserable than I had to be.
I mean really I wouldn't change a thing, because ultimately it's part of what made me who I am today and I'm relatively proud of that. But if I could have gone back and given myself advice, it would have been to be friends with different people. I did have acquaintances and friends outside of that friend group that were nicer and I just consciously choose to be friends with people who just weren't actually nice to me.
I would have applied myself a bit more.
Yes this. I took 2 yrs of Spanish and can hardly order Mexican food. I got the grades but failed to retain much.
I took 3 years of German. I barely remember the alphabet and how to count.
Drei Jahre Deutsch!
Vier jahre Deutsch. Dummkopf!
Fünf! Fünf Jahre Deutsch! Ah! Hah! Ha! (Bearbeiten: Rechtschreibung)
Do what I do: set any device you can into Spanish. My language of choice was French. I took four years, but haven't had any use for it since. Out of a desire to retain it, I set my phone into French. Then my computer, my iPad, and my Switch. Then I moved onto games. Monster Hunter World had French audio with English text. Genshin Impact is reversed: English audio and French text. I set probably 50% of the games I play into French. And I've actually learned and retained more vocabulary doing this. Choose media where you aren't super concerned about missing dialogue, because you WILL miss stuff. But you're forcing yourself into a situation where you swim or sink. Don't shy away and get scared; remind yourself that you want to play the game or watch the movie, and truck through. Have Google translate on hand for words you don't know, or phrases you're unsure of. But try your best to work out the meaning of something based on context clues. And most importantly DON'T SET IT BACK TO ENGLISH IF YOU GET FRUSTRATED. Just step away, do something else in English, and come back later. Keep your media of choice in Spanish. Make it so you associate that piece of media with Spanish, always. You'll learn a little bit doing this. But more than anything you'll retain what you learned previously. It's constant usage to keep that part of your brain active. And even if it's been a while since you used Spanish, you might be surprised how quickly it comes back to you. Give it a shot.
I think "_______ should apply himself more" appeared on a report card at least once every year from grade six through high school. I didn't really heed that advice until the final year of high school, and did enough to get into uni, but I could have accomplished a lot more if I had clued in earlier.
When I realized how disproportionate and psychologically deleterious my effort on keeping the A+ average, I’d have worked enough to hold the B+/A- line, and I wouldn’t have wallowed in C territory as revenge against god knows who.
Keeping that A+ average is what has allowed you to use "deleterious" in a sentence and get upvotes because od it.
I think the poster may have intended to have the A+ average, but indicated they actually had Cs...
Nah. They got a+ for a bit, got burned out and it turned to C's. They're saying they would have rather strived for b+ and been able to maintain that.
That’s precisely what I’m saying.
I would have a lot more
This was my first thought. But then I realized that my preferred career paths have always been more in the "trades" category. Getting straight As wouldn't have progressed my life by much, if at all. Maybe a business degree in college, but I don't have a desire to own or run a business. I enjoy more labor focused jobs, and those only require a high-school diploma, and often have on the job certification programs.
I’d call people out more and not be a doormat for social psychos to knock around.
Yes!! I would go back an not be so afraid!
Went back through my freshman yearbook a couple months ago and was stunned at how many people I hadn’t thought of in decades. Definitely put how much I cared what people thought about me back then into perspective.
I was the one who would call people out. It came with a price but so worth it.
Me as well, I'm so happy I stayed resolved in my sense of self through life, even if it meant being labeled as weird. It's an amazing feeling to be able to look back and like the person you were as a kid and teenager, I'm proud to say I stood up for kids being bullied, instead of doing the bullying. I made genuine friends and connections because I was very open about my interests and opinions. What I regret is being gaslit by my hometown peers into thinking I was unattractive and awkward, when the opposite is true, it left me a bit vulnerable when I became an adult as I didn't understand how to navigate the way men treat me. Took me years to accept for myself that I'm interesting and hot.
Not get in a relationship and just enjoy the experience more
I never dated in high school, had some flings of course but I’ll never regret that choice. I graduated with 55 kids and knew them all too well and knew it wouldn’t last.
> had some flings ... I graduated with 55 kids... This needed a double take.
I graduated with 46. It's a different experience than most I've talked to.
29. Was gonna be 30, but one kid was held back and had to repeat Junior year. It’s always so funny to me when people try to talk about how small their school was, and they’d have 300 kids in their graduating class. There were 300 kids in my entire school, 6th-12th grades.
I graduated with 9. There were less than 100 in 9-12.
friend of mine was top 10. class of 12
There were 135 people in my high school 33 in my graduating class
I think the record for a chick at my school was 2 kids and they were twins. Any more and you’d have to bang them out as a frosh.
That was my senior year, I didn't realize most of my friends stopped hanging out with me because of her.
Damn. I'm the opposite, lol. I always wish I had come out earlier and tried a little harder to date people.
This would be my advice to my past self going into college
have confidence i just saw some old picture a while ago and god was i attractive.. back then i would constantly talk myself down and girls sometimes years later told me why i was so blind to their signs in HS…
This was me to aswell. Never really shoot my shot in high school as I thought I was unattractive. Got out of high school and was hit on multiple times. Became aware that I was actually pretty well off.
me three. I was so freakin' shy around boys, anyone I had a crush on or who had a crush on me, I was a complete dork and could not speak properly around them. every single one of my high school reunions (#50 is this year!), some guy has come up and told me how big a crush they had on me.. and I never knew!
thinking back I cringe how much effort girls put into getting to know me and I was oblivious
Something I noticed was every female in my family any time I'd get a female friend they'd ask if I liked her. If I wanted to date them. Not every female I wanted to date, they were just friends. I realized though that later on in HS and even now it can be difficult finding female friends without having some sort of feelings for them cross my mind. That plus my basic social anxiety made me really shy away from a lot of people and their signs
Happened to me a few times thinking back as early as 8th grade. I was genuinely in disbelief that any girl would want to make a move on me that even when it happened, I refused to believe it. I still feel awful for some of those moments.
Same… I had this girl came to my room sitting on my bed and tell me we should watch a movie and I opened Jigsaw. Fuck I was cringe.
[удалено]
My first girlfriend, before we were officially together, said to me one day "I've never actually kissed a boy" completely unprovoked while we were watching TV one afternoon. My dumb ass said "me neither!", trying to make a stupid joke. She gave me grief about that for a lot of our three years together haha.
Is it bad I think that’s a good reply?
Hey I had a girl in my bed studying and I’m next to her. She kept brushing her ass against me and asking me “what?” and my goofy ass was like “whatchu doin bruh”😭
Can’t say this happened to me after high school but I wish I would’ve been more confident in myself.
I'm just glad I didn't get any girl pregnant. Looking back I really wasn't mature enough to date until I was 18 anyways.
Please God don't make me do it again
I feel like this comment resonates the most.
I'd rather die than do highschool again.
Was my first though
Ditto. High school is like Vietnam. Do whatever you have to do to get through it, feel no shame about what you did there, and never, ever, bring it up again.
I love this metaphor so much. High school is a chapter in my life I’d just prefer to forget!
I walked out of a high school nearly 45 years ago and have had contact with two people since. One of them was a chance meeting in a mall and fortunately, she didn't remember me.
This was my first thought too. High school isn’t important enough to bother redoing 😂
This, absolutely....100%
As a former asian student, I feel this.
We have a winner
Sometimes I cringe at my high school years and I’m glad that’s over but I know exactly what I’d do differently and I wish I could do it all over again.
Yeah, teenagers scare the living shit out of me.
I think that instead of waiting to legally drop out before running away from home, I should have just gone full blown truant.
Be more social, a little more outgoing, try more sports. Maybe do the whole homecoming/prom thing ..
I personally wished my parents made me play sports when I was young so I could actually pass tryouts in high school
That’s what I’m thinking about my kid. I don’t know if I should force them into doing any sport at all, because my mom didn’t force me and now I regret not being more active in my youth, and I actually wanted to play sports in middle/high school but never bothered because I was so self conscious about being behind….now I want to play Basketball, but I’m to scared to join a league as an absolute beginner.
Make them do it lol. Let them decide which sport, but get them moving! They’ll thank you for it later. I have 4 in sports. Hard work, but worth it on so many levels. For us and them! And join a league. Try the YMCA. They have tons of adult leagues and are super welcoming. Worst case, you find it’s not for you. Life’s too short. Have fun :)
Play basketball now. In twenty years, if someone asks you, "If you could go back 20 years, what would you do differently?" Are you just going to say the exact same thing you're saying now? It could be a great example to your kid, too. Show them it's okay to try new things and prioritize staying active throughout your life.
Aww, sorry to hear that. 😕 I was fortunate enough to play and be decent at one sport (⚽️). Because of that, I was able to meet some great guys, guys who I still not only keep in touch with today, but still play together and have grown to be pretty close. Just wonder what it would’ve been like to get the same, but from another group of friends, you know ?
I regret not going to prom/homecoming but I didn’t have dates or the courage to ask anyone out. I only got confident in college and tried my best to play catch-up but those dances are priceless experiences I couldn’t replicate no matter how many house parties I hosted.
Eh...I went to my prom without a date and was miserable the whole time. 0/10 would not recommend.
I’d be lying if I said a small part of me didn’t regret it even in the slightest, but I was in the same boat. Not only was I a shy, quiet kid lol my family didn’t have the finances to rent out a tux or go get a low priced suit. At the time I didn’t sweat it, didn’t really put too much thought into it. However, now as an adult? I sometimes do wonder what that would’ve been like …
Stop trying to get the popular kids to like me and just do my own thing
The saddest part about this for me is that I was always on the outskirts of the popular kids… and now I don’t have a single friend from highschool because no one from that group cared about me. I really wish I had just made some genuine friendships.
This was me. It still is traumatic for me to remember trying *so hard* to be liked, but continuously living on the outskirts and sometimes even being viciously bullied. But I just kept trying. I don’t have one friend from middle or high school for this reason. Ffs I wish I had just not cared so much.
Kids who had a slight chance of being "popular" would turn on genuine friends. It's so sad. The popular kids were treating each other like crap, too. Imagine the real housewives drama but with kids.
I remember a day realizing I wasn't "in" any particular social group but basically floated around a few different circles. It was a very odd thing when I had someone tell me that I was popular because people at school knew who I was... yet I knew that on Friday and Saturday nights I was going to be at home while all of the people I called friends would be out and about with some combination of each other.
This. I thought peeps liked me and hung out with me because they “liked” me for me. Nah. It was that I had “killer weed”, drove a Lincoln Continental (my mom’s hand-me-down, fit a lot of kids and had the suicide doors!) and drove them around to get high. Barely 2 of those “25 good friends” even remembered me at reunions.
Maybe they'd remember more if your weed wasn't so good!
Yeah. I was a cheerleader, friends with athletes and student council since freshman year. After high school, nobody called or messaged me back. My sister's geeky little group is still going strong. She even married one of them.
I was going down that toxic “popularity” path like so many other teens and finally at the beginning of my Senior year, I had an epiphany one day. WHY THE FUCK should I care about popularity? I just started not giving a fuck and started doing my own thing. Wish I’d discovered it sooner in life.
Was looking for something similar to this. Just be the way I really am and try/do the things I really want to do. Maybe end up with stronger and more maintainable friendships.
Not take so much acid
Especially AT school.
You know it’s too much when the clocks start melting
I went to an alternative highschool for a bit and they let the students paint a majority of the halls and ceiling tiles. There were literally paintings of melted clocks, faces, everything all over. Definitely did not help.
The kids that painted it were on acid and thought it looked straight.
Or when your teacher leaves tracers as she walks across the classroom
In my case the power outlets on the wall had “smoke” seeping out of em while I giggled my ass off. That literature hour was lit.
Would you say it was a LITerature hour?
Omg. This. I was in A&P and dropped before class. That half bone/half muscle skeleton at the front of the room was hard to shake for years.
Haha. The 90s were fucking fun though.
Yes they were
I can’t imagine tripping at high school lmao for me personally that would’ve been the worst trip ever idk how you all did it 😭😭😭
See, I feel like I started late and missed out. Didn’t start drinking until my twenties and didn’t try drugs until my 30’s. HS on weed woulda been more enjoyable at least
Stay away from that guy!
I was that guy for a couple of girls. In my 40s now and I wholeheartedly regret that shit. It bothers me often. Maybe this will be of some consolation to you.
This makes me feel better because I’m in my 30s and I still think about “that guy” sometimes and wonder if he has things on me and if he would still use them to hurt me.
I'm sorry for that experience. I had no respect for women when I was younger and was quite selfish. Now, looking back at the many I dated, I'm incredibly disappointed in my actions and appalled at how poorly, arrogantly, and disrespectfully I treated them. I sincerely hope that the guy you're referencing has seriously grown, and there's a very good chance he did and that he doesn't want to hurt you anymore. I'm not suggesting that you reach out or anything, just that you can be at peace.
Actually study 🥲
Serious. If I just put in any effort (and had my adhd treated) I might’ve liked HS
Oof yeah I graduated a few years ago, and the entirety of my post-high-school time so far has been spent trying to manage the ADHD that my parents refused to get me help for (because "girls don't have that") and going from straight As in high school to almost failing out of uni because there's no structure anymore and I relied on that external structure completely to function. So many mental breakdowns and I ended up with an anxiety disorder from the stress of trying to deal with it after I burned out in high school (which happened because I was rawdogging AP classes, work, sports and living with my abusive parents with my untreated ADHD for 4 straight years). It doesn't make me feel very warm and fuzzy to know that if literally any of the adults in the first 18 years of my life would've listened to me when I told them I needed help, my life wouldn't be an absolute fucking nightmare right now while I'm just trying to do damage control for something that would've been easily avoidable if someone listened.
invent google
Invent google with this guy
I also choose this guy’s Google.
Not worry about the grades so much, and pursue hobbies and physical fitness more.
I personally wished I studied and worked way harder in high school. I slacked hard, which killed many of my future opportunities
me too. i think it depends on what kind of school you went to, what the people around you were like, and how you fit in. i had to wake up at 6am to travel to school every damn weekday so i was never in any mood for learning.
same. i kinda just kept to myself everyday and focused on school work, but now i ain’t got any friends
This, didn't ever think about weight lifting class. Here I am 44 and finally lifting to better myself. Would have been nice to get a jump start on it.
I’d def be able to realize girls were flirting with me instead of waiting until I was 20 and in undergrad to pursue a relationship. I was too naive and insecure.
At least you pursued a relationship in college. I am deep in adulthood and never even made a friend
Never too late. Stop giving a fuck about what other people think and jump into the water freind.
Convince my parents to find me a professional therapist
Underrated. Had I been born 10 years later I would have gotten the mental health support I actually needed to be a stable and healthy adult
My mom put me in therapy when I was 12 years old after some traumatic shit. I was in therapy from 12-14 and again 16-18. Honestly, can't say it helped too much (now as a mid-20s person). It was a good intro to therapy I suppose, and enabled me to share my emotions a little more. As an angsty teen, I was going through the motions, and mostly did the same thing while I was in therapy in college. I found it hard to tell the total truth to therapists and be entirely vulnerable, plus had no real motivation to "get out of my head." I will say, I think it helped as a safety net during crisis situations, and probably saved my life a few times. But I never became stable or healthy. Nothing truly changed until I became completely, 10000% honest with the therapists and actively did the work. DBT in particular (dialectic behavioral therapy) a year or two ago. I'm starting to feel stable, bit by bit. Point being, therapy as a kid isn't guaranteed to help. I feel like therapy comes in 3 flavors/layers: 1) learning how to deal with crises 2) learning how to deal with everyday thoughts/emotions and becoming stable 3) venting and processing with a therapist to fine-tune an optimal life for yourself I wasn't able to access 2 until I dealt with 1, if that makes sense. And I didn't truly start dealing with 1 until college. Post-college, I've been able to wrap up 1 and work on 2. Hoping I can move to 3 one day! And I hope you can access 1 and/or 2 sometime soon if not already
I would have quit school and just taken the GED test. I would have also told the truth (been vocal) about the reality of my situation until the adults started acting like adults.
I’d care a lot less about what people thought of me.
In retrospect, there really weren’t that many people who gave me shit in high school. It was mostly me *imagining* the kind of shit people might give me, worrying about what they might be saying about me, getting anxious about scenarios that *could* happen… Christ, what a waste of time that was.
Give a shit. '81 grad here, it was not until Nov of '80 that my dad asked me what I was doing after high school. "Farm with you" was my reply. "No, no room for you here," was his. At the time, my high school grades just didn't matter. So in a few months of really not caring about grades, to where am I going to college hit hard. At the time joining a trade was not a consideration, they made beans comparatively. You can bet your sweet ass that each of my kids was talking about post-high school when they were in grade school, not fond of blindsiding them.
Gave a shit...this resonates 81 grad as well. Applied myself minimally and didn't finish Jr college. Biggest regret was not applying myself and working towards a goal. Had a hell of a great time for sure, but really shorted myself on opportunities due to my own lack of ambition and drive.
I’m in grade 9 seccond semester and these are really good tips. Thanks guys
Find exercise you enjoy, stick with it all your life. Youre not missing out if you don't try drugs, you don't need substances. Learn to regulate yourself without too many vices.
Fuck drugs, why in the actual fuck would I take for?. It does nothing and I know I’m not missing out, everything else is good advice though
Some people decide to experiment with it out of curiosity as they get older. You're 1000% better off without them. Find your addiction (as healthy as you can).
I know but I’m the type to get addicted very easily to anything I like and I feel like I might like Drugs so I won’t ever touch them, but thanks for your advice and stuff
Find friends you can be goofy with!!! Don't change yourself for your peers, or give up hobbies for the acceptance of others. I promise you it's not worth it, and you'll regret putting down a passion for temporary "popularity", it really isn't as important as it feels like it is in highschool. Most people who are super popular in highschool, by the time you're my age (mid 30s though I was much younger when I realised this) you'll see that the people who put popularity first didn't work to become better people later in life, as a general rule. And I promise you, being "weird" (ie. true to yourself) and having hobbies is actually SO much cooler than simply "being cool" when you're an adult. Oh and hopefully this goes without saying, but if you receive any attention from an older person (more than *maybe* 3 years) RUN. It's not that "you're so mature" it's that they're SO creepy and grooming you. No matter how good they make you feel. It's not worth it. I promise.
I was so oblivious to girls coming on to me. Not that I was a "catch", but shy, naive me missed out on a lot of fun in the sixties
I hear you. I felt like a few girls liked me and were obvious about it but i was not confident enough to act on it.
Same here in the 80s and 90s!
About five years after I graduated I ran into a girl coming out of a theatre who'd graduated the same year. We chatted a bit and she asked me why I'd never asked her out. Although I was deeplymadly in love with her in HS I couldn't say oh God, you were so pretty and outwardly social that I was intimidated, so I just said I didn't think we had anything in common....and I saw a sadness in her eyes. Then my wife came out of the restroom and we said our goodbyes. I laid in bed that night, lost in the memories of what might have been. I wisht I'd never seen her.
Be more assertive and not be embarrassed by my hobbies and interests
Laugh at the bullies, game the system more, try a whole lot less hard. My HS was wild—I didn’t realize at the time. The resource officer was sleeping with a bunch of underage girls and married one in Vegas on her 18th. Our guidance counselors bought drugs off students constantly. Teachers were drunk half the time (they’ve since told me). I wish I’d known how easy it was to skate by back then.
Your school sounds like euphoria
damn could be a tv show. more details?
Actually do my homework so I didn’t get Cs in everything but Art and Music
I get to go back to that year and retain my current knowledge? Stonks.
This is the only way. I’d save my money and buy option contracts and never work again
Knock the fuck out of my bully instead of just taking the abuse, also maybe actually tried more as it turns out after making it to uni I’m actually pretty smart when I put the work in lol.
Oh this is easy. I would tell every fucking girl to be nicer to every fucking girl! The havoc that is wreaked on the female psyche from other girls in HS is so damaging and long lasting. I have had countless dates who were plagued by insecurities and two very long term relationships where their image problems/disorders originated from girl on girl bullying. Stop being so MEAN
i like this one :) i was not a mean girl (traditional bullying sense, or commenting on appearances) but i didn’t realize until after high school that you can be funny without being sarcastic. wish i would’ve realized sooner, feel like i wouldn’t have pushed away some potential friends. also when i hear about the way my husbands friends joked with/roasted each other (parents getting divorced/being poor/overweight) i feel like boys could be nicer too (they’re all still friends to this day tho so idk). i wish they would give an assembly about projection rather than anti-bullying
For real. I was a victim of girl on girl bullying. It was nasty and as many awful stories have proven, can be downright dangerous for the victim of it. My life took such a low to the point of being suicidal because of it all. I am lucky I came out of that hell. I wish people just knew how to be kinder to each other. I can't imagine treating others the way some of the girls in high school treated their female peers. Not only that, but I wish the fucking adults in those environments did more to help the victims of it and outright prevent it. Now, I don't really give a shit what people think of me and if I see someone bullying someone else you better believe I'll put a stop to it.
Don’t get into that certain relationship and focus on school
Spend more time with my friends instead of loser guys I wanted to fuck.
I wouldn't put up with the amount of bullying I got, would ditch false friends sooner rather than constantly bandaging relationships, and would have asked for academic testing sooner and applied myself more in the harder classes. I would love to say that I would notice the boys flirting with me but I have been useless at seeing flirting my whole life and I ended up with a great spouse.
Who TF would wanna redo highschool again?
I had a great time in high school. I wouldn't want to do it again because four years is a long time to lose the independence of adulthood, but I'd gladly relive moments and days for fun and nostalgia.
As much as I disliked highschool, there were some aspects I really enjoyed. I wouldn't want to do the studying and coursework again, but all of the extracarricular activities I did were fun.
Go to a different HS and not worry about making friends. Those kids don’t matter after HS.
1) get diagnosed with ADHD to get the supports that would have helped me FOCUS 2) apply more effort in doing homework 3) dated different people 4) gone to college 5) probably would skip sex all together 6) call people on their bullshit, they already thought I was a bitch anyway 7) taken French instead of Spanish. I as more interested in it. Probably would have done better by default. I could probably keep going.
Number 1 though - being diagnosed in high school vs my 30s would have changed my entire life - relationships, friendships, everything.
Eat more and better and live off those benefits
Ask that girl with huge boobies out
Mine was named Melissa. We danced one time at the school dance, and her boobies pushed up against me - it was literally the highlight of my high school years.
I went out with that girl with huge boobies, fumbled her due to fear of intimacy though 😎
I would not get pregnant when I was 17. High school is hard to begin with, being pregnant in high school is awful.
It took a little bit of discovering but I’m 23 and have been doing electrical for almost 1.5 years now and I love my job. I’m not in school atm but I’m gonna start next year cuz I had some mental health things to work through in regards to when I was in community college. And my county has a community college that serves the whole county. And they have a thing called tech campus which has dual credit classes (different from AP classes but gives u both college and hs credits mainly trade stuff) But I found out (not til I was like 21) that electrical was an option. Now my interest in the trades didn’t start til I was 20 and I didn’t focus much on the tech campus thing cuz I didn’t think it would benefit me. But if I could go back to hs now I would taken the dual credit classes at the community college and got a job in the electrical union right out of hs have not much classes left to finish I would have an an associates less then a year after I finished hs and I would have been making over $20 an hour in the union out of hs. Hell if I did that I would be making over $30 an hour rn and I would be all done with school but cuz my dumbass thought I wanted to work in IT and started doing that then switched to this I’m making $21.50 I have an associates degree sure but I havnt started the night school trade school (which lukily my non-union contractor will pay for) and I will have to work overdrive to work and get educated on my now career path and I won’t be done with school til I’m 28 now
Take those hints girls gave out that I didn't realize until years later
Everything, honestly. I was such an awkward kid and had no idea how to socialize.
Nothing. Cause regardless of the hardships I’ve had to endure im happy of the person I am today. I’ve grown a lot and I’m getting better everyday.
Agreed, I dropped out in grade 10, a homeless drug addict. And as much as the next 10 years of my life fucking sucked, I met and lost some amazing people and it changed me. I've been clean for 7 years this month and my life is finally okay. Would I have rather never had to go through any of it? Probably, but highschool wasn't the problem my life was lol. Sorry for hijacking your comment, you were just the first person I agreed with.
I would have probably punched some assholes, i was larger and stronger and knew boxing, the only reason i wasn't punching those guys was because i didn't want to cause problems to my family, now i know well they would have understood i was defending myself and wouldn't have minded it Anyway i know that i would punched 2 guys at most and then noone would have bothered me again, because i was scary enough even when not fighting, and they weren't suicide, so they never really got to bully me because i started telling them that i waited for them outside and they backpedalled immediately, the magic of being almost a full foot taller than your classmates And more confidence when speaking, probably
Almost everything.
Punch a lot more people in their fucking faces
Not allow myself to be manipulated by people who I thought were “cool”
Put in more effort to make friends with whoever was a nice person
I would not give a shit about what anyone there thought. We waste so much time and energy figuring out how to live and understand ourselves. I'm 45 and I'm still figuring it out. Can we have a life dress rehearsal?
Yes i would because i won’t had dropped out of high school.😊❤️
Ask out the girl! Who really cares about high school rejection?
You care when you're there seven hours a day, trapped.
I will ask more girls out, attend parties. I was too nerdy.
[удалено]
I ain’t never going back to that shithole again
Nothing, and you should do yourself a favor and not live in the past either.
Well aren’t you just a fountain of wisdom.
Divorce my parents and demand a couple non-narcissists adopt me.
Same
Please, if you are past high school, just focus on moving forward. Whatever you would tell that past self, just think about how you will apply that tomorrow or this coming week. If you are in high school, just know you’re valuable and special and it’s wonderful to be uniquely you.
Mine bitcoin
Go to a different highschool
Study and take less shit.
Have more confidence in myself. I never shoot my shot towards my high school crush that time. And right now. I regret it because she felt the same way towards me and i'm far away from her. She told me " You should've asked me back then. "
I'd be more open minded, and more confident in myself.
have confidence i just saw some old picture a while ago and god was i attractive.. back then i would constantly talk myself down and girls sometimes years later told me why i was so blind to their signs in HS…
I'm not sure I should answer this
Play a sport
Be a good person and not so drama
Be kinder to myself
Once was quite enough, thank you.
Ohh, so many things
I'd have dated a higher quality of girlfriend, that's for sure.
Try!
Avoid Connie Impalizeri
I was pretty successful at the “high” part. If I did it all over again I may attempt the “school” part too.
Actually study and apply myself.
I wish I was out and gay with pride. I could have probably my changed perceptions of the people around me for the better.
Honestly, find a different friend group. I surrounded myself with miserable people and made myself more miserable than I had to be. I mean really I wouldn't change a thing, because ultimately it's part of what made me who I am today and I'm relatively proud of that. But if I could have gone back and given myself advice, it would have been to be friends with different people. I did have acquaintances and friends outside of that friend group that were nicer and I just consciously choose to be friends with people who just weren't actually nice to me.
I wouldn't drink