High school.

February 03, 2011

High school.

Lately a lot of people have been asking me about my high school experience. If you are a cool person as an adult, I have noticed that it is kind of trendy to hate on your high school experience and rant about how terrible it was. Well, my high school experience was quite awesome...but not until the tail end. Anyways, I thought I would share.

Without getting too into the nitty-gritty details, I was raised by a relatively poor single father. He was a construction worker. I grew up in a nice suburb of Sacramento, and I always hung out with girls who were upper-middle class. Most of them had divorced parents, each with a nice, new tract home. All of them were beautiful, and all of them had the things that they wanted (clothes, make-up, etc.). Some were very spoiled, some weren't very spoiled at all.

I don't know why I hung out with these girls, really. Some of them I had gotten to know from cheer, or from classes. But yeah, who knows why I hung out with them. It finally hit me at the end of my junior year – I don't have much in common with these girls. We would sit down at lunch and they would talk about other kids, so aimlessly, without care. Gossiping, talking shit. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy talking about people who are in my life, whether it's saying positive or negative things about them, that is a big part of being a social animal – but there is a point where it becomes unhealthy, and totally pointless. Anyways, one of the most memorable moments of my high school experience was when I was sitting with some of these girls, and they started saying the most terrible things about two girls who I had an art class with. They liked anime and other things, and weren't into the same things that my friends were into and they just kept going on and on about how weird these two individuals were.

I thought to myself – these 2 sweet, awesome, smart girls are my FRIENDS. This is NEVER going to happen again.

So I got up in the middle of it. I got up and I told myself – I will NEVER sit at this table EVER again.

And I didn't.

I sat alone sometimes. And eventually, I started hanging out with a much nicer, healthier, and cool group of girls. Kasondra, who is still one of my best friends and lives in Santa Cruz with me; Ashleigh,currently a med student at UC David and an aspiring Ob/Gyn and is AWESOME; Alicia, also an aspiring MD (surgeon) and totally cool woman; and Jessica D., living in LA working in fancy-high-tech-graphic-design-that-I-don't-understand. All these girls are still in my life and I keep in touch with them, because they are great.

So I had a great end of high school times. This all happened toward the end of junior year. My senior year I started Spanish club, was in International club, applied to college, had tons of great friends who were all into different things, won Homecoming queen, and had a lot of FUN.

I hope those other girls are happy - however, and whomever they have become.

Here are some images:

Alicia and me at the lake. Going on over TEN years of friendship.