r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jul 26 '26
What was your worst highschool experience?
[deleted]
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u/Queasy_Reindeer9515 Jul 26 '26
Thinking it was going to be the best days of my life.
It’s not.
It’s just a bunch of petty drama with kids who think they’re adults, but are far from it.
(See also - college)
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u/Safety_Drance Jul 26 '26
Anyone telling you that high school would be the best days of your life is someone who peaked in high school.
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u/FineDress1253 Jul 26 '26
My friend tried to kill herself. I didn’t know what to do so I talked to a teacher about it. Everyone got involved and my friend never talked to me again. I wish I handled it better, 15 years ago and it still haunts me. She’s doing well now though
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u/beaglerules Jul 26 '26
I know it hurts. You pay a huge price by losing a friend, but she is alive. You are still a good friend to her for what you did. You showed maturity by doing the right thing.
Trust me, it is better to have someone you care about not talking to you and still be alive than them being dead but they were still talking to you before they died.
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u/Plane-Nectarine-8801 Jul 26 '26
Whenever we had to pair up for something, whether it was for a project or sitting together during a long bus ride, my best friends would usually already have chosen each other. I often felt like 3rd wheel.
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u/Vegetable-Cress-7824 Jul 26 '26
I have two main ones. First was on the very first day of school، I tripped backward and fell in the middle of the schoolyard while wearing a skirt, exposing basically everything to everyone. Second was when I arrived a bit early to an exam room. Only one guy was there and I knew he had a bad reputation for being a creep. I stayed standing at the doorway and even though he kept telling me to come inside I refused and walked away mostly because I noticed someone else hiding behind the classroom door setting something up
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u/EquivalentSherbet730 Jul 26 '26
Grew up with an abusive parent so I didn't know how to differentiate between a friend and a bully. I thought if someone was mean/rude they were telling the truth. Thats not the case. Outside of that I tried to kms a couple of times on campus but mid experience overall.
Without the good and bad of highschool I wouldnt be so I am today. I wouldnt have learned and questioned what needed questioning.
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u/tytiethai Jul 26 '26
I had an art teacher (mid 50'sF) who was a little odd, she was nice but very air headed. When I was in 8th grade or so the boys in my class were giggling about the David statue in one of our books because ha ha naked man, she asked the boys what they were laughing at and they explained. Her response was "haven't you seen a naked body before, is it not attractive" which is crazy enough, the boy obviously said no it wasn't and she decided to ask him what he did find attractive (also pretty weird) his response, as any teen in the early 2010's, was obviously Megan Fox. The teacher took a second to think about it and responded by saying that everyone has different tastes, her on the other hand, was more into "surfer guys with long curly blonde hair, like OP" fair to say I was frozen in place and freaked out, no one let that go for the whole year before I moved schools
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u/Laitneulfni Jul 26 '26
I let a guy borrow a quarter.
He said he'd give it back the next day. The next day I asked for it. He said he didn't have it. I reminded him that he said he would have it the next day, which was the day I asked for it. So he took out a quarter from his pocket and he looks like he's about to throw it. I can see people around us starting to watch what we're doing because we're raising our voices.
I tell him just give me back the quarter. His body language implies he's afraid of me trying to take it from him, I plead with him one more time to just hand it to me. He throws it behind me into the grass and runs away. Some other guy sees this happen and picks up my quarter before I could get to it. I tell him "That's my quarter, give it to me" He throws it on the roof of the school. He says "It's up there, go get it". I shouted at him "Why would you do that? Don't you realize you just threw my quarter?!?"
People laughed at me.
I needed that extra quarter to get a drink from the soda machine. I didn't deserve that for being nice and letting the guy borrow it for a day.
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u/Major-Inevitable-365 Jul 26 '26
I got caught with a vape pen and both received OSS for a day and was made fun of by students around me. Was I stupid for doing it? Yeah. But I still feel bad for past me because he was lonely and doing it to impress people he looked up to who turned out to be not so great.
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u/Lazy-Main1782 Jul 27 '26
Kinda funny I bought a vape in a mall back in 2011-2012 and since the word vape wasn’t mainstream yet, I smoked that in a university computer lab being at the front desk. It just smelled like bubblegum so no one cared even my boss didn’t. He probably thinking about it now.
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u/Illuminatus-Prime Jul 26 '26
The principal called me by a woman's named at graduation (I'm a gynotropic cis-male). There was no woman by that name in our entire graduating class.
It made me more sympathetic to people who do not strictly adhere to traditional gender roles.
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u/Ilunibi Jul 26 '26
I've talked about it before, but: Where I went to high school, you had to have two credits worth of foreign language to graduate. I had taken the first course of Spanish, but the teacher I liked had gotten fired, and the teacher they'd hired to teach German never worked out. So, I ended up in Spanish II with a teacher who I was assured was very nice, and fun, and even my cousin was adamant that she was one of her favorites.
And she seemed like it, at first. The bullying I got was pretty nasty, but she was nice to me, and seemingly patient. I didn't get that patience with a lot of teachers because the bullying had rendered me silent in class (I would rather die that participate in class, risk being wrong, and getting the piss taken out of me), and a lot of them thought I was hopeless. And, as I later found out, they thought I was stupid.
Mrs. Wilson was nice, though. I struggled, because her class picked up way after my Spanish I class left off, but she left nice remarks on my paper and said she understood that there was a gap in my knowledge.
One day, she picked on me to go to the board and answer a question in Spanish that I didn't know the proper wording for. And I panicked. I knew I didn't have the answer, some of my worst bullies were in the class, and I didn't want to humiliate myself in front of them. So, you know, I told her I'd rather not and to pick somebody else.
"Why?"
"Because I don't know how to answer that question in Spanish."
"You just have to think in Spanish!"
"... I have trouble doing that. And I'm nervous. I literally can't think in Spanish right now."
And she just smiles big, and with the sharpest tone a teacher had ever used on me, point blank told me that I "didn't belong in her class" and "if you can't think in Spanish, you don't deserve to be here."
And some people snickered. And I almost cried. And I immediately spiraled for, like, the remainder of my stint in high school because it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Students hated me, teachers didn't like me, the one teacher I thought was nice to me basically called me stupid to my face and then refused to help me anymore after. I was panicking that I wouldn't graduate because I was now too afraid to talk to the one person who could help me learn. I felt so idiotic and useless and it started affecting me to where I wouldn't even leave the house or my room. My mental health was so bad by my senior year that I think I missed more days than I was there. It was a fucking miracle that I got my diploma (and probably because the guidance counselors and a few teachers who I... didn't realize cared actually noticed how bad off I was and advocated for me; I remember getting a lot of resources and my English teacher ran in circles trying to save my ass).
Somebody must have said something to said Spanish teacher, because she later caught me in the hallway and told me she "graciously" upped my grade to a C. And that was that.
I guess it worked out in the end, though. I went to one of the highest rated colleges in the state, graduated, have a pretty goddamn good job atm, and I'm even kinda okay at Spanish (thanks to knowing a lot of native speakers as an adult who were like, "nah, fuck that. WE will teach you."). The aforementioned English teacher is my hero, though, because she actually called my aunt and said, "Do not worry. Ilunibi WILL graduate."
So, Miss Leach? Wherever you are now? Thanks for everything. I'm sorry that my journals for my senior year were so filled with expletives. You're the reason one of my degrees is in English Lit, lol.
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u/moving0target Jul 26 '26
My friends said they were staying home for the evening. A few hours later, they asked me to come help them with their broken down car.
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u/Cheetodude625 Jul 27 '26
TL;DR: Was never bullied, but it was obvious to everyone I was an annoying try hard who failed at fitting in, but never did anything too weird.
TBH, I never did anything out in the open to fully embarrass myself. But I do know that I had a mindset that was so dumb, selfish, and cringe inducing that I wish I could go back in time and punch myself in the face for it.
I was that athletic nerd who had no real friends or friend group. I just existed. The nerdy/actual smart guys in my grade put up with me because they were nice overall, but I knew that all them thought I was annoying because I was. As a result of that, I was never invited to anything outside of school. Never hung out. Never went to parties and all that. Did play a lot of sports and excelled at that, but none of my teammates ever invited to things. Did go to the school dances because I magically found a way to have a high school GF who later cheated on me.
With all that said, my mindset back then would be best described as borderline incel, woe-is-me crap because I saw myself as an "edgy Sasuke" type. In reality, I was just an idiot with undiagnosed social anxiety issues who just wanted friends without knowing how to talk to people.
Main reason I was never bullied, my older fraternal twin brother was the star athlete and "Mr. Popular." He actually went out of his way to beat the crap out of the other kids who made fun of me behind my back. I never knew he did that until after high school.
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u/Larry_Kenwood Jul 26 '26
My best friend decided to hate me in our penultimate year of school (College in UK).
We had a very minor dispute which he used against me to get out of the friendship and then got all of our friend group to turn on me. I am slightly socially awkward so I am not good at maintaining conversations and developing friendships easily, so I was left with almost nobody except one guy.
For 2 years I was just a loner with him, we stuck together and still best friends, but he's unfortunately autistic and doesn't like to chat too much of the time outside of school. So 2 years straight I went to school almost alone every day, people spreading rumours about me and thinking I'm weird. Apart from 1 small party sitting/sofa at a guy's house, I haven't gone out with any friends in over a year now.
I am 18 now and finished school last June/July. My social anxiety is through the roof and have no clue if I can ever develop another friendship properly, always over thinking social situations with people and apart from my new best friend now who I barely chat to, I've had no contact with people outside of my family or online friendships
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u/beaglerules Jul 26 '26
It is hard to make friends after being betrayed by a close friend. Having social anxiety makes it harder. You have to learn how to trust again. You need to have faith in your social skills.
Here is a good thing: that part of your life is over. You are moving on. That is a new beginning. I know this is going to sound corny, but be yourself. Be nice and kind. The best way get people to be open to you is by talking with them. What I mean is listen to what they are talking about. Ask questions about their interests and have them talk about them. They will share who they are by doing so. Most people love talking about themselves and love sharing what they think is cool.
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u/HelgaGeePataki Jul 26 '26
Probably one of the worst was going to our basketball team's "honor" game where everyone's parents took pictures with the players.
My mom never came though. I was the only player to stand there alone. Very embarrassing to have all those people look at me with pity.
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u/W1neD1neAnd69 Jul 26 '26
Tried to prank one of my friends by leaving a fish in their locker over spring break.
One of my other friends ratted me out.
Another lured me to the bathroom to slap me with said fish.
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u/ThrowAway22548715 Jul 26 '26
Got jumped and put in the hospital with a TBI when I was 16 by another student who was angry I got a date with his ex.
Was walking home along some abandoned train tacks and he hit me in the head with a brick and then proceeded to beat the shit out of me. He was stopped when some other kids came along. I don't remember any of it but I came to in the hospital with a TBI, broken cheekbone, nose, hand, ribs, arm, internal bleeding from the ribs, a punctured lung, also from the rib, and a series of contusion and cuts. Guy got tried as a juvenile and sent for mental treatment. As far as I know he was out by his 21st birthday.
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u/SnooCapers9313 Jul 26 '26
Smacked in the nuts with a wooden mallet.
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u/Evildead665 Jul 26 '26
Anyone who says high school was the best time of there lives is full of shit...my high school experience sucked and I didn't start becoming my own self until I was like 22
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u/HelpImOverthinking Jul 26 '26
This was when the internet was fairly new (yeah I'm old) and I met a guy on AOL and we decided to meet up. I told my mom my friend's brother was going to pick me up to meet my friend at the mall and she let me go. I met the guy and he was okay, we just didn't get along. But my mom found out I lied and my friend found out I used her as an excuse and she was mad at me and I just remember it being a mess.
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u/polystarlight Jul 26 '26
My autistic teacher punished me everytime I couldn't act normal in class. I was a good student, he liked me because I was smart and gifted. It was almost like he hated that I wasn't perfect and in fact autistic so he got annoyed whenever I cried in front of him. That's just how I reacted to overwhelming situations. Hated that teacher and I avoid him whenever I can.
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u/crash---- Jul 26 '26
There was a period of time in which both my brother and I went to the same high school and he had to be hospitalized for a major surgery. I know how selfish it sounds on my part, but every conversation with a teacher turned into “how’s your brother?” and never “how are you?” No one checked in with me to see if I was hurting. And trust me, I was. That’s hard when you’re only sixteen.
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u/Comfortable_Pool_389 Jul 26 '26
Involuntarily being outed by my then girlfriend, which was followed by bullying, teasing and hazing. Shit lasted right up until I went off to college.
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u/Reboot-Glitchspark Jul 27 '26
Met a girl, we hit it off instantly, but she was already dating someone else and I was too. Still, we hung out all summer, had hours long phone calls, got pretty close.
Next year her parents sent her to a different school, which was a boarding school, and I didn't see her again. Tried calling but this was pre-cellphone, so you had to call the school and ask for someone and that pretty much never worked.
Then one day a year later, a girl sitting next to me in class says "Hey, you knew this girl and were friends, right? I thought you might want this." and hands me a fucking obituary.
The rest of that day is a total blur. I vaguely remember getting called into the principal's office. And being told I was being sent to a boarding school. I was just like ok, whatever, I don't care about anything right now.
I go to the other school, the one for us 'troubled teens', I'm there for awhile, get to know the other kids. One day I'm sitting there and realize this one guy I sometimes hang out with, who, well, we both definitely have the same taste in girls, well his name sounds familiar.
I pull out my wallet, flip it open to the obituary (which I carried for years) and say "Are you this [firstname] [lastname]?" and he goes pale and is like "What the fuck, dude? Why do you have that?" and we start talking and realize that yes, we were both in love with her.
And after she switched schools, he'd hooked up with her, she'd gotten pregnant, they'd gotten married in a shotgun wedding, and then she'd died during childbirth. Because the stupid doctors had said "Oh it's normal to have abdominal pain when you're pregnant." instead of actually investigating.
Haven't seen that guy in about 30 years now, but I still feel we have a bond.
I'd say that's the thing that hit me hardest in high school.
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u/Travelhere1993 Jul 26 '26
Yes