Tesseracts wrote:gisambards wrote:Tesseracts wrote:I think this issue may be being confused by focusing on Wong. I think there's a difference between "Wong is overreacting" and "anyone who feels bad about high school should realize it's not a big deal."
I was focusing on Wong in my last post. I recognise that high school is a big deal - I only left its British equivalent last year, and I know how traumatic being one of the outcasts can be. But the thing is, as Wong in fact points out, all this high school stuff is arbitrary. When someone feels like an outcast at high school, it is very different to if they feel like an outcast in later life - there's a whole different set of rules and circumstance. And it's this arbitrariness that is why you can't be actively bitter about it - it was all meaningless, even though it felt so important at the time.
It's not meaningless. All of those people you went to high school with grew up and they still exist. People are still judging you for the exact same reasons, but they're more quiet about it because they're adults. Some of them find great success in life because sometimes society rewards jerks. All those people who told you it doesn't matter, it's just high school, also still exist and they're still around to tell you your life doesn't matter. The people in high school are exactly the same as the people everywhere else and they're still here to exploit you in college, in the workplace, in relationships, or anything
That's really sad. I believe people actally change a lot after high school, as a result of life experience like college, jobs, living on their own, and other milestones in life. When I went to my 5 year this past fall, I wasn't expecting much change in my classmates, but I was wrong. Sure, some hadn't changed a bit, but most had mellowed out/matured to become decent human beings. I don't know, maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but I think most people change a lot after high school.