The Year of Love

I want to go back to high school.

The fact that I wrote that sentence terrifies me. I never thought I would ever type those words, particularly because my high school experience is typically not something I look back on with fond memories. You  may be wondering why this thought came up in the first place. Let me explain.

For my Mission Year service site placement, I give a presentation on sex and healthy relationships to junior high and high school students in the Philadelphia Area (Delaware, Chester, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties). I give this presentation to nearly eight groups of students at 1-2 schools each week. Thus, I have the opportunity to enter into many different health classes at various institutions. Going into different schools each week has been a fascinating experience, affording me the ability to observe each school's differing culture. My team presents at a wide variety of schools including a large (nearly 4,000 students) and racially diverse high school, both all girls and all boys private Catholic schools, as well as many stereotypical mid-sized monoethnic suburban schools.

The differing cultures represented at each school intrigue me. At some schools, classes are quite "well behaved," yet no one participates in our presentation or discussion. Others, however, have much participation, but the teachers tend to feel there are more "disciplinary issues." I see students of all types, but I only have one to three days in which I can establish some type of connection or relationship with them. This means that I typically judge students at face value, without the ability to get to know them on any type of deeper level. Seeing all of the different types of schools has essentially forced me to begin to reflect on my own high school experience, wondering what my experience would have been giving a sex and relationship presentation to students at my own high school.

Honestly, when I had just finished high school, I would usually describe my high school experience to people as something I hated. Returning to the high school environment in a different capacity, however, has given me a different perspective than when I was there previously. For example, in high school, I remember being afraid of particular groups of people because I could never predict whether they were going to say or do something I perceived as rambunctious or offensive (which was a lot of things, admittedly). I have no doubt that I speak to plenty of students I would have been afraid of in my high school experience. However, I am entering these classrooms with a certain amount of power, partially due to my guest speaker status, and also because of my use of humor to disarm classes and make them feel more comfortable. Recognizing this change in perspective, I am beginning to ask many questions of my own high school experience. I wonder if my experience was actually as negative as I tend to describe it to people.

For those of you who know little about my high school experience, let me give you a crash course. I went to a small (about 500 students), rural, primarily monoethnic, public high school in Indiana. My freshman year began with a transition from a very small (120 students) Christian private school to Northeastern High School. I had been relatively "sheltered" until then, and I did not understand how to conduct myself in what I observed to be a "vulgar" and "negative" environment. My first reaction to the perceived vulgarity was to judge others for their words and actions. To anyone I judged in this way, I truly apologize. I think I was trying to cope with my transition from a Christian to a public school, and judging others made me feel better about myself. My perception of my high school self is that I was someone who was extremely judgmental and who no one felt they could relate or talk with. Although I am not sure if that is entirely true, I wonder how much more I could connect with those in my classes now that I have had more varied experiences and views on the world. I would actually like to ask each of you who knew me in high school to give me some perspective on what your perceptions of high school Joe were. What did you think of me? What did you think I would end up doing with my life? How did I treat you? Feel free to message me some of these answers (even if they may be harsh or difficult to hear). I think my perception of high school Joe is too biased for me to answer some of these questions for myself.

Another question that comes up about high school is whether I regret anything about my experience. Honestly, I regret not getting to know more people more deeply. I feel as if I was around people a lot, yet I only got to know a select few people in any sort of deep way. I also regret not being more involved with important social justice issues, and not becoming more educated on important happenings in the world. Although I did a paper on the treatment of women in Islam, I feel as if I could have further utilized my studies to focus on the topics that truly matter, rather than superfluous seatwork.

Now that I am five years out of high school, I feel in many ways like I am an entirely different person. Although my personality is likely quite similar to how it was in high school, the things I value and care about have changed far more than I would have previously anticipated. Since high school, I have lived in the city (not the suburbs) of Chicago and Philadelphia. This year, a turning point was when I participated in my first protest. I wonder if anyone in my high school class would have expected me, of all people, to end up marching and protesting for racial justice, that I would be passionate about dissolving gender stereotypes and norms, that I would live in the inner city, or that I would attend a predominately African American church. Would anyone have expected these things from me in high school? I wonder what has become of some of the other people in my high school class. Perhaps their journeys have been just as intriguing as mine. Perhaps their values, interests, and passions have also changed. For those who went to high school with me, here are some more questions: What are some unexpected ways you have changed since I went to high school with you? How is your current life similar to or different from what your high school self had expected? I would love to actually hear your answers and dialogue a bit about our high school experiences, no matter how similar or different they were. That is the beauty of the internet. We can keep up, even if we did not know one another very well in the first place. We can engage in meaningful dialogue about our experiences and come to a better understanding of ourselves and others in the process.

I began this blog by stating that I want to go back to high school. In reality, I want to be able to experience high school with my current values, interests, and passions so that I could flourish at an earlier time. I wonder, however, if these things would be as valuable to me if they were lessons learned any earlier in my life. Perhaps I needed to have my high school experiences to lead me toward the person I am today. Maybe I can be thankful for who I am today, while still gaining a better understanding of the ways in which I have grown and change through the years. I trust the process has been a great one, and it's only just begun.