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"Real life is just like high school"

MyDoorsAreOpen

MyDoorsAreOpen

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Aug 20, 2003
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Every now and then you hear this said with varying degrees of seriousness by young adults in various shades of jadedness. Do you think there's any truth to this? Or rather, when somebody says this, what are they specifically noticing? Are there certain experiences of high school, and the world after it, that might predispose somebody to conclude that real life is just like high school?

For me, no phase of life is, or could ever be, like high school. High school is an utterly unique rite of passage at a specific period in a person's development, never to be replicated. This includes most aspects of the social order and unwritten social rules.

I, for one, wouldn't relive it for a billion bucks.
 
I hated it, at the same time it was awesome. I suppose if I actually still knew or were friends with people in High School i would have had an attachment to my home town and would have never left. But then again I took the chance and somehow knew I had to get out of that place to explore the world.
 
I think (and I am 20), that it has all the bad things of highschool but non of the benefits. Why? First of all, people are just as awful as the kids, I mean one would think that "we're all adults now", but people will pick on you just like in highschool, bosses will jerk you around, co-workers will not talk to you or even look at you because they don't like your face or something you said or think. You think that you were given a hard time because you kissed that ugly girl? Try discussing politics in the work place, you will lose actual job promotions, this is real money and time that you earned and they will deny it to you.
The truth is that grown ups are just that, kids who grew up and now they have power to do a lot of things they couldn't do back in highschool.
Plus, if you got in trouble in highschool you could get away with it. Now you can't.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Though I think this is more P&S material, I'll chime in:

No. Absolutely not. Do these people actually remember high school? People look at HS as a mirror for social distinctions, ignoring the fact that that was not only a place you could actually be noticed (for better or worse), it was insulated enough to feel more significant than it was. Couple this to the fact that it was peopled with individuals who were not only dependents, but still deep in the arrogant and ruthlessly narrow adolescent mindset; the real world hammers that bullshit out of you real quick, if you're lucky. In HS I felt like a genius, and in college I felt like a moron, yet I wouldn't trade my worst day in the latter for the very best in the former.

In short, if someone is a thirty-something convinced that life is just another arena of cliques, school clubs, 50-minute rote lectures, regularly scheduled shitty food, and cattle cars to and from anywhere, then the Complete Idiot's Guide to Extrapolating High School to the Real World, LOL! is no doubt glowing crisply on a bookstore display rack near you. If this thirty-something sees life as an absurdist epic that somehow still holds firm and moves forward despite centrifugal madness, then maybe he or she is ready for the next step.
 
I dont know its hard to lump everyones high school experience together. Some people had a great time, some people hated it. Personally (also 20 years old) I didnt have a bad time but I always felt like kind of a loner. Not that I didn talk to people or have friends, I just didnt do a lot of the normal "high scool" stuff. No prom, no Senior Week, no going to football games on friday nights. I pretty much just got fucked up all the time and played video games. Didnt really get good grades but also didnt try at all in school. Basically I just went because I wanted that diploma, and now that im out I feel I can do whatever I want as long as I support myself. I also had a small business going in High School (we'll leave it at that) that certainly enabled my drug use and made me even more paranoid than I should have been.


So all in all Id say life after high school is similiar in that some people are still going to be douchers no matter what age they are. But thats really the only similiarity I can think of. That and school is just replaced with work so you still have roughly the same amount of free time (though less holidays as an employee haha)
 
Being 21 years old, I still see a lot of similarities from high school to now. It seems to be most of the people I knew in high school who graduated and went off to college. Yes, they're older, more mature, and on a most likely good path, but I still notice a lot of the "high school drama" going on. I see this mostly in college towns. Those are just my observations though.

As for myself, I hated high school up until I was senior. The only reason I didn't hate my senior year was because I was living in a halfway home with a bunch of other guys in my same position which made things a bit easier. Ugh... screw high school :|
 
I've never in my life said something as brusque as '...it's all like high-school' but I'd be lying if I said there weren't moments that did remind me of it. I believe that if you didn't go through trials in the course of your high-school experience that are really similar to some of the trials you go through in "real life" after it, then you didn't even start maturing until after high-school so there's really no way to expect for you to be able to relate life after it to the experience.

Unlike what is so painfully obvious about most of the posters to this thread, I didn't have a terrible high-school experience loaded with cattle cars and shitty food (I'm just bluffing about the food). In most ways, I'm quite glad to be beyond it, but in some ways I wish I were back there. One thing's for sure, it played a huge role in establishing who I am as a person now, and feel inspired whenever I catch up with old friends and see how they've shaped their lives since then.
 
I've said this about the workplace and life in general occasionally - when I say it I'm talking about cliques, bitchiness, bragging about how great your life is and social structure. I stand by that, some adults still behave like they're in high school in terms of how they relate to other people, people who might be a bit different to them or people they might see as being lower down the food chain of life.

I mean priorities might be different; in high school and early 20s in some circles it might be more shallow life goals; body image, latest mobile phone, fashion, the latest bar or club. Queue 10-15 years down the track and people are talking about how much their homes are worth, how much they earn and how their kids are doing in private school. I've seen alpha male behaviour in 30 something men and bitchiness from women in their 30s and 40s and even older, towards other women. In fact, I would go so far to say that the older some people get, they worse they are - I've seen 18 year olds with more maturity than some older people.

I liked school for the most part but I was glad to leave it behind. Uni was great, loved it, made friends, had a great time, was a positive rite of passage. Then I started working and it was like I was in high school all over again for the reasons above. I've made good friends at work but I've met quite a few people I'd gladly never see if I had a choice because of their stupid unspoken games, rules and behaviour.
 
Miss_vanilla said:
I've said this about the workplace and life in general occasionally - when I say it I'm talking about cliques, bitchiness, bragging about how great your life is and social structure. I stand by that, some adults still behave like they're in high school in terms of how they relate to other people, people who might be a bit different to them or people they might see as being lower down the food chain of life.
Click to expand...
This. In the workplace, once it reaches a certain critical mass of staff, highschoolery will ensue. Particularly when large groups of women work together.
 
i think drama, cliquey-ness and bitchiness are a part of most stages of life to some extent or another. it's just that high school is where people first really start to experience it (although for me it was far worse in middle school), and so it's their first point of reference for behavior like that.
 
I think it has more to do with who you associate with. I have coworkers that are 40 with drama filled highschool lives and and some that are in their mid 20’s and have calm drama free lives.

The traits I associate with typical high school behavior are poor impulse control,self absorption, entitlement and lack of foresight. If you avoid people that possess those traits then voila, life is no longer like highscool. At least in my experience so far. :)
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
Every now and then you hear this said with varying degrees of seriousness by young adults in various shades of jadedness. Do you think there's any truth to this? Or rather, when somebody says this, what are they specifically noticing? Are there certain experiences of high school, and the world after it, that might predispose somebody to conclude that real life is just like high school?

For me, no phase of life is, or could ever be, like high school. High school is an utterly unique rite of passage at a specific period in a person's development, never to be replicated. This includes most aspects of the social order and unwritten social rules.

I, for one, wouldn't relive it for a billion bucks.
Click to expand...

LOL Yes, except people are less obvious or vocal about it.

1. You still have plenty of people looking for a free lunch
2. Cliques at work: nerds, sales people (jocks), popular hot girls (marketing/sales)
3. What kind of car you drive matters
4. The dating game is still the same, except there is more money to play with and guys still want to bang the hot chick
5. Still have homework
6. The pregnant chick of the friend circle makes you do more boring things for 9 months
7. Still gotta be at work early
8. Who you're dating can make you popular or unpopular


hmmm I'm sure there are more, but these came to mind. :D
 
I think a problem a lot of people have is believing that because a body has grown, so has a spirit. The two are not so intertwined.

Many people reach their teenage years, and decease spiritual growth, for a variety of reasons. You could accuse them of complacency, ignorance, living in the past, but its not important. The important thing to note is that personal, spiritual growth is overlooked and ignored. Combine this with culture, especially in America. Despite the appearance of actors, content, or settings, entertainment produced for the "prime time" age group is increasingly catering to an intellectually bland audience. The appeals to the most primitive of human emotions and drives should be a forewarning of manipulation, but once one is entranced by the tits and kickassery, its hard to look away. Music, films, magazines, fashion, the mainstream knows the formula for manipulating the most natural instincts of a human being. As law itself becomes more and more recognizably amoral (that is, specifically not immoral), the culture at large stagnates to the fascinations of what we call a preteen.

On average, with "average" people considered, most people are going to allow their body to grow, their spirit to stagnate, and their perception of the world around them to remain unchanged. The goals, motivations, and meanings of life will continue to revolve around the most trivial and most manipulated by the cultural machinations of society at large.

Why the hell else would celebrity gossip be worth so many billions?
 
High school Vs after high school in rangrz experience.

Dime bag of weed --> 2 ounces of coke.
shoving match in hallway --> M777 155mm Howitzer.
rusty 20 year old Mustang --> Brand new Nissan GT-R.
semi cute but slow witted gfl --> gorgeous gf who went to Cambridge.
saving up to buy sneakers --> buying lunch that costs more than sneakers.
unable to get $300.00 credit --> Amex Black Card.
Teachers telling you what to do --> "damnit! you will respeteh mah authoritah!"
glossed over classical physics --> quantum chromodynamics.

conclusion: fuck high school.
 
rangrz said:
High school Vs after high school in rangrz experience.

Dime bag of weed --> 2 ounces of coke.
shoving match in hallway --> M777 155mm Howitzer.
rusty 20 year old Mustang --> Brand new Nissan GT-R.
semi cute but slow witted gfl --> gorgeous gf who went to Cambridge.
saving up to buy sneakers --> buying lunch that costs more than sneakers.
unable to get $300.00 credit --> Amex Black Card.
Teachers telling you what to do --> "damnit! you will respeteh mah authoritah!"
glossed over classical physics --> quantum chromodynamics.

conclusion: fuck high school.
Click to expand...

Doing well rangrz!

On the subject of real life being like high school, I would have to say that high school is a part of real life. The two cannot be seperated, life is the bigger entity, and high school is just something that exists within it. High school experience vs. post-high school experience will vary from person to person, and all accounts will differ.
 
...high school is a part of real life. The two cannot be seperated...
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or so the plutocrats would have you think.

non participation is always an option.
 
School fails.
Rows of desks fail.
Teacher in front fails.
Dress code is all fail.
No phones or iPods is fail.
Text books full of one sided history fail.
Teachers who talk shit about students # epic fails.
Principals who talk shit about teachers # epic fails.
Teachers who tell on each other to the district. Death penalty.

High schools should all be converted into factories because by the time a person is old enough to go to high school, he or she is old enough to do something useful for the good of the community.
High school is the opposite of useful for the good of the community.
 
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