Here is a story.  I had a teacher that never gave 90s.  No matter how much time you spent on an assignment and how hard you worked and how good you made it, you couldn’t get out of the 80s.  Then there was the teacher’s homework. High school starts at 7:25 AM. It ends at 2:00 PM. Their homework lasted until 7:30 AM. That last part was made up.  The homework didn’t actually take until after the next school day started. However, the sheer quantity of work just cannot be truly expressed without exaggerating.  You can’t tell a true high school story without emphasizing the amount of work.

People say that high school’s not so bad, but high school is pretty bad.  They say the grades don’t matter, but colleges think the grades matter. They say the electives are fun and stress free, but the electives just as stressful as the other classes.  Electives are still classes, they are still grades, they still give you plenty of work on top of the work for your other classes.You can’t tell a true high school story being honest about how much stress there is.  

But what is even more stressful than the classes themselves is the bell and beating the bell.  The bell rings at the end of the period, there are five minutes until the next bell, if you aren’t on time to your next class you get marked late, the hallway is extremely crowded with other students having the same issue.  And to make matters worse, your previous teacher held you a few minutes after the bell. Apparently, the teacher dismisses you, not the bell. Yet, the bell tells you when you have to be in your next class. But the morning bell is an even worse story.  With the LA traffic approaching the school in the morning, you can’t beat the 7:25 bell unless you arrive at school at 6:30 before the traffic starts. You can’t tell a true high school story without talking about the bell and the traffic in the hallways and on the street.

How about after schools, like sports, clubs, extra help, and of course homework?  You can only pick one. If you choose sports then you have to be at practice every day without fail or you are missing the next game.  If you pick clubs then choose wisely. With an unending list of clubs, it is almost impossible to pick one and those meetings could go for an hour and a half after school, eating up your entire afternoon.  What about extra help? With tests in every class, every day, you are always studying and reviewing for them. And what better way than spending an hour with all your teachers after school relearning the whole unit from start to finish?  And of course, there’s homework. With the homework lasting for hours on end and lasting until the wee hours of the night, how could you possibly have time for something else after school? You can’t tell a true high school story without talking about the time management and choices you have to make.

But of course, a true high school story isn’t really about high school itself.  It’s about getting through high school, just to go off to college and do the whole thing again.