No surprise there
Coincidentally, one of my coworkers is from the same Iowa hometown as me. We are not close in age, and didn’t know each other previously, but we still share our “hometown” stories and news (okay, and jokes).
Our recent gossip has been over an article which states that Iowa has one of the nation’s lowest dropout rates in the country, but that Waterloo’s East High School – the high school I went to – has one of the highest in Iowa.
It has been labeled a “dropout factory” – a high school were no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshman make it to their senior year.
I’m not surprised. I think my freshman class started out with 400+ students and dwindled down to 250 or less by graduation.
Sometimes I think back to high school and wonder why I hated it so much. I was very involved (orchestra, theater, soccer, various other dorky activities) and an overachiever in my classes, but I didn’t like many of my classmates and remember being miserable most of the time.
Then I see statistics like this and remember that most of my classmates wanted to act like punks and harass the teachers, or act like whiny brats and have their mothers call and harass the teachers… or they wanted to harass their fellow students… the point is, not many people took school seriously. I got a sh*tty education and had a sh*tty time.
Hey, at least it’s over, and my two younger siblings made it through. There’s no reason for it to be on my mind anymore.
Themocracy
And you came out on top in the end. 🙂
This is why I tell E. that I think you and I were separated at birth! (or at least the hospital switched the babies, since we would not have been born at the same time…) I was also involved in a number of activities, most of which were labelled “geeky.” A quick scan of my fellow alums on Facebook shows that if any went on to college, they generally went to Akron U (not exactly an Ivy League–the joke is that they’ll accept anyone with a pulse) or dropped out entirely. There were a few others that made something of themselves, but the majority are still living in or near our home town and popping out babies. At least most of my class finished high school but still–that’s not much of a bar!
that’s how my graduating class was… maybe half of the people actually ended up graduating… i wasn’t very involved at school but i always made good grades in my honors classes but i hated high school… on the bright side, my county has the highest pregnancy rate for teens in the country!!! apparently we have nothing better to do here!!
🙂
One of my classmates was recently sentenced to life in prison for molesting a child. Another was convicted of armed robbery. (I played junior high basketball with him.)
For every classmate who has a decent job, a spouse, 2.3 kids, and a white picket fence, there is someone else who died of AIDS, raped a kid, or lived some other Lifetime television drama.
It’s weird to think of some classmates as adults, but man, they’re out there living all different kinds of adult lives.
this reminds me that my 10 yr. renunion is coming up in ’08. Ugh.
Haha, East does suck. I hated it so much there and am so happy to be done. I just feel bad for all of my friends that are still there! I think it has improved a little though with their new principal? Oh-well, makes no difference to me now!! 🙂
I had a horrible highschool too, but I would bet their lower grad rate was due to expulsion. In Colorado the state got money per student attending. So, while they had a strict policy on the amount of missed school you had, no one was expelled until the day after the money arrived. Then they cleaned house. I think we had about 42 expulsions on that tuesday in my senior year. I HATED high school.
Diane – awww 🙂 … okay, anyway… I am also surprised that so many of my classmates stayed close to our hometown. I’ll just give them the excuse that they wanted to be close to their families. And make families. Well, broken families.
CourtneyInControl – the highest in the country? Somehow I don’t feel as bad about my high school statistic anymore 😉
ajooja – I think it is weird to think of our classmates as adults, because I can’t imagine a lot of them ever growing up. Or at least, I don’t want to imagine what they would be like “grown up”!
Gina (Mannyed) – will you actually go?
Christina – just keep encouraging your friends to get the hell out of there!
Kyra – that is a foreign policy to me! I have never heard of anything like it… sounds like it was really effective 😉 Aren’t you SO HAPPY to be done with all that BS?!
I wouldn’t go back to high school for any amount of money.
Robin – Amen! I think that sums up my perspective completely!
eAst was a grate schoool , me lurned stuf