Comments (10)

By kilax, November 6, 2007 5:31 am

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.