20 High School Do-Overs 20 Years After High School
Hi kids, it’s me, a middle-aged man who still thinks about high school from time to time. High school will be a period of your life that you will be forced to go back to in your mind, for good memories, bad, but you may end up mostly wishing you hadn’t been such an idiot. Here’s where I come in, to try and help you not be such an idiot, a dork, a fool. I assume high school is not what it used to be because of smartphones, online bullying, social media and the like. I won’t pretend to know what to do in those cases, you’re asking the wrong guy, but for everything else, the perennial things, this is what I would change.
1. I would as healthy as feasible. Earthshattering, I know, but a lot of kids eat like garbage. I would lay off all the sugar I was having and get more protein and fat. If you aren’t already eating well, you should be. Bad food sets a teenager way back, in growth, development, and energy available to you throughout the day. You shouldn’t need energy drinks in high school.
2. I would have stayed in band and practiced my instrument more (drums) but I also would have ignored marching band and focused on jazz band. Why? Because two decades later I’m still interested in drumming, but mostly jazz drumming. Jazz band was a cool thing to be able to be a part of. If you’re in band, do only one of the band extra-curriculars and focus more intensely on it. If you’re not in band, get in band, it’s fun.
3. I would phone it in for most of my classes. I wouldn’t pursue straight A’s, I wouldn’t spend too much time on homework. You need that extra time to practice your extra-curriculars and/or work after school. In the long run, classwork, the subjects themselves, all of that wasn’t very important and barely prepared me for college, or, in some cases I found high school work to be more difficult than college work.
4. I would focus in on one class and do well with that class, mainly a difficult topic that stretches you, like a science or math, or English. In fact, take English class the most seriously. Why? Because maybe you’ll be writing blogs someday, or on Medium, or twitter, or wherever else, writing is actually a big part of being an adult. Language skills are underrated and STEM skills are overrated.
5. I would have done wrestling, track, and swimming. I enjoyed the pool. I wanted to know how to fight and wrestling is a great one-on-one sport to learn some self-defense skills. Also, I liked to run and I could run fast. I didn’t capitalize on any of my physical abilities and abandoned all sports as a teenager. Don’t do that, you never know what you can do, even if you do it badly you at least won’t have any regrets. You could also meet and make a lot of new friends and not feel isolated while at school.
6. I would reduce TV and video games by as much as possible. I think playing games with your friends is okay, but for me back then it meant hanging out in person, which was always a rarity on a school night. You shouldn’t be gaming all the time with friends if it means you sign onto your Xbox live or whatever and play online with them. It’s too fun, it’s too addicting and it will stifle your work ethic, and by God you will need a work ethic if you’re going to make anything of yourself in life.
7. I would have attempted to go on a lot of dates. I looked back at my yearbook and, to be honest, there were only a handful of girls who weren’t attractive. Most of us, boys and girls, were on the same level of attractiveness, but back then I was zeroed in on one girl and all it ever did was make me ignore many of the realistic opportunities available to me. I don’t know what I would have done with my dates, but it would have been good to get the experience and to overcome shyness. The best way for a high school guy to try and get dates is to be nonchalant about it. Don’t make it a big deal, don’t be overdramatic about it. It’s easy to build things up waaay too big in your head when you’re a teenager, so fight that with all of your might. That one rejection does not mean your life is over. That one girl you wanted who doesn’t want you, meh, there are others. Adopt that mindset. I know it’s easier to say then for anyone to do, but you need the experience, you have to get some relationship stuff handled early in school if possible.
8. I wouldn’t read any fiction outside of assigned readings. I don’t get the obsession schools have with fiction. Most classics and good books will go over your head. I firmly believe you need some solid life experience to get much out of a lot of literature. If you are spending any free time reading, read non-fiction.
9. I would try to see whatever resources my school had to explore career options. You don’t know what you want to do in life, you have no idea what would be good, but I can give you a pretty good hint, find something you are suited for. You shouldn’t feel like you have to force yourself to be into a job, otherwise it will take too great of a will to overcome your fear and depression to excel at a job. You want to spread your wings and look into as much as you can. Here are a few job opportunities I didn’t know about, like, at all: accountant, finance, programmer, IT, trades. Each of those things may have suited me, but I let my parents talk me into dentistry, which didn’t work out, and then I went for education which I had to force myself through because it turned out I didn’t like teaching kids.
10. I would try to gain practical skills. Take shop class. Test out BOCES. Look for any extracurricular you can do, even if it’s drama club but you want to be someone who works on the set, not an actor. You won’t have a lot of time later in life to learn practical stuff until it becomes a necessity. Help out around the house as much as possible.
11. Steer clear of politics as much as possible. This is no longer a realm of disinterested postulation, it has now become the realm of extremism and personal attacks. Avoid as much as possible, it simply isn’t worth it to you to self-destruct over a political viewpoint you may have that you haven’t had enough life experience to flesh out. Also don’t cavalierly join into any radical groups or follow radical students, you are only trying to get through these years without damage. Back in my day the political kids were weirdos, nerds, or the rich.
12. Find a sensible, flattering style and stick with it. Or, if that’s too conservative for you, experiment with a new style every couple of months until you find what you like best, at least with your hair. All high schoolers should be taking advantage of their youthful hair.
13. Talk to a variety of people, you never know who you may like or connect with. If you can’t, at least listen in different conversations of people you would normally never hang out with. Why? To get to know your peers better and more context with which to look back at these times with.
14. Join a school club, like Latin club, or Spanish club, or whatever else is available at your school. Who cares if your friends will be there or not, you may make new friends, there’s no reason why you need to stay all of the time, but those clubs may open up new experiences for you or take once-in-a-lifetime trips.
15. Make full use of resources to shortcut knowledge for the sake of spending as little time as possible on class. For instance, a high schooler could easily spend a few nights scrolling through sparknotes.com and other similar sites, cliffnotes, jiffynotes, or even KhanAcademy, to catch up on missing information from missed classes, or to quickly review and learn something for a test without needing to commit it to long-term memory. You can even find tutorial videos on Youtube for the TI-84, a common graphing calculator for higher level math classes.
16. If you want a huge leg up against all of your peers, especially this day and age, reduce your fun time. You don’t need to be having fun all the time, it’s a trap. Focus on becoming an adult. Ask your parents, ask what you can help out with, how they take care of things, or if there are any family friends you can volunteer to help out. Losers are staying in playing video games, but the kids who are going to own a home in the future are spending their time wisely. Don’t waste the ridiculous amount of free time you get as a teenager.
17. Have something boring to work on. This should be practicing your sports and instrument firstly, but you need a personal project to be doing as well, like building a canoe, refinishing a piece of furniture, rebuilding a small engine, going fishing or hunting. Anything at all that isn’t exciting and engaging every moment but has a payoff when you’re done. Also, you should be using your hands for this project.
18. Don’t restrict yourself from enjoying life because something could be lame or cringe. Now is the time to begin practicing not feeling embarrased about things. People are judging you, yes, but get over it, their judgment isn’t worth anything. You have to stop feeding into your own insecurity by caring too much about what others think. None of them will remember anything you did or said and you won’t even remember. If you avoid stuff because you’re worried about what your peers will think, all you’re doing is training yourself to not do anything, even when you’re older and alone you still won’t do stuff because of this habit. Also, adults give passes to teenagers being young and stupid, they expect it and they don’t care about your antics so long as you aren’t acting like a criminal. Teenagers have a tendency to be melodramatic and build things up too much in their head. Fight that tendency.
19. Try to follow through with advice from adults. This is about building relationships and connections and showing others you are worth putting time and effort into. You never know how a connection could pay off in the future, but this is a good time in life to learn to please the adults and authority figures in order to build a network. You will always be in need of a network later in life, and a lot of adults who complain about being depressed don’t have any network and have to reach out to strangers on the internet.
20. Show respect for your peers. They are all going through the same stuff you are. There’s no need to feel superior to everyone, no need to look down on anyone, or conversely, admire someone. Simply respect their human dignity and do not think you are above or beneath any of them. Some of those kids will be dead within a decade, some in jail, some married with kids, some successful, most not, some will still be in shape but a lot will get fat, even the ones you would never suspect.
And that’s it, kids. If you are an adult, feel free to comment on what you would do differently if you had to redo high school. We all had different experiences and could offer different insights. Even if no high schoolers ever read this, perhaps some information can be useful across the age-spectrum. Some things simply age well, like respect for others, focusing on a physical hobby/sport, building a network, and taking one subject to learn more seriously than others. Have a great day.
