What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

[Twitch Boy]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

Graduating class of about 100. There were groups linked by sports, music preference, vidya games, etc. that preferred to stick together, but I didn't notice a lot of really clique-ish behavior and drama. Of course, I was the "weird smart" kid kinda doing my own thing.

I'd guess about 40 percent went on to "13th grade" at Delta, about 25 percent went to SVSU, about 15 percent to East Lansing, about 5 percent to Ann Arbor, and I believe I was the only one to go to Tech (maybe there was one other in my grade, can't recall - I know there was one in the grade above me who went there on a football scholarship and there were two in the grade beneath me.)

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

They weight AP classes now to ensure the "right" (i.e., college-bound) kids win VD/SD.

In my HS my weighted GPA was a shade under 4.20 (top scale 4.3 for an A in AP) and I finished 7th. There were a lot of seriously smart kids in my HS, along with a lot more seriously dumb ones.

My college GF totally boned her best friend out of HS VD. She and he got straight 4.0s, but AP classes got a .1 premium. She took every available AP class. He took every one he was allowed to, but his mother taught AP Chem so he wasn't allowed to take it (OCI). So he wound up a few thousandths of a point short. She always felt guilty about that. If I was the guy I'd have at least asked for a handy.

I agree with St. Clown about HomeEc. I took HomeEc in JHS and my friend and I spent the entire class disassembling our sewing machine and surreptitiously throwing pieces of it out the second floor window, culminating with the machine's entire casing. There was a hitter (did you guys have "hitters"? On LI in 1978 a "hitter" was a hamhead punk who beat kids up for their lunch money or just to take their domestic violence issues out on) who had beaten my best friend up in 7th grade sitting in front of us, so we switched desks and he got blamed.

Jocks: Never f-ck with nerds. We will hack the CPS database and have your children taken away.

We weighted AP classes on a 5.0 scale, and honors classes on a 4.5. So our four valedictorians all had a GPA in the 4.6 range.

 

[Kepler]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

We weighted AP classes on a 5.0 scale, and honors classes on a 4.5. So our four valedictorians all had a GPA in the 4.6 range.

Grade inflation (clap, clap, clap clap clap).

My 9-years older brother went to Catholic school (a few years behind Bill O'Reilly -- true story) and not only did they not have step grades (+, -) or weighting for AP/honors, they had a strict curve with something like 5% As, 25 Bs, 40 Cs, 25 Ds, 5 Fs. He and a classmate went to MIT with HS GPAs in the low 3s.

Times have changed. When I was in school if you got a B you were on shaky ground for a Tier 1 school. Today students who get A minuses probably sue.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

Graduating class of about 100. There were groups linked by sports, music preference, vidya games, etc. that preferred to stick together, but I didn't notice a lot of really clique-ish behavior and drama. Of course, I was the "weird smart" kid kinda doing my own thing.

I'd guess about 40 percent went on to "13th grade" at Delta, about 25 percent went to SVSU, about 15 percent to East Lansing, about 5 percent to Ann Arbor, and I believe I was the only one to go to Tech (maybe there was one other in my grade, can't recall - I know there was one in the grade above me who went there on a football scholarship and there were two in the grade beneath me.)

3 of us landed at Tech from a class of 208. All 3 ended up graduating from MTU, which is probably a statistical anomaly.

During commencement, one of the rich girls had her college announced as U of M, but actually attended MSU. Yes, I went to Catholic prep school and her parents were big donors.

Grade inflation (clap, clap, clap clap clap).

My 9-years older brother went to Catholic school (a few years behind Bill O'Reilly -- true story) and not only did they not have step grades (+, -) or weighting for AP/honors, they had a strict curve with only 10% As. He and a classmate went to MIT with HS GPAs in the low 3s.

Times have changed.

My HS has since added the IB cirriculum as well, so I imagine there are even more GPA shenanigans now than in 2005.

 

[goldy_331]

My kid's high school, as I said, had 14 Valedictorians. They chose not to break the ties, all had 4.0. One of my son's buddies from the trap team didn't make VD or SD. He entered Purdue in engineering as a sophomore though due to all the AP and testing out of classes. This was a private college prep school, no home ec. majors in the VD crew.

My school was more like Kep's class of 800. Don't remember any hitters at high school and they would have found me an easy mark.

 

[Kepler]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

Don't remember any hitters at high school and they would have found me an easy mark.

Hitters were in JHS. By HS those kids were in juve or jail or they were, like D-Day, "whereabouts unknown." I actually saw the kid who beat up my friend, on Facebook. He runs a bar now; same town.

I am BLOWN AWAY how many of my classmates stayed in our town. I would say based on FB roughly 50% of my HS graduating class lives within 20 miles of our HS, and that doesn't include the drop outs who all stayed in town to become "local color."

OTOH, exactly one of the kids in the top 10 went back there (he commutes to NYC where he is some sort of Joel Fleischman Columbia Med specialist in Diseases of the Rich). The rest of us are all over the globe, as far away as we could possibly get. 18 years was plenty.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

My HS experience was vastly different from you guys. First off, I went to a somewhat large school, 1500+ kids, and it was (and still is) very mixed. White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Polynesian, Alaska Native, pretty much everything. And playing sports like I did really forced you to interact. You wanna win? Well you gotta win with Hector and Sol Jin so you better learn about each other. Seeing the football players, especially the redneck kids, having to learn that was always funny.

The other factor at my HS was the economic disparity. My school took in neighborhoods that are easily the poorest in Anchorage and at the same time took from the neighborhood that was extremely wealthy and full of political families and politically connected families (I went to school with the family of our current Governor).

Personally, I hated school and couldn't wait to get out. I did just enough to keep myself eligible for sports and that was it.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

My HS experience was vastly different from you guys. First off, I went to a somewhat large school, 1500+ kids, and it was (and still is) very mixed. White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Polynesian, Alaska Native, pretty much everything. And playing sports like I did really forced you to interact. You wanna win? Well you gotta win with Hector and Sol Jin so you better learn about each other. Seeing the football players, especially the redneck kids, having to learn that was always funny.

The other factor at my HS was the economic disparity. My school took in neighborhoods that are easily the poorest in Anchorage and at the same time took from the neighborhood that was extremely wealthy and full of political families and politically connected families (I went to school with the family of our current Governor).

Personally, I hated school and couldn't wait to get out. I did just enough to keep myself eligible for sports and that was it.

I think you're mistaking our graduating class sizes for the overall size of the school. My senior class was 525 students, but that was just one of four grades in the school, and had the smallest headcount. Second, in terms of economic disparity, we had that too, from kids whose parents were barely able to keep them in their trailer homes to those kids living the posh pre-McMansion era large homes in the heavily wooded lots (my prom date's family, for instance). The only difference between what you described and my HS was the ethnic diversity of the population. Actually, your school was quite a bit smaller than mine as we were around 2300 students.

 

[Jimjamesak]

I think you're mistaking our graduating class sizes for the overall size of the school. My senior class was 525 students, but that was just one of four grades in the school, and had the smallest headcount. Second, in terms of economic disparity, we had that too, from kids whose parents were barely able to keep them in their trailer homes to those kids living the posh pre-McMansion era large homes in the heavily wooded lots (my prom date's family, for instance). The only difference between what you described and my HS was the ethnic diversity of the population. Actually, your school was quite a bit smaller than mine as we were around 2300 students.

Yeah I noticed that now. It was probably closer to 2000 to be honest as my class 400 or so and was somewhat small. At my graduation though, I sat between two girls I had never met.

The ethnic diversity was, and still is, a very defining trait of my school.

 

[Kepler]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

The other factor at my HS was the economic disparity. My school took in neighborhoods that are easily the poorest in Anchorage and at the same time took from the neighborhood that was extremely wealthy and full of political families and politically connected families (I went to school with the family of our current Governor).

True in our school, too. We had unbelievably poor kids as in had no shoes so the teachers bought them some, and also Harry Chapin's sons (both as-shats) and a cousin-or-something of Henry Kissinger (used to helicopter into NYC on the weekends for hookers and blow).

I was really surprised later to find out that at many schools the very top rung gets scooped off to boarding school. We didn't have any of that -- the worst that could be said was kids who went to Private School For Rich Catholics Who Don't Want Their Daughters Race Mixing. We did have a few families like that.

 

[Kepler]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

I think you're mistaking our graduating class sizes for the overall size of the school. My senior class was 525 students, but that was just one of four grades in the school, and had the smallest headcount.

On this, our school has gone through all sorts of gyrations. The school in total always held about 2500, but went from 9-12 when my sister attended a few years before me, to 10-12 when I was there to only 11-12 a few years after I graduated.

It's now all the way back to 9-12 and has dropped under 2000 kids and some people want to move to 8-12 so they can phase out JHS, but parents are scared that 18-year olds are going to have sex with 13-year olds which is in fact exactly what's going to happen, as opposed to with 14-year olds which is I guess just fine by them.

Also, somebody got creative with redistricting because while my town has gotten more racially diverse, the school is now predominantly white.

Though the town also has about 7 different high schools now counting the Catholic ones.

 

[Kepler]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

The ethnic diversity was, and still is, a very defining trait of my school.

Was it tense?

Talking to other adults I think the racial tension (really, overt violence) in my school was pretty bizarre. Other than NYC public school kids, of course. My stories are about rocks through windows and stabbings. Their stories are about kidnapping, gang rapes and shootings.

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

Our school was quite affluent but had possibly the largest population of ESL students in the area (of other similarly affluent schools), mini-school, votech and there were pockets of areas less affluent. As crazy as it may sound, but there was so much money for so many of my classmates (we were straight middle-class - nothing to cry about, but no spring breaks to Sanibel either) that it didn't matter how much money you had because someone else always had more. A friend with a McMansion was just as likely to have a party as a buddy with a 1,500 sq foot rambler. The one thing we lacked outside the ESL kids was true diversity. Extremely, extremely white. In my class of 650+ I graduated with 5 black kids. Even the foreign-exchange kids were whiter than white.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Was it tense?

Talking to other adults I think the racial tension (really, overt violence) in my school was pretty bizarre. Other than NYC public school kids, of course. My stories are about rocks through windows and stabbings. Their stories are about kidnapping, gang rapes and shootings.

No, especially in comparison to those problems. We had incidents certainly but my HS had some gang problems that led to stuff far more often then race.

I mean, it's Alaska, nearly everyone is from somewhere else.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

I finished second in my HS class by 0.005 to someone who literally took Home Ec I, II, and III and Typing II while was was taking Calculus, Physics, and Chem II. C'est la vie.

They weight AP classes now to ensure the "right" (i.e., college-bound) kids win VD/SD.

There was a way to get VD in my high school.
And quite actually, it involved the person who beat me out. ... Wait. What? Yes. "VD." Not the same? Oh. ... Nevermind.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

Jocks: Never f-ck with nerds. We will hack the CPS database and have your children taken away.

I must've been the nightmare and not known it. Captained/alternated two different teams; state champion in speech/forensics; salutatorian (doing the Calculus/Physics college prep path). In school I was nerd with a parent who was a teacher in the district. Out of school I was a teammate (Jock is too strong).

We didn't have "hitters", we had "loads". Same thing only different, but with latent drug usage as a bonus. Load tried to "lunch money" the nerd kid one day in a hall one Friday. Too bad Load didn't know that nerd kid was on his way to retrieve the jersey (with captain's C) he forgot to wear to school that day* and was already cranky because he knew he'd be skating hard next practice for that mistake.


*I hated that team rule. We wore jerseys to school on days of games, but that included on Friday for a Saturday game. Why? But it was tradition. < shrug >

 

[Kepler]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

We didn't have "hitters", we had "loads". Same thing only different, but with latent drug usage as a bonus.

Yeah, hitters didn't do drugs, they believed in a Pure America. They are doubtless all Trump voters. They had all started down the path to alcoholism by age 13, though.

Our JHS druggies were "freaks," and they came in two flavors: motorheads who fixed cars, listened to Ozzy, did whippets and sniffed glue, and would fight only if cornered, but then with anything to hand including shop equipment, and Cheech & Chong-themed laid-back dudes who were always sun-bathing on the school roof, smoking enormous joints that probably gave them about 1% of the hit that modern pot does (c.f. Louis C. K. joke), and draped with Latino, um, "girlfriends" who were in their 20s. I genuinely never suspected what all that added up to in JHS. I was well-scrubbed.

 

[The Rube]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

Truckers: School started at 8am or so. They showed up in their trucks, going gear-monkey at 7:30
Freaks: that would be the goths, emos (although "emo" wasn't really a term then), etc.
Nerds/geeks/etc: the super smart kids that didn't socialize
Jocks: no definition needed
Dirtballs: the hairball metal kids w/leather jackets, long hair, and if they owned a car, it was a Trans Am or Firebird.
Homies: anyone in a gang, or tried to appear to be in a gang. There were more than a few. I was bouncyball teammates with a few Crips.

High school sucked. I didn't care for most anyone in that era.

 

[Kepler]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

We had zero gangs. Not even in the projects. It was 1979 and we were a leafy suburb, so even though we had kids who rumbled with chains, it wasn't bad gang violence but good old apple pie murderous race hatred.

Ah, the good old days...

We also didn't have a single person doing heroin. A kid on my block who was a true blue hitter did in fact grow up to die of a heroin overdose, but that was in his late 20s and he picked up the habit in stir.

The motorhead car of choice was the "Puerto Rican Charger" (Dodge Charger all the way from the late 60s to the mid 70s, with the peak model being the 1971 with a turbo which looked like a f-cking SR-71.) All late 60s, early 70s Dodges were big, including the Dart (beloved because it had only about 8 moving parts). Needless to say they'd rather see a Jap on their sister than ride a Jap car (the Invasion was just starting).

 

[MinnesotaNorthStar]

Re: What the Fark 3: The Strange and Unusual

Truckers: School started at 8am or so. They showed up in their trucks, going gear-monkey at 7:30
Freaks: that would be the goths, emos (although "emo" wasn't really a term then), etc.
Nerds/geeks/etc: the super smart kids that didn't socialize
Jocks: no definition needed
Dirtballs: the hairball metal kids w/leather jackets, long hair, and if they owned a car, it was a Trans Am or Firebird.
Homies: anyone in a gang, or tried to appear to be in a gang. There were more than a few. I was bouncyball teammates with a few Crips.

High school sucked. I didn't care for most anyone in that era.

Which ones were the Anti-Semites?