Why does high school have such a profound effect on people, even long after graduation?

Some guy on Instagram had an account devoted to making fan art and fan fiction about his high school friends. He was in his 30’s and not Instagram famous. He would post comics, detailed artwork, and even sexually graphic content about his school experiences and memories. And of course literotica about him and a girl he had a crush on. I don’t think any of his classmates spoke to him anymore and they weren’t friends. Like he was reminiscing 2004 or something. And a guy acquaintance of mine who is like 36 or so keeps talking about girls he knew and liked in high school, his classmates, memories etc. like he was telling me how one girl knew how to be a man eater and trap rich men. Sir she was like 16 something was wrong in that situation.

Having a fulfilling adult life helps with not thinking about school. The happier you are in yourself, the less you care about things that happened ages ago. I was really awkward at school too, to the point that I cringe with hindsight. I went to a girls' school but I used to have an insane, pathetic crush on this complete trash loser scrote at one of the boys' schools who wasn't worth a literal second of my time. At 24 he's already hit the wall at ultra speed and I'm embarrassed that I ever even looked at him. My friends back then were pretty much mainly assholes too. Realy snotty and judgemental NLOG types. I'm so glad I've moved on from them because they just made me feel bad about myself. Then I went to uni and had a much better time, got better self confidence, better friends and grew as a person. I have a lot more hobbies now too and I just feel like I've really levelled up and grown since school. I don't really think much about school anymore. I was thinking about the media's obsession with school recently because me and some friends were looking for a film to watch. It just seems insane to me that actors my age and older are playing schoolchildren in films centred around school and teenagers? I have no interest in watching films about school because it seems so redundant, boring and backwards to dwell on it into your twenties and even older. I think the main reason is sad old scrotes who peaked at school and never progressed past a stunted mentality. Definitely wouldn't be surprised if there's some pedo element too. Either way, it's not healthy and we need to stop normalising the obsession. School isn't a big deal and people need to move on from it.

Middle school affected me a lot, because I think that's when I internalized most of my oppression (this short asian girl used to bully me for having body hair and hitting puberty early and everyone liked her because she was an uwu short asian girl).

High school didn't actually leave much of an impact on me at all - I was just obsessed with WoW at the time so most of my memories were from there. I wasn't really bullied nor was my friend circle particularly interesting (we just bonded over a shared seriousness about academics and otherwise had nothing in common).

I flourished socially in university.

I think, in general, American society is obsessed with youth. We're an emotionally immature country in many ways as a result. We idealize and romanticize that part of life. While I agree with what others have said about that being the time of firsts, not all of us got to experience those things back then.

Being a teenager was complicated for me. I was fat and invisible. Never asked out. I had no real friends. I didn't exist, and it was painful. I'm in my early 30s, and I've never dated, had sex, or been in a relationship. Men do not acknowledge me or show interest in me. I've had to completely cut off the romantic part of me because of the way men have ignored me. So, I didn't get to have the first kiss and the first date and all the intense things of being a teenager that so many people pine for years later. I'm trying to make peace with it. I'm trying to see it as liberating because it means I'm not sitting around yearning for that part of my life. I'm open to my life now and what it has to offer.

For a long time, I was trapped in the past, though. My father died when I was a teen, and it destroyed me. I was traumatized by it. He was the only man who has ever loved me. He was a wonderful father, and I'm grateful to have known him. I became depressed, and I developed debilitating anxiety that caused me to become agoraphobic. I still struggle with these things. I've never had the financial means to seek therapy either. I've just had to survive it and make it through. I used to idealize the time before high school when I was a little girl and my dad was still alive. I wanted to go back to that time when I was safe and loved.

Something happened to me this year. I started to finally feel some healing around his death. I did a lot of inner work in 2022. I had to. I was left devastated by a man who I developed intense feelings for. He ghosted me in late 2021. He was the only man I ever had romantic feelings for, the only man I bonded with besides my father. His treatment of me nearly destroyed me, but I didn't let it. I fought for myself finally. I chose life, not death. And I started to look at all these wounds that had festered for nearly two decades, everything I had pushed down and denied.

What I decided was that my best years are not behind me. I didn't peak in childhood. The past is beautiful, and it's also gone. And while I miss my father and all the people I've lost over the years, I can't stay in the past anymore. I can't live with all those ghosts. What a sad way to live to only believe that great things happened in high school, that that is the only time you can know love and intensity. I decided to find the magic of the present, and to keep my sense of wonder and awe alive. I want to believe that things can get better, that I can live again, that this moment also holds so many riches, that I'm not the sum of all my colossal mistakes I made for so many years as I tried to escape the pain of not being loved or seen or cared about. I love myself. I see myself. I care for myself. I'm not that teen girl anymore that the world treated like nothing. I'm more than that.

For those of us who don't have fond memories of high school and that time of our lives, may we find new experiences, new friends, new possibilities, new opportunities as we grow and evolve. I felt so alone my whole life, but in the last couple of years I found some friends who truly nourish me. I never thought I'd find that ever. I've lost 50 pounds. I've started loving myself. I found goddess spirituality and tarot. I'm writing more than I ever have. I'm alive right now and finding beauty as I am.

High school isn't everything, and I worry about a culture that is so obsessed with it. I fear we are a culture that can't mature, can't accept life in all its complexity. I fear such a culture creates men who are obsessed with young girls and likes taking advantage of their inexperience and innocence, men who can't love women their own age (or love at all), men who can't mature and grow and change and acquire depth. We are a shallow culture with shallow men who never grow up.

I think this may be because it is our first brush with the larger society and its rules. What adults (teachers) value, what our peers expect, what inclusion and exclusion from society mean. It is first phase of socializing of humans, that we can remember. When we are little children, we don't remember much or we are coddled and shielded from the nuances and grey areas of the real world (if we are lucky). Our first self images form in this period, combined with the adolescent brain- it's an intense effect. Wounds form and we need to actively unlearn and heal them as adults. This is what I think anyway.

I really can't tell you because despite having a rough time socially during my formative years (moving around a lot, undiagnosed mental health, etc) and despite having some girls pick on me or behaving cruelly towards me, I honestly can't even remember their names or what they look like anymore. I kinda realized years back that there's just not a lot of reasons to stay stuck in the past when it just doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't define you completely as a person; it was a short period of your youth that you went through and just like that, it's over.

Now, I think it can affect some people heavily because that was the only time in their life that they had friends or good relationships with their teachers, and it felt like they thrived a lot in that small bubble. Now that it's over, they have to begin adulthood with a clean slate and essentially start over. Your boss doesn't care that you were popular in high school. People in college don't even know who you are once you arrive despite being a celebrity at your old high school. It can really be a huge hit to the ego that no matter how awesome you were as a child, now you're just as ordinary as everybody else.

And then of course, there are those who was severely bullied and can't get over it. It's absolutely traumatic in some respect and for this, therapy is always recommended.

Some people, esp men, peak in HS so they cling onto that time/these people. Some didn't peak so they've got a chip on their shoulders. Both are equally bad.

Throughout high school, on a daily basis people pointed out to me my weakness and that I’d never grow out of them. As an adult, I don’t have that done to me at all. Like they would dare now. It's being surrounded by newly forged hormones for me that got to my head and still stays unfortunately.

I'm not sure, I'm in my last year in high school and everyone here is annoying AF. Dudes are 18 acting 12, they snicker and giggle in every class and interrupt the teacher. Grow up already, good lord. the girls aren't that much better either, constantly viciously gossiping starting rumors and vaping in the bathrooms clogging up the entire stalls, and writing rumors on the bathroom walls with Sharpie pens. Also the freshmen are rude af.

I'm just trying to mentally block out this place as much as possible, usually have my earbuds in and just on my laptop for the entire six hours I'm there lmao

I can't wait for HS to be over already.

For me, it's a time when you get to know many people at once at quite a deep level. Obviously you don't interact with everyone a lot, but having classes with someone every day for years on end lets you get to know them quite well. You see them develop and become adults. This never happens again during your life. Your coworkers are grown people and you usually won't talk about things like ethics, historic events, books etc. with them. Adults are much more closed off. So, having said that, when I was in school it really taught me how men treated women they consider ugly. I was otherwise a nice, talkative person, very good at school. Yet I was insulted, ignored and made fun of behind my back for years only for them to try and use me for my intelligence when it suited them. Women never treated me this way, I always had an abundance of female friends. So, to me, during middle and high school, I had ample chance to get to know many men when they were unguarded and realised that most of them are shitty people.

You usually experience a lot of firsts in high school: first love, first job, first car, the first time you have sex or hook up with someone.