If the tagline of middle school was “just wait until you’re in high school”, the tagline for high school was “you’re not in middle school anymore”. This sentiment is expressed by just about everyone during high school; parents remind you to grow up, teachers remind you that your work is harder, and peers remind you to stop being a little kid and start being the adult that you’re turning into. For me, high school was the first time that I actually felt like an adult, even when I was just a freshman. People respect you more when you tell them that you’re in high school compared to when you say that you’re in middle school, and you respect yourself more too. Now you’re superior to everyone (except college students, but they don’t really count when you’re in high school), but that pseudo-elevated stature comes with a much more real increase of responsibility. Once you hit high school, there’s much less room for mistakes. Getting a B on a test still probably isn’t the end of the world in any circumstance, but getting a B on all of your tests could prevent you from going to the college that you want to. High school as a whole is a ramping up of all of your responsibilities, the difficulty of your classes, and the pressure from your parents, teachers, and friends. That said, though, high school was one of my favorite periods of my life, and I still look back on it very fondly.
With this blog, I would like to discuss my own somewhat unique experience of attending three very different high schools. I’ll give a rundown of each one, what I liked, what I didn’t like, and how I think that particular school affected my future.
The first high school that I went to, Singapore American School, was in just about all ways unique. It was a private school located in the northern area of Singapore, where the majority of the expat population lived. The campus had schools for all grades from pre-K up to 12th grade and had nicer facilities than some colleges that I’ve been too. At SAS, the overall feeling of the high school was one of intense pressure. Due to the school’s location in Singapore, almost all of the students that went there were the children of politicians, members of the armed forces, or successful business executives. Although the school was incredibly diverse racially, it wasn’t quite as diverse in terms of social class or life experiences. The children of all of these successful parents were all hyper-motivated to succeed, and the feeling of stress in the school during finals week was almost tangible. From as early as freshman year I would spend two hours or more per night on homework. Personally, I loved this environment. It was a place where I could succeed, and being surrounded by other highly motivated students really helped me learn and make the transition into the more challenging high school environment. The teachers I had at SAS remain some of my favorite teachers that I’ve ever had; they understood our drive for success and they were just as motivated to do well as we were. Though I only attended SAS for two years, I believe that it prepared me for college more than my junior and senior year at lesser schools.
In the summer after sophomore year, the company my dad worked for was bought by Google and so we were forced to move from Singapore to Palo Alto, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. Palo Alto is one of the nicest zip codes in the country; located there are the headquarters of Facebook, the manufacturing center for Tesla, and the home of many top tech executives like Steve Jobs and Larry Page. The school I went to, Palo Alto High School (Paly), which is directly across the street from Stanford, is apparently one of the top high schools in California. Personally, I hated that school more than any other that I’ve ever been to. I had just come from the rigorous atmosphere of SAS, and coming to a large public school in central California where the pace of life moves slower than anywhere else was a very uncomfortable transition. It was hard to make friends for the first few months; no one notices one more new student in a class of 500. I felt like my teachers didn’t understand me, most of the classes were a joke, and I was left with tons of free time every day sitting around doing nothing. The other students all seemed pretty happy with the school, but most of them were California born and raised and accustomed to the relaxed atmosphere.
When my parents talked to me about the possibility of moving to Pennsylvania at the end of my junior year, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. My only stipulation was that I didn’t want to have to go to another large public school. Instead, I went for the complete opposite of the spectrum: a tiny private school called Solebury School with just 50 students per class. The environment of this school, if possible, was even worse than at Paly; the school, unknown to me when I applied, was seen largely as a second-chance school for students who had struggled in other high schools and had to switch out due to social or academic pressures. The redeeming factor of the school was that which such small class sizes, I was able to interact personally with my teachers and still get a decent academic experience out of it. Additionally, I viewed senior year mostly as a checkbox; take some AP classes, get a degree, and move on to college. If I had been at Solebury for any longer, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have been able to put up with the tiny class size.
My experiences with high school taught me that, at least in my perspective, it’s almost the opposite of college. In college, one of the most common refrains is that “it’s not where you go, it’s what you do”. For high school, it’s all about where you go. I did the same things at every high school, from the level of classes that I took to the sports that I participated in. But each school was vastly different, and there was only one that I really enjoyed going to. I think that each had an important effect on my future, and I will also say that I believe that switching high schools offers a very unique perspective and helps make the transition from high school to college much easier. In the end, high school is just one more step of preparation for college. If I could go back, I think that I would take it much less seriously than I did and take some of the pressure off of myself. What I did enjoy universally about high school, though, is the ramping up of freedom and responsibility. In high school, you feel like you actually have the respect of your teachers, and you adjust to the increased duties and workload as they increase every year. Overall, I feel that high school itself is a perfect introduction to college, but the variance between schools is very large and can significantly change an individual’s experience.
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