Ask HN: How can I make the most out of high school?
I just watched an anime following a group of close friends in a band as they pass through high school. I've seen people online state that the anime reminded them of their own high school lives, but it doesn't remind me of my current life at all; it's way too carefree and fun.
My online friends have told me that they don't have close friends either, so my life is normal.
Today, I saw this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/aanfmf/whats_a_very_common_thing_that_you_just_cannot/ecuao12. Granted, the person is saying that they don't relate to looking back on high school. However, the topic is about common things that one can’t relate to, and some repliers said that their own HS lives were carefree. Now, I again feel I am missing something.
I like programming, and I've become interested in type theory. I doubt that other people in my school care about this stuff.
I take art class, but it's a solitary activity between me and my teacher, not together with other students.
I don't know how to make close friends. I can talk to people, but I can't suddenly form a close relationship with somebody. Friendship can’t be forced; it develops naturally. Yet, I've never made a close, loyal friendship, only casual friendships.
Before, I've been looking forward to college so I can study my interests. Now, I feel afraid of ending high school.
Is it normal that I don't have close friends and that I'm solitary? Am I missing out on anything?
What hobbies do you advise me to adopt that I can do in a group, with camaraderie?
Will college be the same or different than high school? Can I have the same kind of youthful fun when I'm an adult?
67 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadBut I don't think what you wrote sounds terse or abrupt! I hope you get some value out of the replies.
Given your interest in type theory, it's definitely normal for you to be solitary. Most mathematicians are. A lot of writers, too, I imagine.
But you are missing out on something, as a lot of us "programmer-types" are, which is a healthy social life. We can connect with others online, but I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we thought that being social online can replace being social IRL.
My recommendation is that you put some work into making a good friend with similar interests to your own. There's got to be someone at your school who is also interested in programming. Find that/those person/s and befriend them. You'll be glad you did.
I had fun: I cheated, I skipped classes, my motto was "minimum effort, maximum freedom." I went out a lot in Amsterdam in order to get my social fix and a read on what it means to be social (long story short: if you don't like going out that much, go to places with more interesting music -- jazz, classical, opera, finger style guitar etc.)
For me the fix was obvious: travel in Europe and make friends. It was obvious because I had a huge hunger for doing whatever I wanted as opposed to other people dictating it to me (e.g. set curriculum in high school).
In the end those friendships were short-lived, all of them. But those friendship did give me the validation of that I mattered (and the insight that everyone matters really). When I look at Japanese high school animes, I think of the time where I felt lost in other countries, and gained some friends who showed me their world in all their wonderful idiosincratic ways.
I'm not saying you should travel. I hope that my story just gives some inspiration.
In your youth you can follow your desire, the older you get, the more you'll have to follow responsibilities.
TV and anime makes carefree socializing in high school look better than it is.
Colleee is usually a lot better time for socializing than high school, espicially if you're ambitious and nerdy.
Find other ambitious nerdy people that share the things you're excuted about. This will probably be much easier to do in high school.
learn to skate, you'll have a quick mode of transport in urban/suburban areas, you get to meet some cool people, widens your music exposure. Chances are these skating kids have spare boards, ask if they can help you learn, most people are down to hang out a little after school and skate for a bit.
Seriously I was in a similar state, but skating helped me branch out to other groups of people, I ended up meeting cool people through it, and I now surf with one of the people I met through it. Plus whenever we are in SF i feel really comfortable street skating.
Be ready to fall, and thats part of the learning, and the balance acquisition. its a life long skill, but a gift that keeps on giving.
also don't take off the plastics that cover the ball bearings on the wheels, people say that they "help out" but it really trashes them, if anything get some Red Dragon Bearings and call it a day, they are super good besides ceramics. If you have the ability to get a board ($110 new) get something some Thomas Trucks, Enjoi Board, and some Spitfire wheels.
Not really. Not everybody needs to or wants to have a huge circle of friends. And let's face it, it's impossible to have a huge circle of close friends. You wouldn't be able to maintain the friendships AND your studies, hobbies, etc.
> What hobbies do you advise me to adopt that I can do in a group, with camaraderie?
Strength training, hiking, biking, running, dancing, watching anime/drama/movies in a group -- so many to choose from. Just try out whatever interests you. You'll end up meeting lifelong friends just doing that.
And trust me, high school is a not a big deal. It's a very small chunk of your life compared to what's ahead. And what's ahead is much much better.
This is quite a common narrative. But it is also very easy for it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't believe that it is easy to make friends, it will be harder to make friends. People are social creatures. Smile, laugh, enjoy yourself, and celebrate the people around you; and you will have friends.
> Am I missing out on anything?
Probably, but such is the narrative of life. If you're concerned about unknown unknowns, then do more scary things. If you like programming and art, try skateboarding or maybe join the debate team and do some public speaking. Just do different stuff. You don't have to abandon the things you like, but you have to make time and space to push yourself into places that are uncomfortable.
> What hobbies do you advise me to adopt that I can do in a group, with camaraderie?
Anything with a group of individuals who are working together. Team sports, band, some ROTC, debate, school newspaper, . I would also caution against the impulse to be "better" than everyone else. Camaraderie comes from working together as a team, not from being better than your teammates. There is enough available success in the world to go around. There's no need to step on people to get there.
> Will college be the same or different than high school?
Both. People will still come in all flavors. The amplitudes of their behaviors will likely be different than what you're used to, but the same behaviors will be there.
> Can I have the same kind of youthful fun when I'm an adult?
Depends on how you define "youthful fun" and "adult". The available options of a 70 year old person are much more physically limited than a 17 year old person. And there is some continuous curve that links those two points. But at 70, you've had a lifetime to accumulate wealth (and maybe some time to blow it too), so the 17 year old may be more financially limited than the 70 year old. Do what you can with what you have.
w.r.t being better than others - I go to a school with a strong academic culture. In absolutely no way do people put each other down, not at all, but I feel like there is an underlying motivation to have good ECs to make oneself attractive to colleges. In particular, you mentioned the debate team, which, at least at my school, seems to me like a highly competitive club that boosts college applications. I feel extremely cynical about the culture of people padding college applications, so I had decided previously to ignore clubs and only pursue my passion of programming to be “true to myself.” However, now I feel a desire to join a club out of genuine pursuit of happiness (as opposed to boosting an application). I hope that I will find a club with a passionate and genuine culture, without competitive people.
Before, my mother had told me that I should have activities outside school that I could show for. Part of it was for colleges, as I would have a hard time competing with others if I didn’t do much outside school. However, my mother also said that part of it was being a fuller person. I used to feel frustrated because I felt like she wanted me to do stuff just for college, a motivation that I felt was “phony,” but now I see what she meant about being more active in general.
As far as hobbies go, it's more about you than about the hobby. I had a drawing group where we would gather at coffee shops and talk and draw for a couple hours. Sports are also surprisingly entertaining once you do them because you feel like it rather than because someone tells you to. I made lots of friends through martial arts.
I went to an engineering school with a sizable CS/ECE program but I never found people like this.
My advice to OP is - go to a university that does have people like this.
Sorry, but that's an unactionable advice. You really can't tell what your classmates interests will be before the uni starts generally.
Go to the best college you can is a better one.
2. Definitely research colleges thoroughly and apply to them, but realize that you don't have to go to college. And certainly not right out of high school. In some disciplines, such as web software engineering, those 4 years spent working with real clients could be more valuable for your career than spending lots of money on a Computer Science degree.
3. Leverage all the extra-curricular activities you can in order to gauge your interest in certain subjects. Obviously you can't register for everything, but pick, say 3 activities to focus on each semester and apply yourself to them. As life goes on, you'll have less and less carefree time to explore this stuff.
You'll be missing out on teenager life as you worry about teenager life, so don't worry about it and just do what you want to do.
In my experience, it's much easier to do with people you have something in common. I didn't even know the names of most of my classmates in high school.
> Will college be the same or different than high school?
The best thing about college was the fact that other people stopped feeling like a bunch of scripted NPCs.
A number of other people have suggested sports. I wish I had discovered Judo and Brazilian Jujitsu younger, but I was a competitive fencer and boxed in university. All sports give you a pool of people to have shared experiences with (maybe a bit artificial) whether they are team sports or individual sports.
The other element of these kind of 'instant friend' activities is that you can find a kind of 'placeholder' group of people to hang out with who may be able to introduce you to other people you are more likely to click with. I made some good friends from groups of people that I largely had nothing in common with but was hanging out with because of some girl (for example) - but you might wind up meeting way more interesting people on the periphery of a group you don't really 100% click with.
My friends in high school were generally 'shared interest' nerd friends (mostly Dungeons and Dragons as a core nerdy interest).
It's possible to make friends doing pretty much whatever - a lot of friends I had in university were my peers in CS and other subjects. We had to hang around in labs and classes together, though (and having a 4th year "honours" program in CS where we did 100% CS and all had on-campus shared offices was really good for that). So it's just as possible that you could wind up walking in, doing your work, and walking out. Cultivating some projects and working with a group might really help with that. A lot of undergraduates are considered disposable randos who are just interested in getting a qualification as quick as possible while accumulating as little extra knowledge as possible, but if you're interested in type theory, maybe you should be trying to work with a research group in something you like. Ideally go for a healthy research group that's actually at the place you want to go, not something that exactly fits your supposed interested right now (which will likely change). So if they have a big healthy machine learning group that welcomes undergraduate research interns vs one cranky weirdo doing type theory, do the former (that's better both socially and, likely, as research prep if that's the direction you want to go).
Do try to make sure that you're not assuming activities are asocial when they aren't, too. Maybe people are getting coffee after art class?
It's very hard to force the issue - I think people are more and more preoccupied with their phones and previous social connections via social media than they are interested in meeting new people. I suggest cultivating a lot of interests (including a wide variety of things), behaving yourself well, keeping an open mind and seeing what happens.
Of course, maybe you're just solitary by nature. But don't assume stuff. I substantially reinvented myself in university and essentially declared myself an extrovert after having been very introverted in HS. Despite some awkward moments from this forced transition (yes, someone trying to put on an extrovert skin can be about as dreadful as you might imagine) this was a very good idea long-term.
High school was an oppressive environment.
So it's not the experience itself, it's what you get out of it as years tick by, and perspective can help. Real stories are subtle, with a lot of ways to retell them differently.
"Carefree" high school life is not innocuous - or rather, like a toddler who breaks their toys, it's innocuous right up until it isn't, and the friendships are only lasting in some cases. As a lifelong thing, what will help the most is bringing a balanced skillset and mindset to the scenarios you find yourself in. But the skills and attitudes you get from full engagement in high school life are also some of the most common ones you will encounter among people of your generation, and they are relatively undirected. It can feel good in the moment without doing anything to help you down the line, because doing the most common thing puts you up against a lot of competition.
So, "normal" can just mean setting yourself up for a completely different set of regrets. It's something that young people cling to desperately in their adolescent years by way of setting a baseline, but there are a lot of good reasons to grow away from it and focus on life more pragmatically as an unending series of opportunities and threats.
College life is more illustrative of the different paths you could take, because there's more specialization, more extremes of behavior. Some college kids break down moments after getting there because they discover they are, in fact, extremely underprepared for life away from their parents. Others can really thrive and define themselves.
Close friendships come with time, make the time for that friend and do things together even if it's dumb. You're not there to impress them or vice versa but just the best of them and the best of you sometimes meet up and show the other person that there is something admirable, in morals and values or skills like your programming. You have something to share and time is the most valuable. So make some time with the people you want to be close to.
> Am I missing out on anything?
From my experience - I wish I tried more at school times. It's much harder once everyone has their own life / family to take care of.
Once you build this map, you can begin to monitor and track how external factors drive you. Memes, TV, movies, music, conversation... all signals designed to persuade and hijack your behavior. Spending time here will give you much needed clarity of self and begin laying the foundation of empathy for others.
Friends appear once you have this map as you will have unintentionally filtered out those who will exploit the unexplored regions of you.
Good luck.
High school performance is not an indication of real life performance. I graduated class rank 380 out of 386 because my personal goal was to see just how close I could cut it without missing the mark. That means I was at that time a risk seeking personality. I also hated high school, because my high school is one of the top high schools in the country and is certainly not a reflection of reality. I was happier isolating myself from the competition politics parents imposed on their children and I achieved that isolation with far too great of success. I still got into college just fine and now I make more money than many of my teenage childrens' friends' parents. This is solely because I pursue my personal interests far more aggressively than most people.
Many years ago when I was at Travelocity I was a young senior developer. Somebody I graduated high school with (top ten class rank) came in as a junior vice president. Her education and life goals were centered around management, but she had no product or technical goals. She left the company before I did and is doing very well. It took me later in life to discover my personal goals and I have been less successful as a result. I suspect there is greater demand for me in the marketplace and I likely have greater job security and her though.
You are still a child. Your brain has not fully formed and so you lack the observational and emotional stability that comes with being an adult. That said remain calm and don't anything too seriously. Focus on learning all things from academics, inter-personal relationships, technical things, human behavior, and so forth. Don't confuse who you are with who you want to be. Be yourself and do it well.
Use your time in high school to prepare the personal behaviors that will carry you through the rest of life. Consider things like self-reflection, work ethic, a lust for learning, written communications, and so forth. Discover your interests and personal passions and have the courage to share your interests with others.
Set personal goals. Its ok if you don't achieve your personal goals at that age, because your interests are subject to change. Goals give you something to work towards and what is important is that you are working towards something intentional with great focus. If you do quit your goal prematurely do so deliberately with a great reason that you can speak to out loud.
You never get your time back. Don't waste your time on frivolous things. Any activity that contributes to some degree of self-improvement, listening/communication skills, or social behavior is important.
Fun is what you make of things. It is a matter of perspective. Beware of people trying to define this for you.
While we have some ideals, e.g. as portrayed by pop-culture, it does not mean that you would even enjoy living this ideal. Your life will be what you desire it to be, if you are able to make your own decisions.
As someone that flip-flopped between solitary and social phases in his life (and not only marginally), my only advice would be: whatever you feel like, just try to enjoy it the best you can.
Life is incredibly short and it is all yours and you will be the ultimate judge.
Regarding friendships: Especially at your age, friendships can be very intense and meaningful, and yet so frail and meaningless in retrospect. Again, all that matters is how you perceive and enjoy it, and that's the point: deep down, everyone just wants to enjoy themselves. Try to enjoy yourself, and while doing that, don't hesitate to bond with people that support this feeling and ideally have similar interests. And take an open look at what they offer on alternative views and interests.
And don't sweat it, if most bonds are very shallow and superficial, these will always be the majority (through all your life), and that's OK. And things might change incredibly fast anyway, especially in high school.