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06/07/2024: Life after High School. What Happened 10 Years After I Left?

(Warning: This blog mention ableism, transphobic, self-harm and some swearing. So, please take care before reading on.)

Welp today marks the 10th anniversary since I graduated from high school. I know this isn’t a big deal for some as high school is usually one of their worst years of their lives. I get that. As an autistic woman who was forced to mask in most of high school in order to keep the bullies away from me, it sucked and sometime wished that I was a normal, neurotypical person instead. Of course, you knew that from reading some of blogs that mention my struggles of being autistic and how my masking led me to my mental breakdown in the 12th grade.

But instead of all that, how about I talk about the better part of high school since it wasn’t all that bad (well most of the time)!

Like mention in some of my blogs, my family and I lived in Germany for 5 years thanks to my mom’s job as a civilian contractor for one of the American bases that is located in there. It’s not too common to live in a historical country where on some of our weekends, we go on tours to look at old castles, local festivals and during breaks; we would go out of Germany to explore other European countries such as France and Italy. In the 10th grade, my AP World History class actually took a trip to a castle as we were covering the Medieval Ages at the time! You don’t have that opportunity in the States, don’t you?

It’s also not too common for me to attend an American school that is located on base, where any student whose parents works for the military, can get in for free (as it’s actually a private school in a sense). Where instead of riding the yellow bus that we Americans are used to, I had to ride an old tour bus, whose interior hasn’t been updated since the 80s’ (back when there used to be two Germanys)! Not only that, I had to ride with all the age groups as the three schools were near each other and tend to have an “assigned” seating area: the elementary students sat in the front, the middle schoolers sat in the center, the high schoolers sat in the back of the bus and only the popular high schoolers can sit in the far back where they have all the seats line up in a row. I remember the popular high school kids on my bus was kind of enough for me to sit in the far back with them. It was one of my better moments of the 5 years living in Germany.

As for the high school, we have the normal crowd that nearly every American high school is used to see. We have the jocks, the popular kids, the rebels, nerds, geeks, goths and that one weird kid that no one wants to be around with. The main difference is that everyone’s parent is either in the military, a civilian contractor or a teacher. So stressing about your military parents getting deployed was pretty common here. But one of the most unique things about attending the school is that some of the students were Germans as one of their parents is a local citizen and if one of their parents works for the military, they get to come to school for free! So, I end up having actual German speaking students in my classes and they managed to blend in with the school system itself.

As for the teachers, they were that were either the fan favorites or are one of the worst teachers that everyone had! Just like back in America. Of course, I had some good teachers that were patient with me. But I had some bad ones too who get mad whenever no one pays attention and at last resort for some, phoning our PRINCIPAL to scare us into behaving (which is a 50-50 chance of working or not)! Then there’s some who like to yell whenever the class gets in trouble, which causes me to have a meltdown as I hate it whenever someone yells at me (and cause me to be afraid of that teacher for a reason).

We have homecomings and proms, just like in America. But the big difference is that we tend to host them in the local German economy. I remember my 11th grade prom took place at a hotel that is not only near a lake, but was also not too far from my home, which made mom happy about as she hates driving on the German Autobahn (especially at night). In my the 12th grade prom, it took place in a town hall of a different town, that was 30 minutes away from my old home. As for homecomings, they tend to take place in a military ballroom that’s on a bigger base.

We have sports as well. But they tend to be a bit shorter as we tend to play with other military bases in Europe, which is not that much. We sometimes play against local German teams, but not by much. I remember in the 12th grade, our football team’s first game of the season was against a local German team. We destroyed them at the end! I remember feeling pretty bad for the German team, thought. Despite attending the 4 years at the school, our football team could never beat our rival team for some reason and is the reason why our team never made it to playoffs (and haven’t since the 70s’).

We have our prep rallies as a quarter of use are happy that we don’t have spent time in seminar again for 90 minutes to pretend that we “care” about our teams (I’m not a sports person, so sorry for those who do like them). I remember one time during the spring prep rally in the 10th grade, a kid ask for money to buy flowers for prom or something and everyone one started to throw coins at him to help out! It was one of the weirdest thing I can remember happening.

Same thing with spirt weeks as we have contests to see which grade has the most spirt points for the days we dressed up. I remember my grade never winning as we tend to not have much spirt, compared to the rest. As for some the events that people dressed up, we had wacky tacky day, blast from the past, where the 12th graders tend to wear togas as they were “rulers” of the school and character day where one year, I saw one of the underclassmen dressed as the Joker from the latest Batman movie.

In the 9th grade, I remember there used to be a gender bender day, where everyone dresses the opposite sex. I know it was very popular at the school. But in the 10th grade, they got rid of it; I got sad and didn’t know why. It turns out that’s because the head sponsor of the homecoming committee believes the event was transphobic and might offend actual trans and nonbinary people, something that was surprising to hear as both military bases and the schools tend to be conservative and strict! But this was around the time that LGBT rights were finally getting full support in society. As the result, the school is actually progressive if you think about it.

Because of that, I know I feel safe about my budding left-leaning views as there were some queer students in my class and by the 12th grade; my school opened the SGA (Straight, Gay and Alliance) club, which made them feel comfortable. Same thing with how the bird and the bee work as our school had to teach sex ed., which is great for teens who want to do it, but do it safety. Thanks to having actual sex ed., there wasn’t too many teen parents at my school (and probably for a good reason too). Ditto with the reading some of the more mature books in school as I remember reading “Maus” & “The Color Purple”, one of the most banned books in America and not have to worry about getting in trouble for reading them as the DODEA allow, ALL challenging books.

The other thing that my military based school surprisingly allows is to for us to dye our hair whatever we want! I never did that but I knew someone in the 9th grade did when she made had to dye her hair if the team she was rooting for in the Super Bowl lost. I think that she was rooting for the Packers, which won instead!

As for wearing hats and hoodies in the other hand, nope; can’t wear them as it’s disrespectful to both the military and for the elders who served in the military. Doesn’t stop some students from wearing them thought. Same thing with pajama pants too. And that we can only wear a skirt at a finger length and no spaghetti strap shirts. Then, some girls of my school tried to get away with wearing short shorts and miniskirts by pairing them with legging (which was popular at the time). But the school caught on and banned them as many cried the school for being sexist towards their appearances.

Then I know I feel safe as not too far from the school, there’s the military police station who will busted anyone who get caught do anything illegal, which could get their parents in trouble (as it’s a privilege living here and that the military has a reputation to keep up). Of course, that doesn’t stop kids from doing the illegal things on base, which even include skipping classes. When we used to go to the baseball field to watch the playoffs (our base holds them every spring), it was a perfect opportunity to ditch school and head to either the bowling alley or to the local Burger’s King. In the 11th grade, our new principal banned us from attending the playoffs during school hours for that reason. Jerks.

Even all that, there was one bad thing about attending a school on a military base, beside the sexist dress code; it was that someone might end up PCSing. What that is whenever their parents’ gets new order to work at another base, they have to move. It tends to be common at the end of the school year as they like to move during summer break. I can’t count how many people I know who moved away because of PCS. Heck, all my friends from my original group (the weebs I mention in one of my blogs), moved away by the time I hit the 11th grade! It was because of that, I had to find another group to hang with. Thankfully, I end up with a bunch of bookworms who were not only taking AP classes, but were somewhat religious too. But don’t worry; they weren’t the kind that rubs their religion in your face.

As for my class size, I remember in the 9th grade, there were 300 students in my class. By the 12th grade, only 150 students remained as most of them either moved or even dropped out! Of course, there were some who came in, which bring the number back up by a bit.

For where we graduate, it was in a football (or soccer for us Americans) stadium that was near the hotel that my family stayed in the first few weeks when we moved to Germany. How fitting. I remembered after I graduated, I feel…relieved? Like I mention in one of my blogs, that was because I had to mask in order to prevent getting bullied like the two autistic kids in my grade and that a month earlier, I had a mental breakdown that caused me to self-harm myself due to the stress of both school and home. Then the fact I’m about to attend a university back in the States, away from everyone in school, I feel like I can start a new chapter as no one will know me in university (well almost…).

Now that it’s been 10 years since I graduated from high school, I feel a little bad for myself. That I wished I was a little more sociable and join more clubs, which would’ve got me into more acceptation letters from the universities that I wanted to go. I also wish to go back to the time when things were simple, where there was some decency at the White House (well, most of the time). Where the Internet didn’t suck and that YouTube was at its high peak, along with the memes that came with it; where I can understand the trends at the time as I was the target audience for most of them. And that I have somewhat a future in hand.

Now, I’m a NEET who’s live with my family in southern Texas and won’t get a job anytime soon due to the shitty job market. I’m worried that Trump might become our president again as people my age won’t vote for Biden due to his handling of the Israel-Hamas war and that inflation is making our groceries too expensive. The Internet sucks now as enshittification (can’t believe it’s an actual fucking word) is destroying the websites that we used to love. Now I don’t get the latest trends and memes, as I’m simply too old to understand them. Meanwhile, some of my former classmates from high school that I follow on Facebook (which I don’t go on that often thanks to the aftermath of the 2016 Election), are now successful teachers, doctors and lawyers and I’m not! I had a future, but not so much these days.

Even so, I don’t miss the days of having to mask to hide my autism from everyone else and having meltdowns for having a test score lower than a B-. Same thing with the teachers yelling at the students, who some just simply don’t care. Then there was mental breakdown in the 12th grade that I really don’t want to go back to! And I had to worry that I might break the dress code because I was a tall and wide teenager. Yeah, there were some things I can improve that would made my high school experience a little better, but that’s what growing up is for, right?

Maybe I’ll try to improve my life again in the next 10 years, okay?