The Overall High School Experience: Enjoyable or Not?

by: Nathan Loura 

High school is something that people usually have to do in order to move on with life, spending four years of their life going through high school and slowly trying to figure out what their plan is for the future and adulthood. However, do former high school students find their high school experience enjoyable or not? 

Every high school is different, different teachers and different classes, so every person's high school experience is going to be different than the next person, however in the end is high school an enjoyable thing that kids have to do for four years? 

The average high school graduation rate in the 2016-2017 school year was 84.6% according to Usnews.com. So why did those other 15.4% of kids drop out of high school? 

 Rocky Hill School graduate Morgan Decarlo had this to say about her high school experience. “I have mixed feelings about my experience at Rocky Hill, I liked going to high school on a social piece, I got to meet great new friends and do social events such as prom.” 

High school is a great place to experience social events, the majority of high schools have prom and other social events that kids can go to and do different things that students can do and get to meet new people and make new friends. 

The high school experience can be different for each student, some students connect very well in high school and make the most of the four years they are there, others feel that high school is more a chore than actual fun to them, whether it’s the school, the teachers, or the just the atmosphere itself. 

According to LiveScience, 71% of high school graduates say that they didn’t enjoy their high school. 61% say that they didn’t like the teachers that they had, and 60% said they didn’t see any value in what they were learning. Also according to LiveScience, less than 2% of high school graduates say that weren’t “bored” during their high school years. 

Jacob Perez, a 2018 Newington High School graduate had this to say about high school experience, “I wouldn’t do it again, I basically just coasted through the four years. Just trying to get that completion grade.”
 
“Why?”

“I never got into it, it was hard for me to form relationships with my teachers and have fun. The social piece of it I enjoyed, but other than that nothing else really grabbed my interest.”

Every student has a different experience in high school, no one person really has the same experience because everyone is different and processes high school a different way. 

Madisun Dunn, a 2020 Wethersfield High School early graduate had this to say about her high school experience. “It was a bunch of ups and downs for me, I had some issues with some teachers and some years were better for me than others.”

“What do you think of your high school experience overall?”

“Overall, I am kind of on the fence about it, like I said some years were better than others. I am kind of in between good and bad, because I did have some good relationships with teachers and I did do some fun things.”

There are some ways in order to have a good high school experience. High school doesn’t have to be all bad it’s what you do in high school that determines it. Make relationships with teachers, go to events that are put on by the  high school. The biggest piece thing is to try and make new friends. There are so many new people in high school that you can meet and form relationships with. These are a couple ways to make your high school experience something to remember 



What was your high school experience like?  Comment below.