High school

Having been thinking back through the experiences which shaped my life, I find myself lingering in high school for a bit. Our freshman year was spent in the Jr. High except if we are taking a class likely to be based in the high school. But we shared the Gym, auditorium, Natatorium and Cafeteria with the High School anyway. Freshman year we had this big project combining work for our science and social studies teacher into a written report which our English teacher helped us learn the structure for. Ten page body plus title page, index and bibliography and end notes. We went on field trip to gather environmental data. We learned to use a 35 mm camera and a darkroom to develop pictures for the report and our presentation had to be oral in the Social Studies class. Because it was stressful, when we were in 8th grade we arrived and got barred from the school and shunted into the park across the street because one of the class above us had decided calling in a bomb threat was a better option than admitting the project wasn’t completed.

We had a teacher we mostly loved who got fired mid year because he gave swats in exchange for raising grades and allowed one girl to get so many she raised her grade from a D to an A. We protested and signed petitions but he was still replaced by a woman who kept a leather whip coiled in her desk. A “bkacksnake”

We had an awesome biology program in the High school and I loved that class more than any other. Studying genetics helped me understand the cancer and Down’s syndrome and other issues I’d had cause to wonder about. Dissecting a fetal pig and elk eyeballs showed me the beauty of living beings and their fragility.

We had so many options to learn. The Art department was my favorite but I had friends who loved music and theater. Auto shop and woodworking and running the KYDZ radio station.

I wasn’t much for sports but I loved the bonfire and snake dance for homecoming and the rivalry with my cousins school in Powell. I did all the dumb spirit week things like wearing a sheet for toga day

I never worried about the rifles in the gun racks in the windows of the unlocked pick up trucks in the parking lot. I never laughed harder than when we all went out to the lake in a school bus and mud wrestled for senior day and then rode the bus back to the school and ran through the halls dripping mud and screaming. For Senior Day. I never cried harder than when Joy’s Dad walked off a cliff in the dark hunting, or when Tom Jolly died in a car wreck.

Being a teenager is brutally emotional. It’s a wonder sometimes that any of us survived. It amazes me that I can look back and smile.

[Walks @ 7]

High School can be most challenging.

[Pat Knowles]

Such memories….some fun, some difficult but all a learning curve. Quite a High school experience! Challenges that we wouldn’t wish on anyone too for you & your friends.

[Ann H. LeFevre]

I don't think I would have made it through high school (which was when my mother's alcoholism was at its worst and she finally sought help) without my faith, family and the friends who were there for me. It is a very tumultuous time and yet, as you noted, it is also a time of great fun!