What was high school like for YOU?

I graduated in 91 from a high school in Utah, we were all mostly blue collar type kids, there are a few rich area schools and we weren't one of them. High school was nothing like you see in these movies for me but when I was growing up watching these movies I used to think that was what high school was going to be like once I got there. Lol it wasn't, had a few similarities but our school was quite boring. I was a jock, I played sports year round, football started at the first of summer, once that was over I was playing basketball and when that ended I was on to track season. It was rare for me to go home right after school as I was usually at a practice. When I did go home it felt weird since I wasn't used to it. My 8th grade year they came to us in Jr High and told us they were moving 9th grade out of high school and back into Jr High so my age group got to spend an extra year in Jr High. It was kind of fun though, it was like being a senior of the school for an extra year. The age group a year younger then us was kind of upset they had to deal with us again for another year. We had the certain groups, the jocks, nerds, druggies etc and our popular group didn't seem to stick out like a sore thumb or anything. Most everyone got along with each other. Most kids were Mormon being in Utah, I am myself although I hated going to church, so we had a unique click with that. If you were Mormon but didn't go to church you would get a little resentment from the good Mormon kids who never missed church. If you weren't Mormon some of the Mormon kids wouldn't even associate with you, they didn't hate you they just chose to not really talk to you. I remember not really caring for the cheerleaders or the dance groups, they seemed the most stuck up and annoying so I just avoided them if I could. My school was really old, it was originally built in 1914 and had upgrades done to it over the years. I thought that part was really cool, it was extremely unique. It has since been torn down and a new school built back in 1996. A movie theater with restaurants and a high rise office building now stands in it's place. That part sucks that I can't go back and visit the old school. I went to all the dances my Jr and Sr year, they were fun but overrated, never cared much for dancing. It was all about just being with the group of friends and trying to score with my girlfriend. Lol. People used to drag State and go eat at Hardee's. Most parents seemed to keep a good leash on all the kids as it never seemed like we ever really ventured far from home. There never really was a hang out or thing that we all would go do. Life was really boring to me then but I didn't care as I was always so busy and tired from all the sports I was playing. I had partial football scholarships to college that I didn't accept, biggest regret I have in life is not taking those to go play. Who knows what would've happened if I did. I never saw anybody throw a huge party like you see in many Hughes movies and kids didn't seem as daring in real life as they do in those teen movies. I feel the kids of today have it really good. They have built so many brand new high schools lately or they remodel more often and their sporting teams all seem to get brand new equipment and uniforms every other year or so. We always had to wear some ugly old as hell stuff and we looked terrible. Playing football I always used to think there has got to be something better we could wear under our gear while playing. If I only would've done something with that thought, I could've invented Under Armour before they did. Lol

Small town like 40 - 50 minutes outside of Charlotte, NC

I love John Hughes movies but a good amount of his high school movies are blown out of proportion. You had different clicks and people got picked on but nothing like movies make it too be. Your typical high school life is mostly just boring and never understood why people ever missed it. My group mostly came from Blue collar families and we never had a lot of money. We would sneak beer from my friends house a lot, get cig's and my one friend that did have money would buy weed all the time. we would hang in the woods or my friends house and his parents didn't care what we did. I feel lucky being the class of 2001 because my age group was probably the last without cell phones and we did this crazy thing called going outside and talking face to face with people.

Graduated in '76 from a big public high school in northern California in the area now called Silicon Valley (we still had cherry orchards and farm land when I lived there). We were a middle-class school, not many "rich" kids at the school, but we had definite cliques. I was in the popular clique of cheerleaders and athletes. I suppose some of those kids were jerks, but I was friendly with everyone and I was in choir so I had friends in the "artsy" clique that consisted of choir and theater arts people. I also did well in school, so I had friends in the "nerd" clique. We had the "stoner" clique and we had two separate groups of Latinos. There were the cholos, who were the Mexican-Americans who had been born here and they were kind of tough; girls had ratted hair and heavy, black eyeliner. Then there were the "FOBs" (fresh off the boat), Latinos who had just moved here and were into the cultural stuff like Ballet Folklorico - those boys were super polite and gentlemanly and dressed really sharply. For fun we went to the beach, movies, miniature golfing, the races, pizza place after football games, and parties. I didn't drink or do drugs in high school and within my clique, the guys and a few of the girls would drink beers and a few boys would smoke dope, but the drugs were always done away from the party and I was never around it. I agree with the poster that said there wasn't a lot of bullying between cliques. We kind of minded our own business (although we secretly made fun of the stoner crowd who would come to class wasted and fall asleep in the back of the classroom). I had fun in high school (still in touch with a lot of old friends through Facebook), was a cheerleader and junior prom princess and popular and dated athletes. I was not rich and actually had to stop trying out for cheerleader because my parents couldn't afford the uniforms and camp (although I didn't tell anyone that was the reason). I think most of my friends were kind of surprised when I ended up going to UCLA on a scholarship because they didn't realize I was so smart. LOL Most of them went to the local junior college but most are pretty successful now and we're currently planning our 40th reunion.

Like the OP I too graduated high school in 1992. i attended a private co-ed high school in NYC where the vast majority took the bus to school, save senior year when you could drive. There were the usual cliques for the guys you would find in the 90s. In my class there was the football team and friends (the jocks), the black kids and their friends and the nerds. There were a few other cliques but the vast majority of the guys fell into one of the ones I mentioned. For the most part everyone got along, of course there were people who hated each other but it was usually just between them and it never really pitted one clique against another.

Although my high school was private, there were numerous people receiving financial aid. There was no division between those whose family had money and those whose family did not. I was a jock and our clique had the richest and poorest people in our class as members.

For the most part in my high school as a guy your freshman year is tough. You are not accepted by your older classmates. Sophomore year you are allowed to attend some parties but are still for the most part an outsider. Junior year you are fully accepted and Senior year is amazing.

I am very grateful to have graduate 1992! Today with camera phones and phones with video recorders there is ZERO chance my friends and I could have gotten away with half the things we did. We got into enough trouble without them!

Actually I totally forget these were posted up, so need to describe how people dressed and acted where I went and forget what I wrote above how people dressed and styled, a video is worth 1000,000 words, these go on forever, but just watch like 30 seconds of each and this would actually be exactly it:
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=55m50s
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=49m18s
https://youtu.be/UM4tls4P6Gc?t=1m1s
https://youtu.be/wYur75DflPU?t=46s
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1s
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1h16m55s
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=2m38s
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=3m20s
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=9m33s
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=20m46s
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=13m20s
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=14m59s
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=10m25s
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=28m
https://youtu.be/wYur75DflPU?t=2m9s
https://youtu.be/wYur75DflPU?t=8m57s

of course if you never lived the 80s and want a really long look at it or are on some super nostalgia binge just watch the four video straight through hah.





(And if anyone wonders were tons of day glow colors are and Madonna-type dressing up....

The day-glo stuff was more during summer vacation or, throughout the year, more back in '85/'86 and also VHS camcorders didn't really capture color all that well so it sort of muted things a bit in that footage. And it was hardly ever to the totally out of control parody level some stuff they set back in the 80s as jokes shows it. Although it certainly was more colorful than grunge era and today.

And there were never actually tons of girls running around like classic early Madonna. Only some did and even most of them only did it rarely or maybe once every few days and scarcely any at all still ever did that by the time of these videos. The last of the 80s into 90s had the hair as big as ever and all the basic 80s styles as much as ever just the Madonna and really extreme stuff was less and the glow-in-the-dark stuff was less. Ironically the one thing the set back in the 80s shows most often don't bother with is the big hair and yet that was THE single most universal style of the entire period.

And if you watch the above and a lot more than the clips above and it seems like every other song is from Dirty Dancing, yeah, that is realistic, it was kind of huge then haha and pretty much everywhere for more than a year.

Also if anyone too young (or maybe even too old) to have experienced the 80s in HS/college is wondering why so many guys even including headbangers, burnouts, jocks, frat boy cool guy types seem to dance around and know the lyrics to stuff like Debbie Gibson in some of those videos, well, that's just how it was then. I know by late 90s it seemed most guys would be way too terrified of losing their faux gangsta street cred to do that hah and the head cheerleaders, most 'it' girls might be less into any guy who did that on average by the late 90s, but it wasn't really like that in the 80s so much.)

Oh please. Nothing as fun as a John Hughes movie.

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Graduated in 1987. Looking back, probably the best time to be a teenager. MTV , the movies, the fashion, etc. it was really all about having fun. Great time to be alive . Glad I got to experience it.