Academically, while I was in the advanced placement and gifted classes, my high school's academic attitude and philosophy was something that was ultimately not a good match for my needs: Swim or Drown.
Since my school years were relatively easy prior to high school, I didn't really know how to study. I thought that since I got good grades in elementary and junior high without too much work, why should high school be any different?
That was my mistake, but it still didn't stop me from feeling overwhelmed and depressed over the work demands from most of my teachers and the lack of success that I enjoyed previously. Pop quizzes were fairly common in some of my classes, and even when I did manage to crack open a book or look over my notes for a class, the tests never seemed to cover what I read or what was assigned.
As a result, my grade point average went from a 3.8 in my last year of junior high to a 2.3 my first year in high school. I found myself staying home from school quite a bit during the first few weeks of 10th grade, because I couldn't face the humiliation of teachers being harsh on me, and students either shunning me or getting in my face and ragging on me, when I needed nurturing and friendship.
I should stress that my academic struggles were not solely the fault of the school, or it's faculty. I did not have the work ethic necessary to thrive in a competitive high school environment, which my school was.
I learned that work ethic, what it took to be good at something, in band, something that I value and am grateful for, but aside from that, almost no one else reached out to help me in the manner that I needed to be helped. As was said, a "Swim or Drown" attitude ruled the day in my school, and if you drowned, tough luck.
What about parties, a staple of high school social life, one may ask?
Simply put, I was neither invited to, or wanted at, any significant shindigs during my time in high school. I went to a grand total of two parties in three years, and they weren't even one of those parents-not-home, everyone go buck-wild affairs. Again, my social awkwardness, due to my Asperger's, rendered me as an undesirable in the teenage party circuit, which certainly contributed to my loneliness.
As far as the prevalent social nuance of adolescence, the affairs of the opposite sex, I can describe my experiences in this department in one word: PATHETIC. To put it bluntly, I flat-out sucked with girls.
My typical teenage boy insecurities and cluelessness, common to many teen males, combined with my being an aspie, added up to terrible experiences. During bus rides with the marching band, when the band members started to pair up, I was always alone, watching the other kids make out and feeling quite low.
As for asking a girl out, forget it. The few times I did venture to ask a cutie those six magic words, "Will you go out with me?", I was lucky that most of those girls didn't laugh at me and tell me to get out of their face. I was fortunate that 99% of them either said, "I already have a boyfriend", or "I can't date right now". Or sometimes just a flat-out "no".
My senior year, as far as my endeavors with girls, fared only slightly better than my previous two years, and that was during the Spring semester; I was only a few weeks from graduating when I experienced my first kiss with a girl that I sort of dated for a week, truly a minor miracle considering what I had gone through before. Like all of the other girls I was interested in (seemingly), she already had a boyfriend, so it was sort of a teenage love-triangle thing.
And that rite of passage immortalized in books, TV, and movies, the prom?
Sadly, no one would go with me; the girl I asked turned me down. My cousin fixed me up with a girl from the inner city whom I had absolutely NOTHING in common with. She seemed loud and "ghetto" to me, with a bit of an intimidating attitude. I got the feeling that she was paid to go out with me; I would not have been the least surprised if that was the case. To this day it is uncomfortable for me to look at my prom picture; I find myself turning it around on my shelf at times.
I am sure some people are thinking, as they are reading this, that these experiences that I had in high school were not that much different than other outcasts and rejects.
