High School Regrets

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I will be graduating High School in less than 2 weeks (VERY nervous) and will be going to community college. I went to an outstanding high school, but i still have my share of regrets:

1. I didn't participate in AP Classes or take the SAT (My case manager said i wasn't emotionally mature enough to handle them)

2. I didn't participate in enough extracurricular activities other than a year of cross country and track/field and after-school basketball.

3. I didn't go out of my way to make friends and discover new opportunities. I have a lot of friends that care about me and I find easy to socialize, but I am not really closely bonded with them.

4. I had poor study habits. I was almost always responsible to get my homework done, but I didn't get the grade I wanted because I had trouble paying attention.

These things are what made me mad and didn't feel like I had a good high school experience. My mom died when I was in freshman year, but I got over it. My dad wants me to go to an autism program called CIP next year, but don't want to go because I am afraid it won't be good and am afraid to be labeled. My major is undeclared, but am really motivated to succeed and get at least a 3.5 GPA (I hope).

What were some of your High School Regrets? How did you deal with them after graduating high school?

- I didn't attend the school exchange to Germany in first grade with my class because I believed my English was not enough to survive living with a foreign family for a week and then letting a German girl live with my family for a week.
- I didn't attend extracurricular math lessons preparing for advanced level in mature exam because they were early in the morning - I preferred to get to school at 8:50 when normal lessons were starting than get there at 8.00 and attend the extra lessons.
- Therefore I did only basic level of math on mature exam and I couldn't get to a good university.
- I didn't prepare enough for the exam time wise - I was always doing everything but I assumed I fit in time limit so I never checked it. In the end I did bad on the exam because of not having enough time. It wasn't all my fault though - they changed the classroom in the very last moment and I wasted 30 minutes dealing with overload related to being suddenly put in an unknown classroom. I would probably make it through if my mind wasn't foggy.
- If I were diagnosed back then they wouldn't change the room like that (or they would inform me in advance and let me get familiar with the place) and I would have more time on the exam. - I had a chance to be diagnosed at age 17 but I wanted to be "normal" so I put my act up and "prove" to the psychiatrist I am totally fine and my parents are just making up stuffs.
- I didn't ask my best friend what University she is going to and I didn't put my documents there. I acknowledged much later that my mature exam results would be enough to go and study Informatics there because my best friend found out an University that just opened Informatics department and was accepting almost everyone.

My high school regrets were odd. I made friends with anyone I don't know, I got rejected by boys, I threw tantrums, I was obsessed with computers and anime (mostly Toonami, which was okay), I got distracted from my studies without knowing, I didn't get a chance to take the SATs because of my GPA, I was a victim of two rumors (pushing a teacher, being pushed into a locker), I got into rock music, and that's about it. All I did throughout my high school years was keeping up with my classes, read, and wandering through the hallways thinking.

Ooooh, I just graduated last week!

Some of my regrets:

1) I spent the second semester of my sophomore year talking to someone more than I should have and ended up getting a B+ in my math class. I know, I know, it's not a bad grade, but it was my first B. I had a bad meltdown and thought my parents would hit me. They didn't, but they did tell me they were disappointed in me and that I wouldn't get into a good college. They didn't react as badly during second semester my junior year (when I got 3 B's) because they realized the value of everything else I did and were too proud of that to reprimand me.

2) I put off getting a 504 Plan until the very end of junior year.

3) I never continued any counseling/therapy session I was in for long.

4) I didn't get accommodations for SAT, AP, and IB testing.

5) I did practically nothing extracurricular-wise during my freshman year-- most likely due to the fact that I was trying to recover from the sudden change from being in a familiar environment in middle school to being in a strange place in high school.

6) I doubted myself too much before junior year. I thought I could never become a leader (I would look at officers in clubs as the people I could never become) and so my extracurriculars were never really strong until junior year.

7) I rarely ever stood up for myself whenever someone cut me in the lunch line. Could have saved so much time. (All you have to do is drop all your textbooks on the ground to get their attention, glare at them, and then tell them not to cut.)

I don't have many close friends in my high school but I don't really regret it. At random times during school, I'd feel this pang of loneliness, but ehhhh...I'm fine.

I don't think I regret anything in high school. I actually had big problems relating to and making friends with my peers because of my AS, but I did run track from sophomore to senior year, and got my driver's license during HS senior year. I also had a higher GPA while in HS. But the one thing I truly regret was NOT studying abroad while in college. All I cared the most about was trying to get internships and making some money while in college.

I barely remember my high school days, I had a few friends and more friendly acquaintances but other than that I would just do my homework in class and read a book I brought with me the rest of the time (since I always read the texts within the first week).

My big regret is that I was never really socially engaged with the other students, I think I went to two parties my entire four years, but looking back there was little I could have done about it, I never even hear of autism or Asperger until college. I also wanted to look into joining the drama club, but I always felt too awkward to ask about how to join and I talked myself out of even trying, which is too bad because I think it's something I really would have enjoyed. Add to my general uncertainty and awkwardness the fact that I never spent more than two years in a school system from middle school until I actually went to college (which may have prevented me from being diagnosed, because when you change school systems so often it doesn't seem weird that you have a hard time making friends/socializing) not because of any disciplinary issues, just a lot of moving around and chaos.

Thanks for the support. Although it may feel awkward to say, it is great to feel that I am not alone in this situation.

I regret it mostly because as I said, I went to a very good high school.

I felt like I had to do things way out of my comfort zone so I did not tarnish the reputation. But I am much happier than I was before at my previous high school.

Hmm...daydreaming a lot, procrastinating
I feel like I should have tried to talk more, maybe?

I have the opposite set of regrets: I wish I hadn't tried so hard. Actually, I wish I would have skipped high school all together, but the next best thing would have been to coast through it with bare minimum effort.

I took a bunch of AA ("able and ambitious") classes and one AP class, took a full course load, did way more homework than I needed to, got way more credits than I needed to, got a 3.4 GPA, got a good SAT schore, and... it wasn't good for anything.

I didn't get a good education, I didn't get scholarships, I went to a private college that accepts anyone, and I graduated from that college with a BA, $46,000 dollars of student loan debt, and very little in the way of jobs skills or life skills.

I started getting burnt out halfway through, so I didn't even get a "scholastic" diploma. I got the standard diploma everyone gets for meeting the bare minimum graduation requirements. However, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have done me any good to get a scholastic diploma. It would have given my mom something to brag to our extended family about.

If I had talked my mom into filing a homeschool affidavit (but not actually trying to homeschool me--she doesn't have the education for it) and just spent those four years working on my hobbies, I'm pretty sure I would have turned out at least a little less horribly. It wouldn't have been any worse.

Or at least I could have taken all easy classes and fewer classes. Skipped the occassional low-point high-effort homework assignment. I probably would have even gotten a better GPA that way!

Well, let's see... I dropped out, I didn't go to prom, I never participated in any extracurriculars, I took lower-level courses than I was capable of, and most of all, I just flat out didn't give a s**t. I would literally spend my days surfing the web on the library computers, sleeping in class, or listening to my mp3 player a lot of the time. I was an underachiever, but unlike most underachievers, I didn't have the social life to make up for it.

To this day, I still have no idea how the f**k my peers managed to balance school, work, partying, relationships, and friends, all while I had enough trouble just juggling school and my personal life. The only things I truly miss about high school are the few friends I did have, and the fact that I sort of had an excuse not to get a job or anything.

What really drives me nuts are how people glorify high school as being "the best years of your life", and continuously portray it in the media as being a place where people fall in love, get into mischief, and generally have a great time. High school f*****g sucked for me, and I didn't learn a thing from it. Now I'm stuck out in the real world sucking wind on welfare.

Wish you a better luck bro

I didn't do a gap year, I spent my junior year studying abroad. The classes that I took transferred back to my college in the U.S.

As with anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If your friend chose to learn little + see only cheesy touristy sites, that was her prerogative. My classes were 100% final exam, so the two weeks before both sets was hellish but the rest of my time in Italy was pretty much bliss. Went away pretty much every weekend, saw a ridiculous amount of Europe, fell crazy in love, fell crazy in love with the Amalfi Coast, etc. Adjusting to home was sad but fine. Sad because no more weekend jaunts to Sorrento was tragic.

It wasn't even that much more expensive than staying home -- my scholarship covered room/tuition/board.