Thursday, March 21, 2019

Discussion: 10 Things Authors Get Wrong About High School

The Discussion Challenge is hosted by Feed Your Fiction Addiction & It Starts At Midnight.




Last year I read a novel that starred a 16-year-old girl. In the middle of class, the girl’s friend group walked out of the classroom without asking permission. They smoked cigarettes outside the school’s front door and then went back to class. None of the teachers said anything about kids leaving the building during school hours.

I know that book characters need freedom in order to make the plot happen, but I couldn’t help thinking that this scene probably wouldn’t have happened at my high school. I attended a public high school in the US during the early 2000s. A big group of kids probably couldn’t stroll out of a classroom without permission. Smoking wasn’t allowed anywhere on campus. Not even outside. If you were going to do those things, you had to be sneaky about them!

The scene made me wonder how my high school experience differed from the experiences of book characters. So, I made a list.




10 Things Authors Get Wrong About High School






1. Getting to school on time involved waking up ungodly early in the morning.



School started at 7 AM. In winter, it’s still dark at 7 AM. My friends who lived on ranches woke up around 4 in the morning to get their chores done before driving to school. We were all zombie-level exhausted. The school cafeteria sold coffee, but we weren’t allowed to have food or drinks in class.














2. Speaking of exhaustion, I had many hours of homework every night.



It was fairly common for me to start my homework when I got home at 3 PM and finish around 10 PM. I don’t remember any nights without homework.















3. My school didn’t have uniforms, but we had a strict dress code.



My friend got sent home because the fishnet sleeves on her shirt were “too sexy.” Her whole body was covered except for her sexy, sexy forearms. A boy got sent home because the hula dancer on his Hawaii t-shirt had a bare midriff (too sexy!)



All four of these girls would be sent home.


Some other things we weren’t allowed to wear: hats; sunglasses; headphones; political messages; miniskirts; short shorts; long coats; chains; stiletto heels; anything that looked sloppy or had too many holes; anything that showed shoulders, stomachs, or boobs. School events (such as dances and field trips) had the same dress code as school.



Nope.












4. Touching your fellow students was discouraged.



No public displays of affection. No roughhousing. If you were quick about it, you might be able to get away with a hug. Passionate make out sessions in the hallway? No. Probably not.















5. Actually, we didn’t have time for hallway make out sessions.



We had 5 minutes between classes. Since the school was large and overcrowded, it often took the entire 5 minutes to get from one class to another. Do you need to pee or go to your locker? Too bad. You probably had to wait until lunch. (Or hope your teacher took pity on you and gave you a pass to leave class.)















6. We all carried backpacks.



Most of us attended 7 classes a day. Each class required a 3-ring binder + 1-3 textbooks. Unless you got lucky with your schedule, getting to your locker between classes wasn’t possible. We carried the stuff for our morning classes and then swapped it out for afternoon stuff during lunch.















7. We ate lunch in the cafeteria (under the watchful gaze of a prison guard).



While we ate, a teacher stood guard at the door. Once we were in the cafeteria, we weren’t allowed to leave without a pass. If the “cafeteria guard” teacher had a sense of humor, we taunted them while we ate. This is how we learned that teachers were not paid extra for guarding the cafeteria, and they were not allowed to tackle us if we stormed the door.






Cafeteria cleanup was our responsibility. Students were randomly selected to clean the cafeteria after lunch. You could also get cleanup duty as punishment for doing something stupid. Yes, cleaning up after a thousand teenagers is disgusting. That’s probably why they made us do it.












8. We made a lot of prison jokes because the building looked like a prison.



It was made of gray cinderblocks. The inside was gray and beige. There were lots of doors with locks. The only door that could be opened from both directions was the front door. The rest of the doors—including the classroom doors—could only be opened from the inside or with a key. The student parking lot had a gate. If you got to school after the security guards closed the gate, you had to park in the far-away lot with the teachers. If you needed to leave during school hours, you had to go to the security office and convince someone to open the gate.















9. Every teacher took attendance at the start of class, not just the homeroom teachers.



If you didn’t show up for a class, the office called your parents. This made ditching difficult but not impossible. There was a long delay between being reported missing and the call home. I ditched class fairly often during my senior year. Where did I go when I ditched? Usually Chipotle and then the library. Yep, I was a burrito-craving, book-reading badass.















10. If you were an awkward loner, the teachers reported you to the school counselor.



You didn’t know you were reported until someone from the office showed up at your class to escort you to your surprise counseling meeting. My meetings weren’t especially deep. The counselor asked about my family. I said everything was fine. The counselor asked about my lack of friends. I said everything was fine. The counselor asked if I was homicidal. I said no. The counselor asked if I was suicidal. I lied and said no. The counselor sent my awkward butt back to class.











How was your high school experience different from the experiences of book characters?





63 comments:

  1. All of this! My son's school robo-calls home if he's not there (we had that issue once when I thought they knew he wasn't going to be in due to illness, so I just called and reminded them and they fixed it). His school seems a bit more laid back on dress code than mine was, based on what I've seen in the hallways when I've been there.

    In books, people seem to just walk out of class, whether in a fit of anger or for other reasons, but if you set a toe out of class at my school, the hall monitors (who were basically rent-a-cops we nicknamed Hans and Helga) were all over you, demanding your hall pass and still eyeing you like you were a criminal even if you had one. And a huge amount of us worked after school. I would get off school, go immediately to work, get home at 9:30, and then eat/shower/do homework until midnight, and then it was back up at 6 am. Yeah, we were all tired and stressed.

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    1. Some of my friends worked in high school, but I don’t think I could have handled it. I probably would have failed something if I’d tried. We had rent-a-cops, too! They were the ones who opened and shut the parking lot gates.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  2. I agree with everything in this post, but especially about the hours of homework. When I was in high school, I definitely didn't have time to go to the mall every weeknight or goof around. Homework and studying in general required a lot of time/energy. It's weird how that's rarely shown in YA literature. I wish it were!

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    1. Yeah, what I remember most about my high school experience is all the homework!

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  3. Mine was a bit different. We had an "open campus" and there were smoking areas (but this was a while ago and in North Carolina at a time tobacco was still king). While I never smoked, there were many days I would end up at the beach on lunch and never made it back to those last two classes. As far as making out in the halls... actually I don't remember that, but I seem to vague recollections of making out in the back of the van coming back from debate tournaments

    www.thepulpitandthepen.com

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    1. We begged for an open campus, but the school said no. They were worried that we’d get into trouble while they were supposed to be watching us.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  4. Yes! I got up so early for school!! The bus picked me up at 6:30 or a bit earlier so I was up at 5. And tons of homework. Ugh I don't dont miss high school.

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    1. I didn’t ride the bus because I lived near the school, but it did come really early for other people. Writing this post made me realize how much I hated high school.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  5. Yes so much! I think this might be one of the reasons I have a hard time with contemporary YA - it's even more unrealistic to me than fantasy! The cafeteria one really gets me too. We weren't allowed to eat on the bleachers or go to the cafe down the street or whatever. And yep, getting to our next classes and maybe going to the bathroom was all we had time for! No time for drama.

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    1. If there were enough teachers to guard us, we were allowed to eat outside at the picnic tables, but that was pretty rare. The cafeteria was usually our only option.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  6. My daughter attended public school for one semester. They had blue and green days; each day had different classes. It was a pretty nice school. They didn't have lockers. I don't really remember any sort of dress code.

    My senior year I attended college half time so I'd drive to school halfway through the day.

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    1. That does sound like a nice school. There were a few people in my high school who went to college or “work experience” and got to leave halfway through the day.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  7. I always wondered about the locker thing in US TV/films - when do you have the time to go to your lockers?? We never even had lockers. Think pretty much every school has a uniform in the UK, but I do remember someone getting sent home on "own clothes day" for wearing a top that said "I love the pope, the pope smokes dope."

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    1. Haha, we would have been sent home for that shirt, too. I only had lockers in high school. It was because we had more textbooks than we could carry. I went to my locker before school, at lunch, and after school. I usually couldn’t get there between classes.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  8. Ooh, there were always couples majorly making out at their lockers when I was in high school. Yick. And there was a smoking area my freshman year, but then it got shut down. The bathrooms always smelled of cigarettes, cloves, or pot though.

    Dress codes have gone through so many cycles in my lifetime. My mom wouldn't let us wear jeans to school, which was WEIRD of her, but it was the preppy 80s, so it wasn't as obvious for me as for my sisters in the groovy 70s. I started teaching when it was a constant battle against midriffs, spaghetti straps, gang styles, and sagging. Then we battled yoga pants for awhile, but lately there's been a WONDERFUL movement against body shaming, victim blaming, etc. My kids' district just says keep your chest, groin and butt covered and no promoting drugs/alcohol/hate speech on your clothes. My own district is a bit more conservative--holes above the knee only if they wear tights underneath--but in general, it's a lot more open than it used to be. As a teacher, I love not having to worry about what students are wearing, and as a parent, I like being the one in charge of what is or isn't okay for my kid to wear.

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    1. I’m glad schools are getting calmer about the dress code. When I was in school, kids were sent home for some ridiculous stuff. The fishnet sleeve thing seemed especially pointless. Her whole body was covered except for her forearms!

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  9. I come to YA with having experienced Catholic school and public school, school in two different states, school in a city and a 1-square mile town, and as both a student and a teacher. Total, I spent almost 20 years in high school (scary, right?), and when I compare my high school to the high schools I taught in, it's like night and day. There was a dress code, but the administration in my school didn't like the teachers enforcing the school policies. There were kids, who would just wander the halls all day and never even go to class, and teachers were tired of reporting them, because the administration did NOTHING. We were warned about giving too much homework, and kids would often "escape" campus and head out to some of the nearby fast-food places for lunch. My high school had an open campus, since there were only about 100 students per class year, and the town was so small. We also had a full period lunch, whereas, the schools I taught in had 23 minute lunch periods. One of my schools extended passing to decrease the number of tardies, since the school had over 2200 students and it was tough getting from one side of the building to the other, but most of the kids just hung out in the halls for longer or tried to get a smoke break while they walked outside the building. I am never that surprised by a lot of the things I see in these books, though it shocks me when teachers are not called out for bad behavior, because the parents at my school were always complaining that someone was being too hard on their kid (even if it wasn't a legit complaint).

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    1. That’s exactly what my school said when the students asked for longer passing periods. They told us we’d just spend the extra time screwing around in the hallways. (They were probably right.) We had short lunches, too. An open campus would have been pointless because we didn’t have time to get anywhere for lunch.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  10. We were never allowed to leave the school during the day. No jaunts to fast food restaurants or coffee shops. We didn't have study halls or free periods. I assume I had a lot of homework, I don't really remember! I have more issues with YA books and what high schoolers in them are doing outside of school - attending raging parties, solving crimes, and just generally being about town with no parental supervision or permission.

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    1. Yeah, YA characters seem to have a lot more fun and a lot less supervision than I did!

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  11. YA children never seem to worry overmuch about homework. How do they have time to solve mysteries/ infiltrate cults/etc? It's a mystery to me. Also no you don't just leave class. Good grief. We did have a smoking area though- isn't that weird? No one went there though unless you were a burnout. Do they still call em burnouts?

    Dress codes though... IDK. We were pretty conservative at my school I guess? Nowadays I see kids at the schools and I'm like dang, we couldn't wear that stuff. No fair! Some of my teachers were remarkably permissive about food and drink though. I usually brought a Big gulp to school for first hour and that was tolerated. I wasn't a coffee drinker so I guess a Mt Dew Big gulp was my drug of choice?

    Basically high school sucked? For me anyway. I think that's why its such fertile ground for YA books? I guess some of us liked high school but I don't know too many lol...

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    1. I hated high school. It was definitely the worst years of my life. If drinks had been allowed in class, I would have come to school with Diet Coke. I needed all the caffeine I could get.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  12. Hahahahahahahaha so, so funny and so true! I didn't go to school at the exact time you did but my high school campus was strictly patrolled and teachers were aware and on top of student movements. Same with dress code! When I went to a school overseas you could tank your parental's career if you put a step out of line!

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    1. I don’t think we could have tanked our parents’ careers, but they did have to leave work and get us when we got in trouble or broke the dress code.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  13. Yes to most of these things! Teens in books never seem to have homework. Or even classes, really. Just lots of long breaks between classes where they hang out in the halls and also free periods? I also spent my entire 5 minutes between classes just getting jostled around by the masses as I tried to get across campus to my next class on time. And the closest thing I ever had to a free period was my senior year when I was aide for the English department and spent my hour grading papers, or sneaking in homework (so I would have less at home) if I could get away with it. Although my school didn't really have no-touching kinda rules.

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    1. Yeah, I’m not sure how book characters have so much time between classes. I had time to fight my way across the building to my next class. That was it.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  14. I went to high school in the Netherlands so our whole school system was different haha. I can rarely relate to US highschool students in books as is.

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    1. It’s interesting that schools vary so much around the world. Even schools in the US have very different rules from each other.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  15. So I actually homeschooled, making school a rather alien experience to me when reading. 😂 But my little sister went to highschool for her final years and thus confirmed my suspicion that American highschools were waaaay unrealistic lmao. It makes me wonder why authors bend the rules so much? I mean I get that lots of highschools would function differently! But still.😂I read one recently where one of the kids just smoked in the bathroom alone during break...and like for starters, when is a bathroom empty for an entire break? 😂 And also would they not...smell it... ANYWAY. I guess who needs logic and realism. :')

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    1. Being homeschooled seems far less traumatic than public school. I’m sure someone attempted to smoke in the bathroom, but it didn’t seem like a common thing. We had to be quick about our bathroom trips because the school kept us on a tight schedule.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  16. So, my daughter is in high school right now and I've been surprised how much certain things have changed. Here's a breakdown of her school experience:

    #1 - They actually pushed the start of school back this year almost a whole hour because of the research on teens and sleep. They don't start till 8:45! (And school gets out at 3:25, which isn't that much later than it used to--apparently, they cut like five minutes from each period?)

    #2 - Danielle definitely has a good amount of homework, but usually not more than she can do after sports practices. She typically doesn't get home from school till 5 or 6 from practice and often has meets or choir concerts and such. So the homework isn't overwhelming. She'll be in more honors classes next year, so we'll see how that goes.

    #3 - There's basically no dress code. When I first visited the school, I was amazed at how many of the girls were wearing such short skirts that you couldn't see them when they had their coats on. Midriff shirts are the norm too, according to my daughter. I mean, I assume there's SOME limit to what skin can be shown, but not much.

    #4 - She actually hasn't mentioned this, so I'm not sure.

    #5 - Yeah, the five minute passing period gives little time for anything but running to class.

    #6 - Yeah, she carries her backpack all day. (She used to even carry her coat around--she didn't even open her locker for the first couple months of school until we convinced her that was crazy. But maybe not as odd as we thought.)

    #7 - They can eat in the cafeteria or outside in the courtyard and maybe in random other seating areas too? (They have a TINY cafeteria that's open to the main lobby so there's no door to guard.) Seniors can leave campus. Kids can also eat in pretty much any of their classes. During study hall, they can go to the library.

    #8 - Their school is pretty open and nice. Definitely not a prison. Kids can leave campus.

    #9 - They do take attendance at the start of each class, and I would get a notification if she's not there (I have a Powerschool app that keeps me updated on attendance and grades--like, I instantly get a notification whenever one of her grades changes). But I often see kids wandering around the school or sitting at random tables, so there must be reasons they can get out of class sometimes? And I don't think smoking is allowed anywhere on campus.

    #10 - Not sure about this one. They encourage kids to talk to counselors, but I don't know if they ever pull them out of class.

    Well, now that I wrote a whole post in response to your post ... Our schools are in the Chicago suburbs and might be different from other areas, but that's what it's like around here! :-)

    Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

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    1. It sounds like the kids have more freedom than I did. It’s great that they pushed back the start time. High school would have been a more pleasant experience if I’d gotten enough sleep. I existed in an exhausted fog back then.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  17. YES to all of this! I read HS books and I never understand where they get the things they get from and where did they go to school that had that?
    I went to school with 7k kids. It was overcrowded. Juniors and seniors started at 7 am and were done earlier. Freshmen and Sophmore were done closer to 5 pm.
    We weren't allowed to wear anything inappropriate either. We weren't allowed to smooch in the hallway. There was NO TIME for anything. Sometimes we had to run from gym all the way to fourth level before the dreadful bell and dodge all these short freshmen to make it before our teached slammed the door in our face - took attendance then marked you as late. 3 lates counted as an abscents and a mark against your final grade.
    There was also no skipping class. If you went to homeroom, then skipped any of the other classes that followed, mom and dad got the dreadful call.

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    1. Also we weren't allowed to leave at all because in the 80s something happened to a kid after they left school during lunch I think they got hit by a car and our school was strict about leaving the campus during school hours after since school hours meant they are in charge of you. If you left, the school patty wagon would collect you and bring you back and everyone got to see your walk of shame

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    2. My gym teacher shut the door in my face in 7th grade. He let me in after he took attendance, but still, RUDE! We lost points for being tardy, too. My school had a closed campus because they didn't trust us to behave ourselves if we left during school hours.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  18. Wow, I'm thinking your high school was a whole lot different than my high school. I was in h.s. in the mid-80's and I guess compared to now things were pretty lax. Lots of PDA between classes. Lots of kids cutting class (I don't know how they got away with it). We wandered in and out of the cafeteria at will. We had homework but nothing extreme. Certainly not hours and hours each night. Guess I should be glad I went to school then! LOL

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    1. Schools seem to change a lot. Judging by the comments on this post, schools are getting lax about some things again. That’s probably good. The dress code stuff always seemed silly to me.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  19. Hahahaha AJ I live in Europe so it was probably different. We didn't have lockers as we also only had 5 minutes between classes. Make up and dress code: same as you. But our building did not look as a prison!

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    1. Haha, I’m glad your school didn’t look like a prison! Attending a prison-school isn’t great for morale.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  20. We had a ton of homework every night so we didn't have time for all these adventures that teens seem to get up to! Also we never had lockers in our school so we had to carry all our books around with us every day. We didn't even have 5 minutes between classes-the bell for the end of one class signalled the start of the next and we had to sprint so we weren't too late! We had uniforms, started at 8.45 for registration and first class at 9. We generally finished either 3.30 0r 3.45. There weren't any after school clubs and a couple of sport teams that met on Saturdays.Attendance was taken in every class.

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    1. Your school sounds as strict as mine. We had lots of sports and clubs, though. I was in theater for a while, but I was terrible at acting, so I quit.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  21. I think books should get some leeway as just nothing interesting will happen if they include things like the actual hours of homework and studying necessary to not fail.
    I'm from Norway, and any high school that's not american will immediately be different. I've definitely walked out of class without no one noticing though. I'm always curious about american high schools because do other teachers than yours stop you if you're in hallways during class-hours? Because at ours there would always be people going to a smaller group room for projects or the library, so it would literally be impossible to catch someone who weren't supposed to be outside

    Good post, though! I've spent a week visiting a Belgian catcholic school and it was exactly the way you describe this post, if a bit stricter. It was so interesting, because the students there were treated as so much less independent by the teachers, and so I and the rest of my group adapted this "do the minimum effort to meet these many requirements set for this task" mentality, instead of producing good work or learning something

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    1. I agree that book characters should get some leeway. Books would be boring if the characters followed all the rules.

      To leave class at my school, you needed a note from the teacher. We had security guards who constantly patrolled the school. If they caught you without a note, they’d walk you back to class and make you get one.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  22. So many of these are all too relatable. I got up obscenely early for school, usually because I couldn't even get all of my homework done the night before. We definitely couldn't just get up and leave class without permission and touching of any kind was strongly discouraged by all of the teachers and administrators standing around, as well as the fact that we too only had 5 minutes between classes.

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  23. Wow. This post makes high school sound terrible! I rarely relate to high school settings in books, but that's because I went to an all girls private school. And yet, I actually really enjoyed my high school experience! I actually learned quite a bit about public school from books, since I didn't have homeroom or half of the extracurriculars that are offered in most schools. But now I see I may have been too trusting!

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  24. OMG you had actual *supervision* - wow! Our school did look like a prison... but like an abandoned prison that hasn't been fixed up in a while, and has actual dents in the corrugated metal walls.

    Whether we could just leave during class entirely depended on the teacher's level of attention/actually being there. Some teachers were legit. never there during classes. You could def. just ask to go to the loo and then mitch off (I guess you call it 'truanting'?) somewhere. Also, if you made it to the sports field, you could do whatever the f**k you liked. Seriously. NO-ONE would come looking for you.

    We didn't have lockers on account of when they used to have lockers, kids sold drugs outta them. Some people had them in the older years, but you had to pay to rent them, and agree that the teachers could look in them at any time.

    And at lunch time we could do whatever - we could go into town to buy fast food if we wanted. Or, as several of my friends did, to the house of the closest person living nearby to do vodka shots and get totally pi**ed. I don't think any teacher ever noticed. Honestly, they only noticed if someone did something they couldn't ignore - like that time someone brought a live chicken in their backpack.

    ...The older I get, the more I question the quality of my schooling! Lol.

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  25. My hs experience (graduated 4 years ago) can relate to a few of these points—especially the hours of homework! The backpacks too! We actually didn't have lockers so you needed a backpack to carry everything. Everyone also needed a laptop in class. And wow a 7am start is so early—we started had 7:55am but one year my basketball practices were at 6am.

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  26. This is hilarious and very true!

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  27. Classes in California tend to be six periods, not seven. My son's school offers optional zero or seventh periods for an extra class or two. Kids are allowed to eat in places other than the cafeteria. Dress codes have relaxed in recent years. Passing time between periods is three minutes.

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  28. These are all so true. Some other things I can think of are characters skipping class (for whatever reason) and the school not really caring and the general lack of supervision. I think something else I would like to see once in a YA book is a snow day or 2-hour delay.

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  29. I love this so much. I went to a Catholic school, so we did have uniforms. But yes to all the homework. Yes to going to school early (classes started at 7.25 in the morning). Yes to not being able to just leave a classroom or the actual building on your own without getting in trouble.

    -Lauren
    www.shootingstarsmag.net

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  30. I don't know where all these YA kids have time for all the shenanigans they get into lol Between getting to the bus (or in some cases having to walk) to and from school - the homework - I didn't have time to be solving crimes and all the drama they get into.

    Karen @ For What It's Worth

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  31. This is so fun! So I think my high school experience was a little different. I DID wake up at 4am half the time, but that was because of swimming, not because I gave a crap what my hair looked like. Instead of armed guards we had angry nuns in the cafeteria, but the point still stands that we could not leave bwhahah. I did not have much homework though, and if I did, I wasn't too concerned about it. Oops? Swimming took precedence- we even got to leave school early for practice. And as a non-Catholic person in a Catholic school, I got such a kick out of the whole thing. I think, often, that I should write a book based on my high school experience (which I ADORED) but I think people might find it unbelievable? But it was real! 😂

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  32. I remember standing in the freezing cold, in the dark, waiting for the bus. I worked after school and then did homework. Not always getting it done before I fell asleep either. And they were very strict about the dress code. One weird thing though. We actually had a courtyard for a smoking area. Odd, as we were underage. I think they did it to keep us from hanging out in the bathrooms.

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  33. We were talking about this type of thing on another blog a couple of years ago. And someone made reference to my age and I said that didn't matter because my son graduated in 2010, so I still had a pretty good idea about high school. What I hate about authors misrepresenting US high school life is kids in other countries get a skewed idea of what American teens are like. 😒 I have wanted to do a blog post about some of the outrageous things teens (and some adults) from the UK on the Harry Potter social site I was a member of thought about US schools in general. 🎓

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  34. You are so right! I can never relate to the high school experience in books. Our backpacks were always SO heavy from all the books and binders we had to carry around all day. There were lockers, but you had to rent them, and they were out of the way too. You had 5 minutes to walk from one side of the premises aaaaaall the way to the other side. No time to stop.

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  35. Yeah, your school sounds more like a prison!

    UK high schools are different to US ones but the things that always strike me as ridiculous in novels are things like the love interest being a complete manwhore who has banged half the female population of the senior year... Not even in a teenage boy's dreams would that be realistic!

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  36. I think California schools are a little bit different than yours because 7am?!?! Oh my gosh!!! Our high school started at 8:30am. I would have definitely been a zombie! You had the option to take Zero period, so you could get out of school earlier or make up classes you failed, but that started at 7:30am and I was a hard pass on that lol.

    And we had 5 minutes to get between classes too. Our school was tiny though....our graduating class was 160? kids vs my husband's school which had over 1,000 kids in just his grade. So we had enough time to run back to our lockers between every single class (mainly Fridays when we had all classes and weren't on block schedule) and get stuff or we'd visit with friends for a few minutes between classes. But my hubby laughed and said they didn't have time for that because of his school size.

    And since both my husband and I went to High School in California, our schools were both all open with lots of breezeways. The majority of the people ate in the walkways, outside in the grassy areas or went off campus for lunch. If I didn't go off campus for lunch then my friends had a grassy spot by a tree that we'd all eat at. We had a cafeteria but no one actually used it much. So reading about that, like in the Lux Series, fascinates me.

    We also had block schedule 4 out of 5 days a week. So because of that we didn't have more than 1-2 hours most for homework a night, if even that. I'm sorry you had that much homework, that's brutal *hugs*!!

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  37. Great list but when I went to school there are some differences - only homeroom took attendance. No dress code, we had more time between classes to smoke, go to our lockers or pee. I never cared if I was late so that doesn't apply. =)

    Mary

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  38. I know I don't live in the US, but my high school experience was so much different from how it's portrayed in books. No one could leave the classroom without the professor's permission and only one student at time. There weren't uniforms, but the students were discourage to wear certain clothe items, like flip-flops and shorts (which is odd only because the school was located on a sea-side town). And there were no lockers, so, unless you had classes on the same classroom, the backpack was always on our back.

    Tânia @MyLovelySecret

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  39. Ohh ! Miss my High school days.

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