High School- Where the hell did I go?

[diglossia_fic]

Am I the only one who thinks high school TV dramas and books are a load of crap? Is it just me or do high school fic AU's seem weirdly stereotypical?

Before I get into, here's a teaser for the last Law and Order SVU: Berlin fic. I've got a lot of work to do before the next one's ready. I've got it all planned out, I just need to get Part 1 to tie

Comments

[scorpia_strikes]

The first thing that hits me is 1900 students??? For real? I mean, christ, we're like 500 tops, and I feel like that's 500 too many. 1900 students, that's almost 2000 people in one place and my skin itch just thinking about it.

I've always kind of enjoyed the typical high school stories because they were so different to the schools here (and because I thought that was how it was going to be when I started high school myself, well, apparently not). Reading about your school though, it sounds just like mine. Some major differences because we're from two different countries, obviously, but the environment doesn't seem all that far from ours.

It still surprises me how many versus'es you had. Is it really that obvious that there are this versus that? We don't have any "official", and I don't think anyone offers it a thought either. We do have the unsaid "smart ones vs. not so smart ones" (and here you're a loser if you're not a geek), and first graders vs. third graders (though you only notice at the end of the year when third graders

[diglossia_fic]

Yup. The biggest school in Virginia Beach (the next city over) has 2400.

That is an interesting point: we're two different countries. In the US, you have to be sixteen to drop out of school, which for most people is the second year of high school. Public school is free but it comes at a huge cost: you don't control where you go (you have to go to the school in your district) and you don't control who you go to school with. You have to enroll your kid in a special program or apply to go to a school out of your district. I don't know how Norway does it but high school in the US and Gymnasium are completely different ideas. In the US, high school is a chore; in Germany, if you're there past grade 10, you want to be there.

Sports are connected to the school and there are a lot of local, regional, state, and national competitions that are based around high school teams. The stereotype is that football players and their cheerleaders control the school, which you can see in dramas as diverse as Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Glee, and Friday

[diglossia_fic]

Oh, and as to the quality of our sports teams: Tony Tchani, my former French teacher's adopted son and a guy I went to school with, now plays for the New York Red Bulls. I mean, it's soccer, but he won an award last year for being the best athlete in Virginia, which has eight million people.

[scorpia_strikes]

I think our schools are somewhat in the middle of Gymnasium and American high school. It's really, really hard and some days you just hide under your bed thinking "why am I doing this to myself", but you don't want to leave the place, we all love to be here in some twisted way. We pretty much choose schools ourselves after secondary school (8.-10. grade), so there's always a fight about getting into the best ones. Sogn og Fjordane is rated among the best counties in the country, with my school as one of the best ones, so you can say that I feel privileged to be here, all in all.

Oh, and as to the quality of our sports teams: Tony Tchani, my former French teacher's adopted son and a guy I went to school with, now plays for the New York Red Bulls. I mean, it's soccer, but he won an award last year for being the best athlete in Virginia, which has eight million people.

Wow, that's not bad at all! And the population in Virginia is twice the population of Norway!

[have_a_hug]

My high school was pretty much the same, but with 500 kids, 80% black and maybe 5 Asian descent, including me, and im barely Asian. Everyone knew everyone and we didn't skip so much as we just didn't show up. You probably dont remember a guy named Kaleb Eulls. He tackled a girl on a bus cause she went psycho and started waving a gun around. Kaleb's a pretty cool guy. The stunt he pulled caused the rest of the students to call him Superman, and he never got a big head over what he'd done

[have_a_hug]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lcBXM4HSRo
Here's a video with a link to the story in the info. Yep, my little town's claim to fame.