SailorWriter
Member
I am now 10th grade this school year for my school, and I am interested to know anyone's experience in high school before, how life was different, different technologies, etc.
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How was the high school experience?
- Thread starter SailorWriter
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Christian Saboteur
Member
Knowing what I know now,I wish I could go back.But I guess that's not the way life is supposed to happen.I graduated from High School in 1987.Technology???,we were just starting to think about computers,and what a 'Floppy Disc' is,we listened to our music from cassette tapes,and LP players.I know I could have been smarter and applied myself more,I wished I had established better relationships with people/friends.As far as learning goes,I've learned more on my own,I have a couple of hobbies,the in particular that has forced me to find reasons to educate and retrain myself,and present me with challenges and continuous problem solving.Make good use of the time you have left as a 'Kid',appreciate the people/friends you have around you.I can think of quite a few people that I was in school with that are already dead.Remember,your parents want to see you do well,and be happy.We don't realize how love us,and think about us until it's too late.Be wise my friend.
I entered my sophomore year in 1974. I turned 16 and got my driver's license that February. On my 16th birthday my mother woke me up early and told me that it was time for me to go out and find a job. I found two jobs by 10:00 that morning. One of them was to help the trash collection company in our town ($2.00 per hour). I worked for that guy until I graduated high school. The other was working as a gas station attendant in a town about 8 miles away ($1.62 per hour). Yes, we still provided full-service.
Getting my driver's license didn't do me much good until the following fall because I couldn't afford a car and my parents couldn't help either so I rode my bicycle to work five days a week after school from 5 to 9 pm. When the weather got colder, my parents found a 1967 Chevy Impala for $450.00 and told me I could use it until my brother got his license the following spring. In the mean time I had to save my money to buy my own vehicle, pay for vehicle license, repairs, and maintenance. That vehicle was beginning to show a lot of rust even though it was only about eight years old, which was common.
As far as technology, the highest level I had was a small transistor radio. That Impala had AM radio only, manual windows, manual brakes, manual steering, manual door locks, manual climate control with no AC except to open windows, no ABS brakes, no air bags, none of the bells and whistles we have today. It was two years later when I finally bought my first under dash mounted 8-track tape player for my car and a year after that I upgraded to a cassette tape player. We had no computer of any kind and no cell phones. We used a rotary dial phone.
We had no air conditioning in our home either. My parents always had a large garden and we spent a lot of our summer times managing the garden and picking wild strawberries, blueberries, June berries, raspberries, choke cherries, cranberries, plumbs, and hazelnuts.
I remember the first video game I saw was at a friends house called Pong. To us, it was amazing.
Getting my driver's license didn't do me much good until the following fall because I couldn't afford a car and my parents couldn't help either so I rode my bicycle to work five days a week after school from 5 to 9 pm. When the weather got colder, my parents found a 1967 Chevy Impala for $450.00 and told me I could use it until my brother got his license the following spring. In the mean time I had to save my money to buy my own vehicle, pay for vehicle license, repairs, and maintenance. That vehicle was beginning to show a lot of rust even though it was only about eight years old, which was common.
As far as technology, the highest level I had was a small transistor radio. That Impala had AM radio only, manual windows, manual brakes, manual steering, manual door locks, manual climate control with no AC except to open windows, no ABS brakes, no air bags, none of the bells and whistles we have today. It was two years later when I finally bought my first under dash mounted 8-track tape player for my car and a year after that I upgraded to a cassette tape player. We had no computer of any kind and no cell phones. We used a rotary dial phone.
We had no air conditioning in our home either. My parents always had a large garden and we spent a lot of our summer times managing the garden and picking wild strawberries, blueberries, June berries, raspberries, choke cherries, cranberries, plumbs, and hazelnuts.
I remember the first video game I saw was at a friends house called Pong. To us, it was amazing.
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SailorWriter
Member
Dude caused wars buddy...Bush was president.
jasonc
Member
I remember those .I hung out with the smart kids anyway , lol .
I had one of these I was on the cutting edgein high school .
Wip used an abacus .
jasonc
Member
He wasnt perfect ,but well congress left and right supported those .
I was in Afghanistan when riven was in high school
I was in high school when bush Sr and regean was potus .the wall came down when I was in ninth grade .
SailorWriter
Member
Huh, interesting. Having a job and going to it during your school days? To be honest, if I was in your place, I don't think I would handle it lol. And the fact that you used a car that will be a safety risk nowadays back then is really ballsy of you, a rusted car to be accurate!
Wow, stuff was different back then. Things from the past that are obsolete now used to be called the cutting edge in the past, shows how things differ in generations.
jasonc
Member
Shoot . We had kids in my day doing this.
jasonc
Member
They are now called that .hd and lcd existed in the late 80s .
2-speed power glide. Funny thing...one of the motor mounts had separated so I had to be careful about how hard I accelerated otherwise the motor would lift off the mount. I could potentially put the fan through the radiator if I wasn't careful.
The first two vehicles I bought for myself I paid $200.00 each for. One was a 64 Ford Galaxy 500 and the other was a 67 Ford Fairlane 2-door. Both had some serious rust, particularly in the rear corner panels. Placing things in the trunk and expecting them to not fall out was a gamble. Those days, getting a 10-year old vehicle with no rust here in MN was nearly impossible unless it wasn't driven during the winter. It was also common to expect to replace/rebuild the engine if it had more than 85,000 miles on it.
I never owned one but those were the years of the muscle cars. Charger, Challenger, GTO, Mustang, Firebird, Barracuda, and Camaro to name a few. I almost bought a 1967 Ford Mustang with a 302 V8 outfitted with a 6-pack. I just couldn't swing the cost. A friend of mine did buy it and I remember he was able to burn rubber in all gears. Dang thing really moved.
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I got home from school at about 3:15 and had to be at work by 4:00 so it was jump on the bike and go. I rode a lot of bike back then. Fortunately, it was generally a downhill grade, not much but enough to help maintain my speed. Coming home, especially as it got toward fall, it was usually dark so I had a headlamp and tail lamp.
Yes, things were quite different. You know, we hear so much about how people are so poor and underpaid. I can tell you from my experience, people today have a lot more discretionary cash today than we did then. Standard of living is quite a bit higher now.
Another thing that I see that is quite different today from what it was when I was a teenager is the amount of time spent outdoors. As kids, we lived outdoors winter and summer. I remember coming in during the winter and finding out that my hands were so cold, I couldn't grip the zipper on my coat or the laces on my boots to get them off. I either had to wait until they warmed or hopefully find a sibling or parent to help out. We didn't care. We had fun.
During the summer months when we were off from school, my mother would wake us up at 7:00 am telling us we had a choice: go outside and find something to do or stay in and help her with housework. That was a no-brainer!!
During the summer months when we were off from school, my mother would wake us up at 7:00 am telling us we had a choice: go outside and find something to do or stay in and help her with housework. That was a no-brainer!!
Christian Saboteur
Member
The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger was announced over the P.A. System by our assistant principal while I was sitting in World Cultures Class.It voice cracked at the end of his message,I still remember.
jasonc
Member
Feb 1 ,2003 was the Columbia
Jan 28,1986 was the challenger.
I saw the after math of the challenger as it just happened. I live near the cape
This brings up another memory. We were not allowed to use calculators in high school. Everything had to be done by hand and we were required to show our work so the teacher could tell if we used a calculator or not even at home.I hung out with the smart kids anyway , lol .
I had one of these I was on the cutting edge
Ten years after I graduated from high school, I enrolled in a technical institute automated systems maintenance program. This was a 2-year program that touched on many topics including Integrated Circuit (IC) board level electronics, electrical motor control circuits, conduit installation and bending, hard-wiring relays, switches, photo sensors, capacitive sensors, and actuators, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programming, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) programming, pneumatic and hydraulic controls, National Electrical Code (NEC) study, and technical writing.
When analyzing IC board level electronics we worked with very small numbers, sometimes carrying up to 12 places past the decimal point. At that time the only calculator I had was a solar powered simple math calculator. It had minimal functions including add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root, and maybe inverse but that was it. I was about 30 years old then and of course most of my classmates were fresh out of high school. To work with those small numbers, I used scientific notation along with my simple calculator to solve the problems. My younger classmates were amazed. Apparently this was no longer taught in schools so it was new to them. It would have been about the same for me if someone was using a slide rule for I was never taught how to use one of those. I almost made it through both years of the program using that simple calculator but eventually had to break down and buy a new Texas Instruments TI-35 because it was getting too difficult to complete the math work on my tests in the given time allowed. Today, the calculators on our phones are far more capable.
Almost.