6 ms·

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party And the stuff about sexual intercourse - really? Such a far cry from my own high school years (in the seventi

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party And the stuff about sexual intercourse - really? Such a far cry from my own high school years (in the seventies), I can hardly believe it. Sounds more like the stuff I would try to convince my mother, with mixed success. Otherwise, kudos for such mastery of language at 16.

saagarjha 7y ago
This depends extremely strongly on the high school, I have found. Mine was fairly boring in that sense (the description given above would apply fairly well to it) and I had an interesting time listening to other people’s high school experiences when I came to college. (Though, it’s not like I spiced things up when I was there, either. I just heard about more stuff from people I actually knew who were involved in that kind of stuff, whereas in high school I couldn’t point to anyone I knew personally who might have gone to a party.)
krebs_liebhaber 7y ago
It's not true that nobody's fucking. The LGBT kids fuck to an extent, as do some of the lower achievers, but even then it's nowhere near as much as I expected. I'm surprised to hear you compliment my writing style. I always thought it was subpar - too many clauses, a slew of unnecessary qualifiers and weasel words, no shortage of kludges for things I can't express very well. I tend to be better at it after I've been reading a book for a while and have "effective rhetoric" somewhere in my brain's cache line.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  > I'm surprised to hear you compliment my writing style. Your comment had me on the edge of my seat, like a report from the trenches.
- kirstenbirgit 7y ago
  Just some advice, since you said you're 16. When you get a compliment, I know it's tempting to downplay yourself and seem humble, but a "thank you" is almost more appropriate. Stand by yourself :)
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    Sometimes I agree: In this case, I read it more as telling us how much he appreciates the compliment because of the fact he generally feels subpar. I am the same when I speak Norwegian: When I get a compliment, I feel as he does.
    - ALittleLight 7y ago
      I read it as somewhat insulting to the complimenter. "You think this is good? My own standards are much higher." Maybe that's unfair, but in the context of the author's prior description of being involved in trying to achieve, or join, or do things to stand out, the interpretation I gave feels more plausible. It seems much more polite and appropriate to me to not react that way.
- graphpapa 7y ago
  Your very articulate derision - of your own ability to articulate yourself - gave me a good laugh.
- switch007 7y ago
  > The LGBT kids fuck to an extent, as do some of the lower achievers, but even then it's nowhere near as much as I expected. I'm trying to be charitable and not over-interpret the juxtaposition of "LGBT" and "lower achievers". I'm surprised you have so much time to study who is having sex. Quite remarkable.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Those are orthogonal concepts anyway
    - switch007 7y ago
      I know that.
  - kick 7y ago
    It might actually reflect your own prejudice a bit that you're interpreting it that way. Speaking as a rainbow myself over here, it's...not unlikely? Throw a bunch of teenagers or young adults in support groups together with the subtext that they all have the same sexual orientation with no chance of being shamed for making advances for what's effectively the first time in most of their lives, and it doesn't take a fortune teller to figure out what's probably going to be happening in greater rates for those kids. And there's definitely evidence that lower academic investment is correlated with higher sexual activity; I've been up for dozens of hours now so forgive me for not throwing some papers in your direction, but they shouldn't be hard to find. I don't think it's healthy for anyone to really analyze this stuff for any demographic, but acting like what he said was so awful was really out of line, and pretty clearly breaking HN's guidelines.
    - switch007 7y ago
      The way it was written makes out they have hard evidence of who is having sex broken down by grade and orientation. I don't believe that for a second. I guess you just need to write assertively and nobody will question it.
- Veera_Sivarajan 7y ago
  Mind sharing the title of the book?
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  The fact that you know more brevity would improve your style puts you ahead of some English majors I went to University with. I'm sure you're sick of hearing it, but your generation does give me optimism for the future. I believe you'll have to do more with less than your predecessors, and for my own failures in mitigating that you have my apologies. But you do make it plausible that we might just muddle through the upcoming troubles.
Waterluvian 7y ago
High school can be many things. And it's not just binned into stereotypes. For me high school was full of sex and parties. And by far the most sex and partying was via robotics club, believe it or not. Which is also where I learned the most about engineering and really developed a hunger to go to university. For my kids I want high school to be a whole experience. Equal measures social, sports, and academics. Maybe less sex.
MivLives 7y ago
As is mentioned elsewhere a lot of that might be the case of just no one talking about it publicly. I went to high school in the era when smartphones just started to be a thing. No one was really talking about sex out loud, people would get caught with drugs occasionally (a lot of xanax and weed), but why would anyone talk to the person who sat at the lunch table with the kid who wore a tail everyday. I was also in one of the first schools that issued laptops to all students. The use of them was similar to how the parent post described smart phones. The honors/ap kids would either type notes or just not use them. The CP kids would be on... whatever the unblocked site of the day was (people figured out pretty early on that google docs/google wave were good ways to chat). The weirdos like me were playing cat and mouse with the tech people hosting proxies, imageboards, and meebo (IM client) repeaters. I'll never forget the day we went to the stupid url we used for it, and it redirected to barney.com. We also had a rather robust sneakernet set up for distributing giant packs of flash games and early versions of minecraft.

saagarjha 7y ago

This depends extremely strongly on the high school, I have found. Mine was fairly boring in that sense (the description given above would apply fairly well to it) and I had an interesting time listening to other people’s high school experiences when I came to college. (Though, it’s not like I spiced things up when I was there, either. I just heard about more stuff from people I actually knew who were involved in that kind of stuff, whereas in high school I couldn’t point to anyone I knew personally who might have gone to a party.)

krebs_liebhaber 7y ago

It's not true that nobody's fucking. The LGBT kids fuck to an extent, as do some of the lower achievers, but even then it's nowhere near as much as I expected. I'm surprised to hear you compliment my writing style. I always thought it was subpar - too many clauses, a slew of unnecessary qualifiers and weasel words, no shortage of kludges for things I can't express very well. I tend to be better at it after I've been reading a book for a while and have "effective rhetoric" somewhere in my brain's cache line.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
> I'm surprised to hear you compliment my writing style. Your comment had me on the edge of my seat, like a report from the trenches.
kirstenbirgit 7y ago
Just some advice, since you said you're 16. When you get a compliment, I know it's tempting to downplay yourself and seem humble, but a "thank you" is almost more appropriate. Stand by yourself :)
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  Sometimes I agree: In this case, I read it more as telling us how much he appreciates the compliment because of the fact he generally feels subpar. I am the same when I speak Norwegian: When I get a compliment, I feel as he does.
  - ALittleLight 7y ago
    I read it as somewhat insulting to the complimenter. "You think this is good? My own standards are much higher." Maybe that's unfair, but in the context of the author's prior description of being involved in trying to achieve, or join, or do things to stand out, the interpretation I gave feels more plausible. It seems much more polite and appropriate to me to not react that way.
graphpapa 7y ago
Your very articulate derision - of your own ability to articulate yourself - gave me a good laugh.
switch007 7y ago
> The LGBT kids fuck to an extent, as do some of the lower achievers, but even then it's nowhere near as much as I expected. I'm trying to be charitable and not over-interpret the juxtaposition of "LGBT" and "lower achievers". I'm surprised you have so much time to study who is having sex. Quite remarkable.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Those are orthogonal concepts anyway
  - switch007 7y ago
    I know that.
- kick 7y ago
  It might actually reflect your own prejudice a bit that you're interpreting it that way. Speaking as a rainbow myself over here, it's...not unlikely? Throw a bunch of teenagers or young adults in support groups together with the subtext that they all have the same sexual orientation with no chance of being shamed for making advances for what's effectively the first time in most of their lives, and it doesn't take a fortune teller to figure out what's probably going to be happening in greater rates for those kids. And there's definitely evidence that lower academic investment is correlated with higher sexual activity; I've been up for dozens of hours now so forgive me for not throwing some papers in your direction, but they shouldn't be hard to find. I don't think it's healthy for anyone to really analyze this stuff for any demographic, but acting like what he said was so awful was really out of line, and pretty clearly breaking HN's guidelines.
  - switch007 7y ago
    The way it was written makes out they have hard evidence of who is having sex broken down by grade and orientation. I don't believe that for a second. I guess you just need to write assertively and nobody will question it.
Veera_Sivarajan 7y ago
Mind sharing the title of the book?
SuoDuanDao 7y ago
The fact that you know more brevity would improve your style puts you ahead of some English majors I went to University with. I'm sure you're sick of hearing it, but your generation does give me optimism for the future. I believe you'll have to do more with less than your predecessors, and for my own failures in mitigating that you have my apologies. But you do make it plausible that we might just muddle through the upcoming troubles.

Waterluvian 7y ago

High school can be many things. And it's not just binned into stereotypes. For me high school was full of sex and parties. And by far the most sex and partying was via robotics club, believe it or not. Which is also where I learned the most about engineering and really developed a hunger to go to university. For my kids I want high school to be a whole experience. Equal measures social, sports, and academics. Maybe less sex.

MivLives 7y ago

As is mentioned elsewhere a lot of that might be the case of just no one talking about it publicly. I went to high school in the era when smartphones just started to be a thing. No one was really talking about sex out loud, people would get caught with drugs occasionally (a lot of xanax and weed), but why would anyone talk to the person who sat at the lunch table with the kid who wore a tail everyday. I was also in one of the first schools that issued laptops to all students. The use of them was similar to how the parent post described smart phones. The honors/ap kids would either type notes or just not use them. The CP kids would be on... whatever the unblocked site of the day was (people figured out pretty early on that google docs/google wave were good ways to chat). The weirdos like me were playing cat and mouse with the tech people hosting proxies, imageboards, and meebo (IM client) repeaters. I'll never forget the day we went to the stupid url we used for it, and it redirected to barney.com. We also had a rather robust sneakernet set up for distributing giant packs of flash games and early versions of minecraft.