Show ‘N Tell Tuesday: The High School Me

It’s a Show ‘N Tell Tuesday! Today, I’m linking up with Andrea to share a little bit about my high school self. This is a trip down memory lane for me and a picture overload for you. 🙂 What’s the first thing you think of when you think of your high school self?

I think awkward. Hahaha

My friends and I all really really really liked to take pictures, and we would find any excuse to do so. Tall, skinny giraffe? Why not! I’m sure the people in this random Myrtle Beach gift shop didn’t think we were strange at all.

Casual shot at the park. 🙂 One of our friends was into photography so we were her subjects one summer night. But honestly, there are people TODAY walking around taking pictures with their iPads and selfie sticks, so picture taking may have just gotten weirder over the years. I, on the other hand, like to think I got less weird over the years. Ha!

I almost wish my high school friends had blogs so they could comment and share their thoughts on the “me” of high school. I would describe myself as kind, studious, and introverted. I was (and still am) a total girl’s girl, so I loved spending time with my girlfriends. I also spent a lot of time with my family, which is not always typical of a high school student! When I think of my younger brother, I remember him enjoying spending time with us, but always being go go go and making plans with a friend. I never felt like I had to have plans and I’m still that way today!

I spent a lot of weekends at basketball games watching my brother, Alex. For a few years, Alex and our cousin, Nick, were on the same traveling basketball team, so that was even more incentive for me to go because I knew two people who were playing!

Nick’s brother CJ is the same age as me and he played baseball, so I always went to those games too. I was on the yearbook staff and I often volunteered to take pictures of these events since I would be there anyway. 🙂

I have lots of pictures of my family in Indianapolis from these years for some reason. We see my Dad’s family a few times a year, but it seems like in high school, we were in Pittsburgh for one holiday and Indianapolis for the next!

This is my cousin’s daughter, Lucy. My cousins are the same age as my parents because my Dad’s siblings are much older than him. Anyways, I still call Lucy my cousin. She’s ten years old now which blows my mind, but she’s still my little baby doll. 🙂

I did a lot with my church in high school. I went to youth group on Sunday nights, worked as a counselor at Summer Blast day camp in the summer, and went to a bunch of events with my “church” friends at other times throughout the year, too! Some of my church friends and school friends were the same, like Kristin. 🙂 The things I remember doing most are the 30 Hour Famine, ice skating, small group meetings at Starbucks, and weekends away at JTown, a Christian camp in Jumonville, PA.

Ice skating at Schenley Park

My favorite small group girls!

Me and my youngest brother after the best event at summer camp…

…when the local fire station sent a fire truck to spray us all down. 🙂

I was in two musicals in 9th and 10th grade: 42nd Street and Singin’ In The Rain. I took chorus as one of my electives and though I don’t think I have a particularly great singing voice, apparently it was good enough. 😉

But my hard work in chorus class paid off because we were invited to go on the band trip when I was in 10th grade. This was my first visit to New York City! We sang while we were there, but I mostly remember sightseeing and going to shows. 🙂

I was also a dancer for most of my life, but if you put me on So You Think You Can Dance, I would get voted off the very first night. Hahaha!

I have rhythm and I like to dance, but I don’t think I am naturally gifted at it. In our recital videos, I never looked as graceful as I felt. 🙂 Over the years I took jazz, lyrical, and hip hop. I was never a ballerina or a tap dancer, though I did have to learn a little tap for the musical one year!

My parents let my brothers and I try every sport we wanted…for me that meant dance class, gymnastics, cheerleading, bowling (yes, I’m serious), softball, basketball, and then my senior year of high school, cross country! I liked to run but a bigger part of me just wanted to be on a team and cross country had no try outs;) Running became my favorite, and that’s a good thing because here’s how the rest of my athletic career went:

Cheerleading: after one season as a six year old, I was cut because I refused to do a back handspring without someone spotting me.
Bowling: Just for fun! I was in a bumper bowling league as a kid and then I did the after school bowling program in elementary school.
Softball: I was the world’s worst player…I somehow swung the bat so wrong that I lost two fingernails in the process and could never figure out where left field and right field were located. As catcher, I would turn my head to the side when the pitcher threw the ball because I was afraid of being hit in the face (even with a mask) and I would volunteer to sit on the bench when we had extra players. Hahaha
Basketball: No good or bad memories from this one; I think I just preferred dancing!

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, so when I was able to fit another elective into my schedule, I worked in the preschool at our high school. There’s a morning and afternoon program with a head teacher and an assistant teacher. The high school students who choose to take this class are only in there for one class period with the little ones. Sometimes we observed through a one way mirror (we could see the kids but they couldn’t see us) and sometimes we were actually teaching a lesson to the kids. These were my co-teachers!

My best friend in high school was Maria. We met at church and she went to a different high school, so we always had fun catching up on the weekends. She knew a lot of people who went to my school because of our mutual friends at church, so she was like an honorary Plum Mustang;)

Maria and I all ready for 11th grade 🙂 NOT! This is the first day of school, but the night before the first day was so stressful! I was always in honors English classes so I had required summer reading, but in 11th grade, I took an advanced history class of some kind that required me to take notes on every chapter in the history book over the summer. Well, apparently I procrastinated HARD because the night before school started, Maria came over to talk me off a cliff since I wasn’t done taking notes. And then she pulled an all nighter and finished taking notes for me so I could go to bed. Perks of having a friend who went to another school!

When the word “selfie” became a common word in recent years, I guess we all assumed no one took selfies before. Wrong.

All three of us are holding cameras. I can’t. Hahaha

And thank God we either gave up on or got better at text on photos…

I was the kind of person who loved going to dances, with or without a date. Luckily my friends felt the same way. The same group of us went to 9th and 10th grade Homecomings together!

9th Grade

10th Grade

We got our acts together by junior and senior year and found dates for Homecoming and Prom. 🙂

This was such a fun dress to wear! Junior prom is one of my favorite high school memories. At our school, you weren’t allowed to attend Prom until your junior year, even if you were asked by an upperclassman, so it made it that much more exciting when you finally were allowed to go. I just remember this night being filled with lots of picture taking and lots of dancing! Our high school didn’t have an After Prom, so we all went to our friend Kristin’s house to watch movies and continue our craziness ha! God bless her parents for hosting our big group!

At our school, most people wore short dresses for Homecoming and long dresses for Prom. We were thinking these would be nice…

But this is what we decided on instead. 🙂

Senior Homecoming

 

Senior Prom

Looking back at my pictures, I realized my friends and I liked to go places in big groups (besides dances!).

Ice skating

Taylor Swift concert

 

Apple baseball at Danielle’s house…we literally played baseball with apples from the trees in her yard!

NHS Induction

And then one summer one of our friends planned a scavenger hunt for a bunch of us! Danielle and Kayla and I were all friends, and then my cousin CJ joined in with his best friend, Zach!

I wonder what we ate to make our tongues blue!?!?

Spelling the word “love”. 🙂

If I had to pick my favorite year of high school, I would say senior year. My brother, Alex, and I got to go to school together for the first time since elementary school!

He was in 9th grade and I was in 12th grade. He really loved me once I started driving him to school. 🙂

This was my first car! A red Ford Escape who my friends and I named “Skyler”. Then once Alex started driving, we shared this car. Alex was notorious for coming home with the gas light on!!! One time I left to go to the gym and I KNEW I wouldn’t even make it there without running out of gas. That’s how low the gas gauge was. So I started driving to the gas station and I ran out of gas on my way there. I WAS SO MAD!!! Luckily my Dad came and saved the day. 🙂

Senior year bought lots of fun events, like the Powderpuff football game, where the junior girls play the senior girls and the boys are the cheerleaders. 🙂 The senior girls (my team!) won this year!

We get professional headshots done for our senior picture in the yearbook but still get pictures taken on picture day. I have no idea what those pictures are actually used for (maybe school ID) so the seniors usually plan some kind of “theme” for picture day. We chose an 80s theme which is hilarious because none of us were born until at least 1991. Hahaha

These are my professional casual senior pictures. We get a headshot done at a local studio for the yearbook and then everyone does pictures like these, too. Is that a thing where you live?!

 

Two of my favorite high school memories: I turned 18 and my best friend and my mom planned a surprise party for me!

And Snowmageddon! We had an entire week off school and then some because we got SO MUCH SNOW and then a pipe at the high school burst, so while the rest of the town went back to school, we got to stay home for a few more days. 🙂

I would definitely say I became more outgoing as I got older…but I would still describe myself the same way. I am kind, studious, and introverted. I’m a total girl’s girl. And I love to spend time with my family. I just shared a lot of great memories with you, but there are lot of not-so-great memories that I have from high school all surrounding normal high school things like drama with friends and boys. High school was good to me, but I wish I could be the person I am now in high school all over again. I have grown up and I can honestly say I like myself haha! I DO care what people think about me, yet I don’t care at all. Does that make sense? I wish I would have stood up for myself more instead of trying to make my friends happy in certain situations. But you know, live and learn. If I wasn’t the way I was in high school, I wouldn’t have had those experiences, and I wouldn’t be reflecting on them today. High school was fun, but the real world is fun, too. 🙂

– What kind of person were you in high school?

– What’s your favorite high school memory?