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How close to your High School experience is the HSY pack?
ignominiusrex
Posts: 2,680 Member
Someone mentioned in another thread that the new High School Years pack depicts a quintessentially American high school movie version of high school that was nothing like their experience in another country.
I went to high school in the US, and agree that the pack does look like a high school fantasy rather than the reality ( but that's ok! I like fantasy! The reality blew), but I would love to know more about what the high school experience is like for those who don't seem much to relate with from this new pack's trailer.
So does the new High School Years pack look like a recognizable, relatable rendition of high school to you? If not, what was different, and what is the norm instead, where you went to high school?
I went to high school in the US, and agree that the pack does look like a high school fantasy rather than the reality ( but that's ok! I like fantasy! The reality blew), but I would love to know more about what the high school experience is like for those who don't seem much to relate with from this new pack's trailer.
So does the new High School Years pack look like a recognizable, relatable rendition of high school to you? If not, what was different, and what is the norm instead, where you went to high school?
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The schooling in Jamaica was similar too (except for the American football, instead we had soccer which we called football). My problem is that it doesn't seem like our teens can join other sports and I hope there is some cross pack compatibility in that sense. I also saw a track in the trailer. In Jamaica track and field is a big thing (yes they literally train all of us to be mini usain bolts). My fondest memories was having track field day and we had cheerleaders there too. We also had a track field day at my schools in canada but it was definitely a bigger deal and funner in Jamaica.
We also had after-school clubs and stuff in Jamaica and canada. I'm not sure about the electives in highschool in Jamaica but I was told they had cooking classes like they do in canada.
So I think I could make an experience that is similar to the highschool in both canada and Jamaica. But yeah it depends on if they have other after-school activities and sports than what they talked about in the official blog.
Edited to add: And yes, I did go to high school in the US, so I speak from the perspective of an American.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
It depends where you live tho, I went in a urban area in NY. Wouldn’t see anything like high school movies here.
We did not have a football team. There was snow on the ground almost the entire school year. The big sports teams that got all the attention were the basketball team, volleyball team (both could be played indoors), and the cross-country ski racing team. There were no cheerleaders for any of these sports as far as I remember. Incidentally, Alaskan universities don't have football either. Their big sport is hockey.
I didn't go to prom, so I can't speak to how accurate that is, but my school did have one. And it probably featured cheesy decorations and outfits such as you see in the trailer, just cheesy to a different era's fashion tastes is all. But the time of year that it was held, there was usually still snow, so this trailer is missing the part where girls are trying to walk on ice in their high heels...
I lived really far away from the school (an hour and a half bus ride from my town to the town where the school was), and the highway could get closed because of avalanches coming down and blocking the road, so... you know... that was different.
A lot of the other differences are just due to time passing. Back when I was in high school, cellphones didn't exist, and computers were still kind of a novelty that most people (even the young ones) didn't really know how to use for much. Internet didn't exist until I was in college.
Whiteboards were not common. Most classrooms had chalkboards.
But the hallway lined with individual students' lockers is dead-on. Also, hanging out in the hallway before school, during lunch and after school. Lots of students (myself in included) sat on the floor in the hallway near our lockers to eat lunch (I don't think I ever even entered the cafeteria the entire time I was going to high school. Don't even know what it looked like). And decorating your locker was a popular thing, nearly everyone taped all kinds of pictures and quotes and stuff to the outsides of their lockers, so that part looked exactly like high school to me.
I was a cheerleader my junior and senior years. We would travel to games on the same bus as the football and basketball players. So much fun on the bus on the way home if we won.
I didn't play any organized sports but was active in several extracurricular activities. Student Government Association, Nat'l Honor Society, Psychology Club, Yearbook. I was also a tutor for Freshman English.
I am so looking forward to High School Years. 📓
ETA: So glad you started this thread. I was curious about the non-American high school experience since so many are saying their experiences were so different in high school.
I attended a small town US school. We had football, basketball and track. We had cheerleading and dance teams. We had dances and prom and homecoming. We had after school hang outs, sleep overs and dating. We had teen crises. We had after school clubs. Most of that is in the game, I think, so that’s fair. I did a lot of these things.
We didn’t have social media, Tik Tok, and texting, which are major factors in modern teen life and socialization. We didn’t do “promposals” or rent limos for prom.
Things we also had that don’t seem be represented in the trailer: music (choir and marching band), Art, Theater, debate, journalism, media. It remains to be seen what other activities are in the game, but this is where you would have found me: Music. Art. Drama. The school paper.
So, while I would say the things represented are typical of American high schools, without those other things, the representation isn’t a balanced view and would be an incomplete picture of my personal high school experience.
Tales From The Myst
The Blue Moon Jukebox
So, the most of the high school drama things seen in TV mostly takes place in the middle schools in my country. Those were the times I don't want to remember...
But what similarities did I have... Well...
Ah the memories... I even asked the headmaster for an autograph for fun. And I got it.
One thing I will say about my high school experience, is that it was still very much like what is depicted in this classic RUSH song, "Subdivisions" especially the lyrics "In the high school halls/In the shopping malls/Conform or be cast out!"
It brought a little mist to my eyes to see the Sim teens able to just be who they are, whatever that is, and express themselves without fear because that's what I hope and want for all kids.
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But everything else not at all. We had lockers but there was so few minutes between classes I only used it once. And there was a limited supply so I shared it with about three friends.
My school had over 3000 kids. Too many kids to have like a true popular person. So it was more like every group had popular people. And if I had to pick the most popular group it would’ve probably been the smart kids.
Cafeteria really wasn’t a place most people ate in. The school had a bunch of pavilions and the majority of the students ate at one. Lunch was divided into three or four periods. I was always very unlucky and never had the same lunch as any of my friends.
There were a bunch of clubs. But they were student lead with a teacher as an overseer not financed by the school. Volunteering was pretty big, as it’s a prerequisite to graduate. So there was a couple clubs that focused on that. Colorguard/band/choir were as popular as football and cheerleading. Girls soccer and softball was also pretty big.
Prom was a thing but promposals were before my time.
Standards were high
You paid attention in class and timely completion of homework was the norm
Teachers were generally well qualified and demanding - some had been teaching since the 1920s
A lot of the male teachers were WW2 veterans so had a unique view on life and brooked no nonsense
There was a dress code, and it was strictly enforced
The big social backdrop was the war in Viet Nam - every male knew that unless he got some sort of deferment or went to college he was going there. The Cold War was the ever-present daily reality.
High tech was something on the order of a reel-to-reel tape recorder or movie projector
The only telephones that existed were plugged into walls by wires
Computers were massive, huge room sized things that were powered by vacuum tubes and owned only by governments, huge corporations, and huge geeky colleges like MIT
You got there either by walking or city bus if you lived over a mile away, depending on the bus stop your walk was nearly a mile anyway
Selina's post reminded me that one kept moving between classes as there was little time between them.
I don't mind that the SIMS are doing a cartoon American High School movie version. It's the SIMS and it looks fun. Still, when I get it, I'll probably bring some BtVS influence into my stories there too.
My Families Via PlumTree App
My high school was a sprawling one-story building built where kids from grades 9 through 12 mingled. Since nearly everyone lived in the rural area where our school/school district was, we could have days like Tractor Day on Spirit Week and have seniors drive their family's farming tractors to school. There were also teachers who taught my parents when they were in high school, then taught my older brother when he entered high school, and then taught me when I enrolled as a freshmen. (And yes, yes it's weird when your teacher compares you to your parents when it comes to an essay paper.)
Also, I was in the marching band and not seeing a marching band practice on that big ol' football field during the trailer hurt a bit.
It was bad enough every year they'd have this "Secret Admirer" day where students would purchase different colored carnations (white=friendship, pink=secret crush, red=love), and while in homeroom before we switched to our first class someone would come to the classroom and hand out these carnations and the whole class would be doing cat-calls and whistles and ribbing you, because you didn't know who sent the flowers to you!
We had proms which was in the Spring (I went to them all! .... girls wore floor length dresses, dudes wore tuxes), we had Homecoming in the Fall (girls would wear a dressy dress, but not floor length, guys would wear a suit) and then we had Sadie Hawkins dance, which was the opposite of the traditional dances, mostly it meant the girls asked the guys to be their date rather than the other way around.
There was a lot of rough-housing in the halls between classes! You'd see dudes having other dudes in a headlock and giving that person a friendly head noogie, cheerleaders would decorate the football players lockers, (or basketball, depending on the sports season it was). There would always be big signs all over the hall walls that didn't have lockers, before a big game. Sometimes we'd have a parade in the halls on game day. The jocks always wore their jerseys on game day and the cheerleaders always wore their uniform to school that day.
We'd have pep rallies every Friday during football and basketball season, we'd be dismissed from classes about 30 minutes early to gather in the gym and the coach would give some encouraging pep-talk to the sports team, the marching band would play the school song, the school mascot would be doing cheers and gymnastics with the cheerleaders down on the gym floor.
My school was pretty small, I think there were only about 180 graduating seniors and only about 500 total students in the entire school. High school went from 9th-12th grade. The Seniors were always assigned to a freshman (a ninth grader) at the beginning of the year to mentor and help transition them to being in high school. They'd show them where the different rooms and labs were, where the bathrooms were on each floor, etc. and basically take them under their wing and protect them.
We had no vending machines or food courts, we had the typical cafeteria style where you'd grab a tray and tell the people working what you'd like.
We did have "cliques" ....
All of our coaches for any sport, also were required to be a teacher and taught actual classes (usually math, science, phys ed, and one taught auto mechanics.
I have good memories of high school actually. I wasn't a cheerleader but I was on the drill team and my senior year I was the only one chosen out of my entire state to be part of the "All Americans" to perform at the Hula Bowl during the half time show.
We didn't have smartphones but the flip phones with keyboards were popular among the in-crowd. I did not have a cell phone. We were also into our cars or trucks. I lived in a hunting, fishing, very outdoorsy swimming in the lime rock ponds going to the river riding in the woods mud bogging kinda town. Everyone wanted a truck and if you had one it was awesome. I did own my car and had an afterschool job to pay my insurance and car payments. It was a purple TransAm and I loved it.
We also had cliques but I'm not sure that is a thing these days in high school its been 20 years ago for me so I'm not sure what it is like now. We also had the Superlatives our senior year. I was a loner due to home life struggles but I did participate in JROTC, which was its own clique. And while I didn't play for the school, I did play softball for our church league. Sports wise Football was the popular one but our school also had soccer, basketball, baseball, and volleyball teams and of course cheerleading. There were also clubs, band, dance team, etc. and JROTC had drill teams, Color Guard, and riffle teams.
If you had a car or were friends with one, you could eat off school grounds as long as you made it back for class. And no one really ate in the cafeteria, those who chose to stay at school would eat in the outside quad. We had a small locker area and if you wanted one you could have one but of kids never used one. No time between classes and everyone just carried their stuff on them in backpacks.
Being a loner I didn't really attend many school events except prom my senior year and I went alone and met up with a couple of friends. We had school events like bake sales, band concerts, and so on. Various Dances, holiday dances and events, and there was the junior/senior prom. But Homecoming was the big event, even bigger than prom. They had various themes throughout the week to celebrate it. At the end you'd attend the game, watch who was crowned queen and king, and then go to the dance, and then the after-party. I was on Color Guard during those games so I did participate but I didn't go to the dance or parties.
I did a lot of hunting, riding in the woods, and just making sure my family was ok back then. But I do look back, and while I don't regret anything, I do wish I had hung out more with my friends.
It will be interesting to see what all is included in this pack.
I'd also note that I'm well over a decade out of school so the world I attended HS in is so different than what current students are experiencing and, for all the problems in our world right now, I'm grateful to see that today's LGBTGIA+ students seem to be WAY more seen and supported than I and my fellow LGBTQ peers were, even if we still have a long way to go. Seeing that cultural shift reflected in this EP trailer honestly got me a little emotional.
Plus it makes sense that a HS pack in 2022 wouldn't include flip phones or N64s or aging buildings from the 70's that are 40 years overdue for a renovation. Streaming wasn't even a concept yet when I was in school and now it's such a big source of entertainment for so many young folks (and some olds like me).
I for one am glad that it's based around the American school system. I only have TV shows and movies for reference of what they are like but in comparison to what we have they seem like they have a lot more going on outside of studies.
All the sims err'day
My high school had football and cheer and that, but I was kind of alternative/artsy, a loner except for my sweetie and a couple of friends, kind of envied the artsy kids with more friends than I had, and honestly chamber orchestra and pit orchestra (for theater) was what got me to actually show up at school for a large portion of senior year. Orchestra and theater were minority activities at my school but they were a big deal to those who loved them. I was never a football/cheer kid or a trendsetting/popular kid and I also don't really feel like I need to relive those years.
Because it was so large, there were lots of sports including tennis and swimming. But football and basketball were high profile. Track and cheerleading were popular also. There were opportunities for arts, photography, writing, drama, science, etc. I was in FFA/FHA (future farmers and homemakers), Beta Club, 4H, and German Club. The latter was involved in competition with other schools and had some of the best parties.
I have good memories of students doing many things. Hearing the JROTC marching and rhyming while I was stuck in Algebra, seeing art students painting in the atrium, buying Rolos from business students who ran the school store, working in the library my senior year, sneaking into the teacher's lounge to buy a forbidden Coke, dressing as a Pink lady for Spirit Week. It made up for the awfulness of my middle school years.
Band and horticulture (the latter was my interest) could do that because we had amazing teachers organize finances well beyond their duties. Art, chorus, anything without stars like that just couldn't. Students had to buy their own gloves for science...
I lived somewhere fairly rural with more work/technical options compared to college and more stereotypically "country" interests. So while internet and social media was pervasive, no one was trying to be an influencer or streamer. They just watched them.
So it very much is more movie fantasy of my American high school experience, but as long as I am not locked to something ridiculous it is fine.