High school reunions don’t matter
This may be controversial. You can agree with me, or think I’m being ridiculous but honestly, I don’t understand why people care about high school reunions.
As I write this, I’ve already started to think about how the people I went to high school with will react to what I’m about to say. Am I coming across as conceited? Like I think I’m too cool to associate with them now? I’m starting to regress to the thought patterns I had when I was 15 and this is just one of the many reasons why I think high school reunions are pointless.
When you think of a high school reunion, the first thing that comes to mind is no doubt a movie you’ve seen. For me, it’s Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, a film that I adore. This film presents two women in their mid-twenties who have been invited to their high school reunion. They start to reminisce about their school days and devise a plan to impress their former classmates with a spectacular life they don’t actually lead.
This is where my beef with high school reunions began.
In school, it was exhilarating to talk about what you might be doing with your life 10 years after graduation. You’d think about what country you’d be living in, if you’d landed your dream job and if you’d end up getting married. Back then, we thought we’d stay friends with the people in our “group” forever and that we’d all be so thrilled to see each other at a party 10 years after we ditched our questionably coloured uniforms. In reality, that’s rarely the case.
After high school, you lose touch with most people. The people you do keep in touch with, are those you’ve actively chosen to keep in your life and the dreams you had at lunch, may be totally different to the dreams you have now. 10 years is a long time. Everyone you knew in school has grown up and their views on life, ways of thinking and values may have all completely changed since you last saw them.
In the film, Romy and Michele devise a plan to make their lives seem more exciting, so they can impress their former classmates. My question is why? Why do these women want to impress people they haven’t spoken to in 10 years? Why are they basing their self-worth on the opinions of people they haven’t even thought about in a decade?
What’s the point?
Dr Andrea Bonior Ph.D wrote an essay about reunions in 2019 and explained that one of the main reasons people chose not to attend was “the idea that one wasn’t in a place in life that was impressive enough to show off to others.” This reason ran alongside fear of not being remembered and travel logistics.
She also highlighted that people usually want to attend a reunion to “renew old friendships, see how others had changed and to show off how they themselves had changed.” High school reunions have long been a space for people to reconnect with friends they genuinely miss from school. The thing is though, in 2020, you don’t have to travel back to your hometown to reconnect with old friends.
Social media is so prevalent in this generation, that the idea of a high school reunion feels redundant. If there is an old friend you’d like to catch-up with over coffee, a quick search on Facebook can tell you if it’s possible. If you want to see where your high school friends, enemies and frenemies are in life, Instagram gives a full library of images that will show you if they’re married, if they have kids and whether they ended up finishing that law degree they always talked about.
The main reason high school reunions exist is to see what everyone from your graduating class is up to 10 years later. But with social media giving us access to these people at the touch of a button, why dress up and go to an event filled with awkward small talk, when you can spend a few hours scrolling through Facebook and Instagram to find out what you want to know? The wine is cheaper, and you don’t have to worry about spilling food on your outfit.
High school reunions are placed on an unnecessarily high pedestal and I want to knock them down. Depending on your high school experience, you’ll either be excited to attend this event, or you’ll be dreading it. I’m not saying any of this because I had a horrible high school experience. For me, high school was fine. There were a few ups and downs, but everybody has those. No matter how your high school experience panned out, there are still so many reasons why high school reunions are simply illogical.
There’s no reason to show off your life to people who probably haven’t thought about you in 10 years. You most likely haven’t thought about them either, so why put yourself in a situation where you have to act interested in someone, you’re actually not interested in at all? If you had a tough time with bullies in school, but have finally found your tribe and feel comfortable in your own skin, why go back to that toxic environment and try to impress the people who hurt you? If there are people you genuinely want to reconnect with, instead of meeting at an event in your hometown, why not just swing them a DM asking to catch up over coffee? Why dress up and attend an awkward high school reunion when you can just curl up in your pyjamas with a bottle of wine and stalk everyone online for an hour or two?
Some people may read this and think that I’m being cynical but think about the time and money you’d save by not attending a high school reunion. Think about the time and money you’d save by not hosting a high school reunion (for those thinking of planning one). High school reunions aren’t practical, and we shouldn’t think of them as these magical events that will suddenly make our lives more enriching, by providing us with opportunities for closure and revenge. In reality, they’re just parties filled with people you don’t really know anymore.
If you’re planning my high school reunion and have made it this far, then I completely understand if my invitation gets “lost in the mail”. You’ve probably figured out how I’m going to fill out that RSVP.
Words - Lauren Payne
