Whether you lose a bunch of weight, get married and have kids or become a super successful lawyer, a lot can happen in 10 years. These are the some drastic changes from high school.
When A Do-It-All Decides To Stop Doing It All
One of my neighbors growing up was that super motivated Type A do everything types. Co-valedictorian, captain of the hockey team, gifted musician…just always working. 10 year reunion, went just how we all expected. Full ride to Yale, Harvard MBA, six figure Wall Street job, gorgeous fiance…and he seemed utterly miserable. 10 years later, 20th reunion. He got sick of it all, quit his job, sold his house, got divorced, and got out of town. He now owns a pig farm in Upstate New York, spends his days working the farm, brewing beer, and hiking in the forest…and I’ve never met a happier, more satisfied person in my life. Source
What Happens To A Skinny Nerd In Prison
Skinny nerdy guy got busted for selling a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of adobe software in college and spent 15 months in prison. He came out super buff. Source
The Prison Prank
My 10-year was after e-mail was invented, but before social media. So I got an e-mail out of the blue one day from a girl I’d gone to High School with. She was organizing the 10-year reunion and wanted to know if I could come. I told her I wouldn’t be able to make it, so she wrote again asking for my address, because she wanted to put together a directory and hand it out at the reunion. As a joke, I e-mailed her back with the address of a cell block in a North Carolina prison. I intended to e-mail her back the next day with an explanation and my actual address. I completely forgot to do this. I had pretty much completely forgotten about this until years later on a weekend trip to my hometown, I noticed a few furtive glances, and someone finally said they were glad to see I’d gotten out of prison and that I didn’t seem to have been harmed by the experience. They wanted to know how long I’d been in. They were polite enough not to ask what I’d done to deserve being locked up. It took me 20 minutes and a prolonged question-and-answer period to figure out what the fuck they were talking about. All of this was 15 years ago. To this day, someone will occasionally post a comment on my Facebook page about how my current success is just such an inspiration, because it shows how someone can serve time in prison and then turn their life around. Source
From Lame To Fame
One kid was fairly small, quiet and goofy. Nice kid, but nothing too special about him. We hung out a few times at speech/drama tournaments. I had wondered what happened to him. Turns out he grew quite a lot and became quite popular. His acting career took him far. He’s been in several huge films, including X-Men. We knew him as Jimmy. Today he goes by a more mature name of James – James Marsden. I hope he’s still a cool, goofy guy deep down that I remember from the few times we hung out. Source
The Best Cops Know The Crime Best
The kid who was stealing motorcycles and selling them for parts is now a police officer. He was never accused or convicted of course but I knew that for a fact. Let’s hope people sometimes do change. Source
Went To Highschool With A Real Vampire
On the flip side I know someone who hasn’t aged since high school. No extra fat, no wobbles, no gray hair, nothing. Even his voice is the same at thirty as it was at fourteen. I’m pretty sure he’s a vampire. Source
What Age Does To A Classmate
Had my 10 year last November. A lot of the guys looked a lot older, a lot of the girls looked the same. There were a few girls that no one remembered from high school that got really hot, and there were some cool guys in high school that didn’t look so good. A lot of balding heads on the guys and fake tits on the girls. Edit: My graduating class was over 900 people so you can imagine there were a lot of transformations of the people who actually came for the reunion. Source
The Class Pyro…Became What?
Nobody changed at all. I left Ireland three days after my leaving cert, and happened to move back a month before the reunion party. I hadn’t seen a single person in the 10 intervening years, and everyone was basically the exact same person as they had been in school. Better-dressed, more confident, less awkward – but essentially the exact same people. I had been dreading it, because I was never a popular kid in school – but it actually felt wonderful to be among those people again. After high school, you never really get to know anyone that well again. Add that to me having spent 10 years being an immigrant in various places, and that made re-connecting with these people extra sweet. All of the people with massive chips on their shoulders – they didn’t show up. So the only people who were there were the ones who were as excited as I was. There was one kid who changed massively, but he didn’t come to the reunion. In school, he was the most dyslexic kid, worst at math, bottom of every class. His only love was making home-made bombs on his farm and blowing shit up with them. He went to a college in Cornwall or Wales or something, that specialised in mining – because he figured that way he could work with explosives. So fast-forward almost ten years, and I am finally getting my bachelor’s degree. I took a bit longer than most people do, but I had just got the results from my last few exams and I had finally passed. I was basking in that elation when my phone rang and it’s this guy. He just got his PhD for building a fucking robot that goes into mines and fires fucking lasers everywhere to make a 3D scan of the mine without endangering any humans. He built a robot with lasers on it. And had a PhD. Way to take the wind out of my sails, James. Source
The Yo-Yo Pro, And A Lesson In Maturity
Back in high school we had a kid who has aspergers and was a little weird. He was, however, amazing at the yo-yo, having picked one up during middle school when we had that yo-yo trick assembly. After everyone else had stopped walking the dog in 8th grade, this guy was doing more and more elaborate tricks every day during lunch. He was bullied and teased but he continued doing what he loved. So, at our ten year reunion, people from every strata of high school popularity was there, including this guy. He was his same old self, but more confident. I asked him if he still yo-yos, and he busted out his custom made titanium yo-yo that he said he made on a CNC lathe. He then starts to do some tricks and a large crowd gathered around. It was quite the show, he had gotten very good. When he finished, people clapped and cheered, and even the jockiest dudes from back in the day fist bumped him and told him how badass he was. So I guess the biggest transformation was everyone else. Nobody teased him for being who he was anymore, they now admired him for being so passionate about something. Source
The Opposite Of Leaving A Kind Note In A Yearbook
I was friendly with this guy K freshman/sophomore year, I think. He was super quiet, shy, incredibly studious, chubby kid. Even some teachers would be like ‘lighten up, relax.’ He came out of his shell senior year and we kind of stopped being friends because he was hanging out with the ‘cool’ kids and having parties where people could drink, etc, and I was super square and uninterested. So at my reunion, he was this x20. He is now a ‘hotshot’ kind of guy in DC working for a ‘strategies’ company. (Just googled it, no idea what they do). Anyway, at the reunion he was mostly okay UNTIL he chugged a shit-ton of beers. Some folks had left, but the rest of left at the reunion had gathered around while he picked up a yearbook. He proceeded to shit on EVERY PERSON in our year whether they were there to defend themselves or not. This was a super uncool kid freshman year (who nobody really disliked or made fun of, actually) just bashing everyone for weight, being weird, being uncool, being too cool, etc. My boyfriend was with me (he did not go to HS with me) and was so uncomfortable the entire time. Source
Summer Camp At 40 Really Brings Back Memories
We didn’t have a 10 year but we did have a 22 year. The year we all turned 40. It was so much fun. We rented the summer camp we all went to growing up for the whole weekend. People brought their kids. We got wasted and told stories all night. We were all older and fatter, but nobody had changed a bit. Source
An Unlikely Zen Master
There was a guy in my class that was a big meathead and was known to be a huge bully and womanizer. He is now an easy-going artist that hugs everyone and has a very zen demeanor. At our 10 year reunion, he told me how excited he was to atone and let everyone know that he has changed. I thought it was incredibly touching and my respect for him is fully restored. Source
The Truth Behind Highschool Reunions
At the 10 year it’s all about who was successful. At the 20 it’s about kids. That’s the one I just went to. We did it over 2 days with the first being a small dinner party at a bar; we rented out a room. The second day was a family day at a local amusement park where we pooled for tickets, rented a pavilion, and had lunch catered. At 30 … “Who is left” starts at the 30. There was a prayer for our classmates who passed before the dinner, and it took a few minutes to get through all the names. Also at the 30, everyone’s more honest about their jobs. No more exaggerating. If there’s any bragging, it’s about how soon they can retire from it. I’ve got my 40th coming up, and you’re probably right about grandkids. They’re already smearing them all over Facebook. At 40 it’ll be about grandkids. Source