What did your classmates from school end up doing with their lives? (celebrate, long distance)

[WellShoneMoon]

Out of my graduating class (50+ years ago) of about 280 people: several doctors, about a half-dozen lawyers, one judge, a couple of ministers, lots of engineers and teachers, lots of assorted business people and blue collar workers, and one guy who, after a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse, ended up committing suicide.

[Serious Conversation]

I find it interesting that some of the posters are noting the ratios of living/dead classmates, and that even though most frequent posters here are at least twenty years older than I am, that ratio is worse for me.

I graduated with about 300 people. We were the largest class to graduate from that school up to 2004, and are probably the largest to have ever graduated as all the classes my cousins were in (graduated in 2013, 2016) were about 200, and the school has declined academically over the past decade.

Of these, roughly thirty have died within ten years of graduating of high school. These are the ones I know of or have heard about through the grapevine. I know a few more that have died since then. Probably 10%-12% of the class was dead by 30. Most of these deaths were where drugs and/or alcohol were suspected - numerous overdoses, DUIs, suicide while impaired, etc. We've had a few die of natural causes - couple of cancers, an asthmatic, of all things - and several traffic fatalities. What stands out is the high mortality rate of drug abuse and addiction.

Originally Posted by Escort Rider

You are imputing to me things which I did not say, which is a very dishonest way to discuss an issue. First, I don't "worry" about people I used to know. Second, not only am I not a "Nosy Parker" but I have many interests in life besides knowing what has happened to people I used to know, as interesting as that is. Third, I am not "moving decades backwards" by becoming aware of what has happened to people I used to know; in fact, there is no "moving backwards" at all. If I happen to find out what someone has ended up doing with his or her life, that is not a regression for me at all - I still retain all the progress I have made in knowledge, skills, and attitude.

I am sorry you so obviously had bad experiences in high school. Given that background, it is perfectly understandable that you want nothing to do with those memories/those people. But what is not so understandable is the sneering, nasty attitude you demonstrate toward a point of view different from your own.

Perhaps you would agree with Jean Paul Sartre, who wrote that "Hell is other people" ("L'enfer, c'est autrui"). Indeed, I have known some people who cause me to recall that little quote, even if I do not share that attitude as a general rule of life.

One thing I find perplexing is how hung up people get on the high school years, especially older people who have lived the majorities of their lives and should have been able to establish more satisfying social bonds in the intervening years.

For the most part, we don't have much choice where we go to school. Maybe, like most, we went to the closest public high school. Perhaps our parents sent the child to a religious school based on their convictions that the child never really buys into. If the child is gifted, maybe they're lucky to get into a special program. Ultimately, that decision is made largely by the parent, and especially in the case of the public schools, the student body is just a selection of local residents.

In adult life, we often self-select neighborhoods, friends, and associations because we look for arrangements that suit on our own tastes. When I lived in Indiana, I chose to live where I did (though it was hurried) because I wanted to be around a certain type of people. In school, the arrangement is made, then people sort themselves based on the arrangement. The order is reversed between the two.

From my perspective, I probably know of two classmates struggling with some major issue - financial, legal, substance abuse, domestic problems - to every one classmate who is well-adjusted and reasonable. Being in the same town, I see some of these people occasionally, and hear about this and that through the grapevine. I was never well-liked in high school, much of it from my own doing, but outside of maybe a dozen people, I really don't care what someone from high school whom I've probably spoken no more than two sentences to fifteen years ago is up to today.

I added probably a hundred classmates from high school on Facebook over the past several years. I ended up deleting probably eighty of those last week. I found the hard luck stories depressing, and most of the rest I haven't seen in years and probably won't. Life is better less cluttered.

[johngolf]

They cover the whole spectrum from one that killed a policeman during a bank robbery to everything one can imagine. None achieved national fame.

[ABQ2015]

I attended my 40 year class reunion and have some classmates on Facebook so stay in touch that way but I don’t have any close friends from high school. My high school was in a Western mining town (i.e., open pit, not underground mining) with a small teacher's college so many of my male classmates went to work for the mines. The mines paid very well similar to a good manufacturing job but unfortunately the mines declined over time and lots of workers had to find new jobs mid-career. Also many of my 180 so classmates had close ties to the town and still live in the area. They work blue collar jobs, office jobs, local government jobs, for small family businesses, etc. or attended the local college and became school teachers.

Of those who went away to university, there are a couple of physicians, including a successful plastic surgeon, a college professor, engineers, accountants, and one woman who obtained a PhD in computer science at an Ivy League college. I’m sure there must have been a few nurses and lawyers but don’t know of any and I don’t know of anyone who was very successful in business or creative arts. Sadly, one male classmate, who was heavily into drugs in high school, became a paranoid schizophrenic and murdered a man, and a couple of male classmates committed suicide.

[SouthernProper]

Class of 200 people - Graduated 1993

Only one classmate has passed away, a lifelong friend, she was an Engineer (auto accident 1999)

At least two pilots
Computer programmer
A few police officers
A couple of lawyers
Real Estate
Many business owners (one was our valedictorian)
Ship Captain
Deep sea diver/rescue
Doctor
A few teachers
Organic farming

... and a registered sex offender

I'm a veteran homeschooling mom of five, pastors wife, former business owner and interior designer.

[jane_sm1th73]

Originally Posted by BucFan

Ambassador to Bulgaria....ABC 20/20 Anchor.....Neurosurgeon.....several West Pointers, successful Army Officers....Orthopedic surgeon.....Venture Capitalist grad from Stanford.....damn, thanks OP, I'm all of a sudden depressed.

Jeez. I'm depressed, too. Thanks for sharing, lol!

[Serious Conversation]

Originally Posted by SouthernProper

Class of 200 people - Graduated 1993

Only one classmate has passed away, a lifelong friend, she was an Engineer (auto accident 1999)

At least two pilots
Computer programmer
A few police officers
A couple of lawyers
Real Estate
Many business owners (one was our valedictorian)
Ship Captain
Deep sea diver/rescue
Doctor
A few teachers
Organic farming

... and a registered sex offender

I'm a veteran homeschooling mom of five, pastors wife, former business owner and interior designer.

That's rather amazing. I guess the drugs have taken a toll on my generation.

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by Pyewackette

Nonsense.

There is no one I want or need to "catch up" with from my past. Yes, I did NOT "spring miraculously into bloom today" - I sprang miraculously into bloom the day I graduated from high school and started working my way through college. I made my life AFTER high school.

I don't find "other people" all that interesting either. There are far more interesting things I do with my time and energy other than moving decades backwards to worry about people who happened to be teenagers at the same time I was a teenager in a small town where I have not even visited for over 40 years.

I don't need to be a Nosy Parker to find interest in life.

The only people I find interesting are interesting people.

I found my high school class on FB. I recognized my former classmates by name only. The faces were not recognizable to me. Conversations and family pictures were the main topics. Since I have neither, I couldn't relate. That made it pretty boring for me.

I have one high school friend with whom I hadn't been in touch for years until we friended each other on FB. She is very politically active. I don't know what she did for a living before she retired.

[SunGrins]

Our class was about 700 and we just had a 50th reunion last fall. I did not travel back for the event but they had around 100. I only tried to keep track of a few classmates and none of them went to the reunion either. I looked at the Facebook page from the reunion and didn't recognize anyone. Here's the little that I know... Most are retired.
Several didn't make it home from Vietnam...sad. I see a few others died in just the last year...cancer, car wreck.
One is a preacher, one sells real estate, one was a school principal, one was a doctor, one career military, one a postal worker, one an engineer, one a NPS Park Ranger, one sold insurance, one was a photographer and published porn before the internet. The big employer in the area was Boeing so a number worked there. Many moved away but there is still a large number that stayed in the same general area (within 50 miles).

[kevxu]

There were eighty-some kids in my class by grade twelve. We always lost some males along the way because we had several factories in town, plus we were a rural area. So, some guys would quit and get a factory job and some would drop out and work on the family farm. Usually a small number of girls would get pregnant and drop out - this didn't happen in my class.

My former best friend is a successful dealer in furniture in NYC, one very nice Scots immigrant girl later became the recreation director (or something like that) in our village's first nursing home, one guy dropped out and was in jail within a year, my first year in NYC (60 plus years ago) I completely unexpectedly ran into a farm guy who had dropped out in grade 11 or maybe even in our senior year. I was totally high school gushy about the encounter, but realized that he was uncomfortable to have run into me and it turned out that he was a hustler. There are a number of people on the Classmates site, but they don't say what they have done for a living....not sure why they are on it at all as they have no bios or anything. I guess it is a way of getting in touch if you want to.