Do they still brag about that one football game they won in year 11 even when they’re 45?

What to you is a dead giveaway that someone peaked in secondary school?

41 comments

  1. I may have a unique insight into this one.

    An extensive criminal record definitely screams “peaked in secondary/high school”

    Mostly all the “popular” people from my year at school are punting gear, nicking motors or having domestics(as in they are domestic abusers)

    All the the so called dorks appear to be living a pretty good life although they’re broadly still dorks.

    Edits: Clarifications.

  2. They never left their home town and all the talk about is school. You are 40 years old pal and still act like you are a teenager in school. It’s weird meeting adults that are emotional stunted. It’s just they way they talk about getting married too. It’s like topics you would discuss as a teenager with a teenagers perspective.

  4. Secondary school? I was in the football team junior school, so obviously that’s where I peaked.

  6. I have a friend who is very sweet, but she constantly talks about our secondary school and remembers every single thing word for word that happened. She was a top set girl, and her entire life seems to have revolved around those 7 years of school.

    I don’t remember any of it, we’re 51! Far more important shit has happened in the last 35 years.

  8. They live their whole lives out on Facebook through a cultivated selection of “amazing moments”.

  10. 31M – A good mate of mine is still close to all his school friends, which is lovely & he was even kind enough to bring me along to a lot of their social gatherings after I moved a to London & didn’t really know a great deal of people in the beginning. Again all lovely people but most of them hadn’t left their Essex hometown – the majority of their chat was about how someone said this in science in year 9 or who got off with who at year 11 prom. I don’t want to come across like a dick I just thought it was odd as when I’m with my mates from school days we rarely mention school unless it’s the time one guy shat himself in music year 8. That always has to be mentioned

  11. Obsessing over the social hierarchy at school. Whether that’s trying to recreate it or trying to show how much better they are than everyone there. Emotional small mindedness

  12. They still bring up drama and arguments from that period in their life. Let it go, move on… it’s not healthy and frankly, a bit weird, to have emotional investment from an argument from all those years ago…

  13. They coasted through school on their popularity but when school ended everybody forgot about them.

    Now they are still living in their home town, working in shit jobs, slinging gear, roided up to the max, turkey teeth, have a son who is ‘my world’ who they see only on weekends.

  15. When people say “never left their town” like that’s a bad thing, do you mean never moved to live elsewhere or never travelled?

    I have lived all over the country but I can’t get my head around why so many of you think living in the same town is supposed to be a bad thing? Why do you have to move?

  16. Definitely bumping into my high school bullies who think staring me down and trying to be the ‘big man’ is still a thing, I barely remember you and honestly have nothing to say to you because of how much of a dick you were from the bits I do remember. We’re adults now and you don’t even realise that being kind to others is way more rewarding than being the ‘big man, hard nut’ on the estate.

  18. People who repeatedly will tell you that your school years are the best years of your life as if their experience is universal

    I hated school, I hated living at home as a kid but now as an adult even when things are bad they’re pretty great, I have so much more freedom to do the things I want and even enjoy studying and taking online classes (whereas I couldn’t stand classes at school)

  19. Intelligence often rounds off to a more ordinary level at some point after the age of 16 to 21 (even if they’re still smarter than average). So a lot of people in a way genuinely do reach their peak in Year 11. The observed active thread of educational psychology has to round off a little somewhere. Lots of people who were truly exceptional when they were younger (straight A* students) get to a point where they’re just the tiniest bit smarter than normal but not really that smart (or not manifestly-so if they still are) once they’re beyond a certain age and just settled in their career and whatnot. On the other hand wisdom and experience increase the older you get, and that’s more important. Being book-smart – or at least having the capability to be uniformly so, even if you never put it to test that much at school beyond one or two subjects you just naturally excelled in – is a flex, sure, but it’s not going to get you through life just on its own. Not really. It just makes certain opportunities come to you easier but again you can still miss out if you haven’t aligned your heart fully with the trajectory you need to be on. And when it’s like that it’s easy to have a very rosy image of the past but there were probably always huge imperfections and issues with the past. Just that hindsight’s kind in that you do tend to overlook the bad stuff and make a period of your life that you idolise sound more consistently good than it was, even if it wasn’t.

    A lot of aunties do that when they want to talk down on someone in the present day to prove how off-the-rails they’ve gone since a certain point in school. Half the time it’s just rose-tinted spectacles or not being aware of all the many things that were very bad during that time in their lives. You never really know all angles to someone’s personas and character unless you truly do know them that well or have spent that much time with them over the years. As far as someone else is concerned they might’ve glown up since and really be in the peak of their characterological life, even if you always thought they were the perfect, angelic child and that everything about them from their teens onward was/is bad. You literally don’t always know people half as well as you think you do. So it’s good to not be judgemental just for the sake of being judgemental when there’s an awful lot you wouldn’t know about them. Judge them if they really have done x and y since leaving school (or whenever) and you know it’s not just gossip but when you’re talking badly of other people’s kids in comparison to how you remember them being at one particular time you need your facts to be right.

  23. Only having friends from school and not being able to make new friends as an adult. It’s brilliant if people have managed to maintain friendships from their schooldays, but if they’re your only friends because you haven’t managed to forge any new connections at all… that’s weird.

  24. My mates and I are all leading objectively decent lives, good jobs and married with kids and all that, but we’re all still best mates despite living all over the place. Whenever we get together we still talk loads about our school days. Nights out we had, football games we won etc. So I guess, looking at these comments, we’re probably guilty of peaking at school too 😀

  25. Blokes (I don’t know if women have the equivalent to honest) who were obviously ‘hard’ at school and never twigged that that’s no longer the case. In their head they’re still living in the world where a growl from them still intimidates someone, as opposed to making them laugh at them.

  26. I honestly didn’t realise that any UK kids peak in secondary school like cheerleaders and jocks do in US schools. I thought that they were all grotty little scruds and the only way is up. Even if they end up lowlife criminals they were probably even worse in school.

  27. A small horde of children conceived not long after (or during) secondary school.

    No A-levels or degree.

    Still wandering around their hometown.

    Showing up to reunions, and still being in contact with the year group on facebook.
    I blocked the last one a few years back for being an intolerant weed-addicted prick totally unlike the friend I used to know.

  30. Plastic surgery.

    Amount of people from school who I see have had surgery of all kinds, and it’s always the ‘popular kids’ from school. Desperately trying to keep up with looks being their only feature when people around you care less about that and more about personality.

    Mid 20s as well, it’s quite sad really.

  31. Don’t most people peak at 16-18? You’ve got pretty much a blank cheque to do whatever the fuck you like.

    The story where I stayed up all night in a field doing mushrooms and other stuff with various naked people is unlikely to be superseded by anything because I have work in the morning and need to make the kids breakfast.

  32. I definitely didn’t peak in high school.

    But there was that one time I came off the bench on at right back, skipped past a couple of kids, cut inside on my left foot and scored an absolute belter from 30 yards out! To be fair the wind got behind it, but the keeper didn’t stand a chance.

    I probably only played about a dozen times for the football team, because well I was a bit shit at football, it’s the only goal i ever scored. I’m smiling like a twat now remembering it 25 years later

  33. Still drinkin/sniffing/smoking like their teens.

    I did that shit heavily from 18-21 before getting sick of it and washing my hands of fake happiness indunced by substance abuse but alot of my friends are still on it. Pub every week, sniff when they can. Smoking weed constantly. They have jobs but at some point you have to move the fuck on from that stuff. It’s fun when you’re 18 not when you’re 30 in 5 years.

  35. Saying/posting things like “can you believe this year’s year 7s were born in 2012? When did we get so old?”

    You are 30, why are you still thinking about time in school terms? Why are you thinking about 11 year olds in general?

  36. They want to do a pub crawl of 12 pubs around our town that we started back then but didn’t finish. Everyone else has moved on with their lives but this guy only seems to care about finishing “the golden mile” as he calls it

  38. Still care that they were “hard man” of the school class/year. Usually also drive a beat up MG or similar and sell shit drugs

  40. This one’s for you Reddit;
    “I found school easy and I passed all my exams without trying, but then I learned I didn’t have to study and so I failed all my uni exams and dropped out”

  41. I’m actually envious of those “peaked in high school” people as I’m in my 40s and have never “peaked”, in fact I’ve been in a slump for around 40 years now.

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