is high school basically a prison?
yes
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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My highschool was literally built in an old prison
my college was all brutalist sort of architecture, except probably even less style than brutalism and just all concrete. people did joke that it was built to be a college or prison.
One time in middle school someone punched me in the face
I laughed it off and basically went "what a loser" to the person i was walking with
he also didn't punch me again
is there a moral to this story? no. 
i guess the moral is i didn't have too much problems in high school after that. even those times might have been in middle school cause it was the same building so all that shit is blurring together a bit now.
One time my "best friend" randomly stabbed me in the arm with a pencil and I had a graphite scar for years where he did it
then after college he unfriended me on Facebook and became a cop
he apparently has gotten awards for being a good cop
ngl until you got up to the cop part, i thought you might have been talking about me
i didn't punch him in the arm though, he just like, randomly looked at me and slammed the pencil down
real psycho shit that aside from him becoming a cop was really out of character for him
It’s unsurprising that so many people love to cry mutual abuse/bothsidesism when a woman defends herself against her abuser given schools basically teach you from a young age that you’re just as bad as the bully if you fight back.
I got told many times, and then got to experience first-hand, that the only way to fight back was to do it myself. Definitely a fucked situation and a bad lesson to be teaching kids, but getting punished for doing something after authorities repeatedly fail you is representative of being an adult in America.
There was a kid in middle school who liked beating up on me, usually just enough to look playful but not arouse suspicion. One day, he grabbed my pinky and twisted it, obviously making me bend to what he wanted me to do. The next day he wanted to show someone the new trick he'd learned, so he asked for my pinky again. Knowing he'd hurt me worse if I didn't give it to him, I acquiesced. He then twisted it harder and more confidently than the first time, and I collapsed in pain. Turns out he broke my pinky. School administration made us got to counseling where they told me he was just playing and did nothing else. His parents, however, came down hard on him. Made him write an apology letter and he was mostly friendly and apologetic towards me afterwards. Figure there was a mix of genuine remorse that he'd gone "too far" and fear of his parents who, in turn, may have been afraid he'd gone too far or maybe were afraid we'd sue. Anyway, appeasement doesn't work, but that was pretty much my only defense mechanism: shut down and let it happen.
It's why I can't play any competitive sports. I go straight for the neck chop because it's the most effective tactical option. Football, swimming, board games- do not try to send me to fucking jail in Monopoly.
School was great in elementary and senior high, middle school sucked and my freshman years of high school sucked too and I did real bad grades wise. Elementary was great because I was just a kid and fucked around, senior high was great because I fucked around and hung out with the stoner ska kids even though I was straight and arrow drugs wise.
I'm pretty sure it's scientifically established that middle school specifically fucks kids up compared to extending elementary out by a few years, but we just can't change it. Kind of like how we know high schoolers would all have better grades if the classes started a couple of hours later to better align with teenage circadian rhythms, but we don't do that either.
I'm pretty sure it's scientifically established that middle school specifically fucks kids up compared to extending elementary out by a few years,
What's the difference?
Okay so I've read a few recent articles on it and it seems the research is less clear-cut than I thought based on what I learned ten or twenty years ago.
The idea is that shaking up a kid's peer group when they're already navigating the transition to being a teenager puts a lot of unnecessary stress of them, whereas structuring school as k-8 allows them to remain in a stable community during their early teenage years and gives them opportunities to be at the head of their peer group and be given leadership opportunities.
But the counter is that teens have specific educational and community needs that a k-8 elementary school doesn't necessarily provide. The whole reason middle schools arose in the first place is to better cater to young teens.
It's also possible that the previous studies showing middle schoolers underperforming compared to their k-8 counterparts was actually just capturing socioeconomic differences, as places with k-8 tended to be legacy schools in wealthier areas while poorer areas tended to have middle schools.
The conclusion that most of the articles I read from academic institutions came to was that, if it matters, it matters a lot less than basically every other problem that schools in America face.
in middle school a kid kneed me in the upper thigh and I had cartilage damage for about 15 years
Myself and my buddy were the two largest boys in our highschool from around grade 10 onward. We were pretty nerdy but would often get challenged to fights. We both played canadian football so we would just shove them over like they were opposing linemen until they got over it.
So if the "pick the biggest guy and fight him" cliche from movies is true then yeah it is like prison
I used to let other kids punch or slap me for money. It was usually around 25 or 50 cents per slap. Eventually I learned to take any sort of dare for money, like eating dirt or screaming in the middle of class.
It was really common for kids to dare me to go to a teacher and say "I'm gay." I could get up to $5 for that and I did it like twenty times. It was my most popular bit. Kids would erupt in laughter and roll on the floor. Jokes on them because I was the only kid in middle school with a PS1, Nintendo 64, and a Sega Saturn.
stabbing people in prison usually gets you put in lockdown.
In high school, too.
yea i could have got in some serious shit but luckily those kids probably didnt want to say 'i punched someone and he stabbed me."
i just reflexively went to hit back and forgot i had a pencil oooooops.
In first year French, Catholic secondary school, nuns as teachers. Sister Bernadette stabbed a pencil into the top of Charles Kelly's head because he wouldn't remove his earring.
is high school basically a prison?
In my experience, many teachers regard their students with the same mix of contempt and suspicion as cops do the public.
When I was in middle school, there was a kid who would punch me in the upper arm every day, so I had a bruise for two and a half consecutive school years. I finally got so sick of it that I left a sheet of thumb tacks outside my house for about two months until they got good and rusty, and then I taped them to my arm under my sleeve (points out, obviously). Like clockwork, the kid punched my arm, and looked at his hand in horror as he found a grid of puncture wounds. I don't think he told anyone, because I never heard anything about it, but he did stop punching me.