so fight, fight for science and tech and the glory of tj hiiiigh!

so on facebook, people keep making these groups entitled, "you know you are from such-and-such-place if you...," and then they list all the idiosyncrasies of that place. there's now a group called "you know you went to tj if...," and man, reading it was a blast from the past. i almost forgot how strange a magnet school can be. jefferson was such a nurturing and stimulating environment, but honestly, we were freaks. here's my list of reasons why our jefferson existence was really pathetic. and AWESOME. but mostly pathetic.

- freshman year, my backpack was so gigantic that every teacher that i would pass in the hall would comment on "the little girl with the big backpack"
- we would play games on our calculators on the schoolbus.
- i popped my locker so that i wouldn't have to use the combination, and when someone broke into it, they only stole pens.
- apparently i had a date for junior year homecoming and i had no idea.
- shakespeare troupe wore CAPES to school on a daily basis.
- we wrote down mrs. chhabra's quotes in chem ("what on god's green earth??","i will make you clean it up with your eyelashes!"), which were 50x funnier because of her accent. for more hilarious tj quotes, go to tjbash.org.
- the intranet became the best stalking tool when people's schedules (including 8th period) were posted online.
- at 30%, the asians were the largest minority population at jefferson.
- there were TWO boys in my class who still thought rat-tails were appropriate hairstyles.
- while most schools listed sports championship titles on the sides of their buildings, we listed things like "it's academic" and "math olympiad."
- the color guard would skip class and twirl their fake rifles in the auditorium lobby (aka, "the audlob").
- we were all envious of the guy in our calculus class with the TI-89.
- my senior year crush was kind of known as a criminal. but really, he was just on probation for graffiti-ing (actually, he was a very talented artist).
- there were no class rankings, because a 4.0 didn't mean anything.
- no one got pregnant in high school. in fact, the first person to have a baby from our class is just pregnant NOW.
- i lettered in academics.
- meg and i would leave video tech to hang out in mr. slade's GOVERNMENT class.
- i didn't have a last dance at my prom since my date was a junior who was taking the SATs the next day and had to go home early.
- i had to get my cousin to decipher a yearbook message for me because it was written in asian ebonics.
- i think only four people out of my graduating class of 400 didn't go to college.
- we were unfazed by the constant stream of japanese tourists, who came with videocameras and all.
- senior year, we entered a radio contest for a mandy moore concert, and two guys wrote a program to flood the website with votes. when the radio station caught on and improved the website, the nerds wrote a better program to trick them once again, and we won.


it's crazy how odd our high-school experience was, right? i still loved it though. anyone else have any weird memories?