My father always told me that the world would change dramatically as I grow older. I never knew exactly what he was talking about until recently, as I look back on how things have changed since I was a student in high school. Here is a lighthearted look at a handful of things that have changed dramatically since I was in high school.
Before the days of Facebook, Twitter, and social media, and texting, messages and social communications were sent in a very old-school manner. Whenever someone wanted to disperse information to someone else, in lieu of speaking, one would simply write the message on a small piece of paper and pass it off to its intended recipient. Post-It Notes were banned in my high school simply because they made passing notes easier, but we were a generation of resourceful students, so we reverted to tearing up pieces of paper from our notebooks.
Public announcements and discussions were facilitated through the use of a magic marker. Instead of posting your complaint, idea, joke, or rumor online, one simply took a marker into the nearest bathroom stall and wrote it on the wall. Over the course of a day or two, one would almost certainly return to an explosion of written responses; seldom profound and usually profane responses.
Instead of promoting messages online to gain enhanced exposure, the messages were written boldly on full sheets of paper and slid behind the locked glass of the high school bulletin board. This ensured maximum exposure, the likes of which were almost guaranteed to be seen by the entire student body, that is until the administration came around with the key to open the glass and remove it.
The generation of today have all kinds of communication tools available at their disposal. I have yet to meet one school age child who doesn’t carry around at least one cell phone. Gone are the days where getting messages around took a little bit of creativity; today there is an overwhelming amount of communication going on, the likes of which don’t require any effort or planning.
I used to have a small collection of notes that were passed around when I was in high school, many of them were quite humorous, such as one that was sent to my high school room mate in 9th grade, which simply stated, take a shower, you smell like a sardines asshole.
What kind of notes did you use to pass in school?
