School reunion, everyone’s life is just the same

[Schooldinners1]

Was wondering how others found seeing their old classmates and going back to your old town.

The majority of people have stayed living in the same area, not far from their parents and haven’t really ventured anywhere outside of it.

I am wondering how it’ll go. I’m one of the few people who went to uni in a totally new city hundreds of miles away and never moved back!

It will be interesting. It’s going to be at the community hall I had my primary school discos in 😄

Well yes exactly. It’s all about aspirations really. If you’ve been raised not to expect much of yourself or others I suppose you wouldn’t even bother.

Some folks have only worked in their local supermarket and holidayed in Benidorm for example. I suppose if that’s all you know and normal for everyone around you… it takes a strong person to break away from the cycle of poverty!

In many areas it’s like generational deprivation. However once you know/see what’s possible and people expect more from you, your life can totally change.

I think this is the point I guess. All of you were from decent places I wasn’t.

50% of them were probably inbred.

@Schooldinners1 that has been my point. So many people here have made sweeping statements stereotyping people who live in their home towns, without seeming to understand that not every home town and not every person is the same.

therefore while these boasting about how broad minded and cosmopolitan they are they are actually demonstrating a lack of worldliness and imagination.

living in your hometown absolutely does not automatically mean a low skilled job and a holiday in Benidorm. It’s ‘parochial’ o assume that (if @IAAL allows mentions I use that word outside a context of sneering at people living in their home town😂)

I guess what I can say to this is because my upbringing was so drastically different I had no understanding or concept of someone growing up in a safe and positive environment.

I just never saw it. I never met anyone with professional parents or people who even worked in an office until I left and went to University and I was totally shocked by how much everyone else had and that’s only when I realised how little we had.

@Stripedbag101 Don't be silly. I'm not sneering at anyone. I would feel hemmed in and miserable if I had to live in my home town (which was the absolute reverse of remote or miserable - it's a very prosperous and desirable place, so much so that most of the people who live there now are not 'natives', but choose to live there because it's so desirable. While everyone who grew up there now lives in London...)

But if you like your home town and it offers you plenty of interest and newness and so on, then that's great. It just wouldn't be for me, or for any of the girls (now 50 yr old women) I went to school with.

@Schooldinners1 I had a friend at university who was the first member of her family to go to university. She went to a rubbish school in a dismal nowhere place. Her family were mystified by her going to university - the expectation was that she would stay at home, get a local job, and help out with her younger siblings. She just happened to be clever and motivated and saw a way out. She is now a consultant radiologist and lives in (surprise surprise) London.

We will have to agree to differ.

Apart from your assumption about my vocabulary- I absolutely know the definition of words I use!

have a lovely evening - I am away to water the garden and have a glass of wine

🥂
@Stripedbag101

Are you sure you joined the right year group and your actual one wasn't up until the next year?!

I never felt so out of my depth. I ended up living in a student flat with people who were just sooo much better off than me - it was just so clear.

I was from a poor little northern town. I didn’t even know what hummus was. I remember a Jewish boy I lived with exposing me to all these new things 😂

Then all the wealthy international students. I didn’t even know what investment banking was it really gave me mental health problems but it made me so determined to be like one of these people.

They were so privileged they didn’t even know that everything that came easily for them and fell into their laps I had to fight for.

I remember one girls mother was a teacher and even me wishing I was from that sort of background. Which now looking back on it is pretty norm across the board.

This is interesting because I am one of those people, never moved out of the area I went to school in, no great career to speak of etc. I am sure there will be some of my six form peers look down on me because of it.

Some of us are slow burners, either because real life has got in the way or because it takes some of us longer to figure out what is really important to them, and that might not be what is really important to you @Schooldinners1

I think what really disadvantaged me or caused me to struggle because of my background was the lack of cultural capital I had accessed in my younger years.

All of this makes it very clear that you’re from a different background once you are in University, entering a prestigious career or living in a more affluent area.

If you grew up in a dump where people eat chip barms or whatever you’re gonna feel like such a sore thumb in a room full of doctors/barristers kids.

You really need to be strong willed to drag yourself out to the mindset of being different to tell yourself you belong there.

That's the great thing about university, though. I learned a lot from the friend I mentioned (we are still close friends 30 years on), and she learned a lot from me too.

My youngest DD is currently at university and her closest friend is a girl who is, again, the first person in her family to go to university and has got there against pretty much all the odds. This friend sends money back to her parents from her student job, as she's now better off than they are. My DD went to boarding school and has had a pretty privileged upbringing. It has been an enlightening friendship for both girls.

Are there really "shithole" towns? Where the whole place is awful and in dire poverty?

Don't most big towns and cities have wealthy areas and deprived areas - a mix, where the inequality is often stark?

And then some smaller chocolate box villages and prosperous towns are just full of the financially comfortable and outright wealthy?

I've never lived anywhere where the entire town was deprived, and can't think of anywhere I have visited like that. Am aware that could be the ignorance of privilege though, or maybe I'm forgetting somewhere!

@TrappedInSlothBody I think you've showing your privilege. Small towns aren't all chocolate box. Look at Jaywick, or ex mining villages in the North East where the entire village was dependant on mining and the economy hasn't recovered and they are dying.

Usually in really deprived areas (from what I’ve seen) the people just don’t venture outside of their area, they stay there with what they know. Lots of kids for example haven’t even been shopping to their city centre.

They only stay within the 1-2 miles where they live and stick with the same impoverished people.

Some families have multi-generational unemployment.

Some people think they’re rich once they’re the girlfriend of the local weed dealer.

They may not know anyone who gets dressed nicely to go off to work for the day.

They might just think it’s normal to sit in your pyjamas all day and seeing violent behaviour and constant police visits because of fights in your street are normal daily occurrences.

All of this was my normal childhood.

There are plenty of places that are grim. Certainly pockets of the abandoned North and Wales. You wouldn't know if you didn't go. And you wouldn't go unless you needed to or lived there.

No investment. Limited job opportunities. No hope.

If that's the sort of place you grew up OP, no i wouldn't be rushing back for any reunions unless there were people i really wanted to see.

The thing is when you have no money or spend everything you have on drugs, drinking, debts etc you can’t even afford to go anywhere or expose yourself to anything new.

Plus you don’t even have the confidence to go in certain places or speak to people who aren’t like you.

So you basically just stay there rotting away. It’s very common to see people with several missing teeth for example, such a thing wouldn’t be seen as odd.

Or seeing someone OD in the street after taking heroine. I wasn’t shocked, just called an ambulance to sort her out and got on with my walk to college.

I can well believe. I'm always surprised that some people are surprised such deprivation exists.

It's awful, but I wouldn't expose myself to it if I didn't need to. Not quite to that level, but I have plenty of people from my past that I'd just have no common ground with any more because they've stayed on the same trajectory. They would think I was stuck and snobby for not struggling in the same way and I'd feel like I couldn't talk about myself because I'm not up to my ears in debt and fag butts.

I wouldn't criticise people for staying put though. Some people don't think there's anything beyond the struggle for them.

I can't think of anything worse than a school reunion. I never again want to breathe the same air as those people. They were all twats.

I do know that severe enduring poverty exists and traps generations of families, but just have never been somewhere (I don't think so anyway) where it was all solely like that.

I have lived, and live now, in a place where the level of inequality is huge.

All of the points of poverty mentioned above are visible in certain parts of my city. Side by side with massively wealthy areas though.

I have never visited the utterly deprived towns in the UK mentioned above.

I’ve heard “looking down my nose” a few times 😂 …but honestly for us leaving that area meant something. We wanted more.

I did see a school friend who recently had a baby remember to post on social media to celebrate international marijuana day.. I thought wow you just had a newborn and that’s what you’re thinking about 😆

I didn’t even know how terrible it all was until I left and was exposed to other young people who had totally different lives.

There was a 20 year one a few years ago. I didn’t go. I was horrifically bullied in secondary school by the people in my year and told I would amount to nothing by the teachers. Why would I want to go back and revisit that? Seems most haven’t amounted to much anyway and peeked as teenagers (given what one of my friends said of the event) so I didn’t miss anything.

So you’re judging everyone who remained at home (even if it was deprived) as low achieving, boring and narrow minded?

I actually think it’s you who is narrow minded but fair enough we all have our views. What I find quite awful though is knowing you have this view and wanting to go to this reunion and actively look down on people. For that reason alone, you sound insufferable and I would hope never to bump into you or converse with you.

I find people from all walks of life fascinating to be honest (I’m a clinical psych so that’s essentially what I do). I certainly wouldn’t go into a reunion with a judgemental mindset. Those people who stayed may have many interesting stories to tell, it’s just you’re not open to them.