Regardless of how happy you are in your life now, or how tortured or peaceful your high school experience was, the concept of high school reunions is daunting to pretty much everyone. Here you are, 5, 10, 15, 25 years later, and you have to face all of your former crushes and bullies and essentially compare lives?! No, thank you!
Still, whether we feel proud of our circumstances or in the pits of despair, a lot of people still show up out of pure curiosity, and perhaps a bit of schadenfreude towards former bullies. There are obviously countless circumstances that can befall people that are out of their hands, so quantifying someone's life based on outside signs of "success" can at times be cruel and reductive.
Even so, it's hard not to take a long look at your graduating class and notice both the glow-ups and tragedies.
In a recent Reddit thread, high school teachers and former students alike shared some of the most drastic changes they've noticed at high school reunions, and they range from downright depressing to inspirational.
1. Canofsplode feels heartbroken for her former classmate.
"I sat beside this girl Joni in grade 8. She was so smart and really pretty. She would always finish the year with like 95 averages even as high as 98 in some subjects. I was a hooligan that's why I was seated next to her. She would help me with stuff always let me copy her homework peek at tests. There's no way I would have passed without her."
"The teacher would always say you'll never get anywhere if you just copy Joni all the time. She works the drive thru at a&w now. has a herd of children with some skeezy looking dude who's in and out of jail. Breaks my heart when I see her..so much potential to end up flipping burgers I always wonder where it went wrong for her."
2. MischaTheJudoMan's former crush murdered her own children.
"Not a teacher, but a girl I used to be interested in since elementary school, we were really close friends. I’d even “work” for her dad when I was a kid, stuffing envelopes for him to send out to his clients, just basic stuff that he offered us 10 cents per envelope to be a nice guy. In high school, we drifted a little bit apart, and she started dating another friend of mine who shortly after noped out of that relationship because she wanted him to make her pregnant."
"Fast forward a couple years after graduation, she did have children, who she then suffocated when they were 3 years old and 22 months old. Sentenced to over 40 years in jail. She was smart, pretty, and charming, and now she might never see the outside world again. Needless to say she didn’t make it to the 10 year reunion."
3. karty44's valedictorian got caught up in drugs.
"Not a teacher, but interesting nonetheless... the valedictorian of my graduating class lost his full ride to state college after two quarters because of drinking and drugs. He grew up in a protected and very strict household. Once he left and got exposed to the temptations of life, he didn’t know how to handle it. Last I heard he’s working odd jobs and is bumming around our hometown."
4. Imsosadsoveryverysad knows a student who was fired by their mom.
"Former student who was a decent kid who tried, just not the brightest. Graduated got a job a whataburger. Got fired because he kept showing up late. His manager was his mom."
5. SadlyReturndRS has a lot of deceased classmates.
"13 dead out of 217, class of 2011. Two car wrecks, one suicide, one dead soldier, one lost at sea, and the rest overdosed. We did a 5 year reunion just because we lost like 4 of them during year 4.
I swear, staying in your hometown after high school will kill ya."
6. greenlily23 saw a formely bullied classmate crush it at life.
"Also not a teacher, but have been out of HS (all girls school) for six years. At our 5 year reunion, I caught up with girl who was severely bullied during HS. She fell off a horse in grade 8 while riding competitive and legit snapped her spine, and was in a very intense back brace for her entire high school career.... and my god the other girls were so nasty to her. She would get made fun of for her appearance and there was an incident where someone filmed her in class without her knowledge and then edited the video to have all these sexual innuendos around her back brace and it was posted on Facebook."
"Our principal was also a horrible woman and when the video got reported to the principal, the principal somehow blamed this girl instead of penalizing the bully. She ended up having to stay back a year because her disability was so bad and she couldn't complete her school work and was unable to graduate. She was incredibly religious as well and other girls used to make weird christian incest jokes about her mom having to bathe her (because she couldn't bathe herself due to her back brace)."
"Anyway, she's now doing some fancy medical degree in the UK and is pain free and out of the back brace. She looks amazing (healthy, glowing) and rigorously kicks ass at the gym every day to physically rehabilitate her body. The best part of the story is that she has absolutely no ill-will to the girls who bullied her. It upset her at the time but she didn't let it scar her -- she knew that her bullies were obviously insecure and dealing with some inner demons if they went out of their way to ruin her life. She felt bad for them more than anything. I run into her at the gym all the time and it's so nice to see her so confident and thriving!"
7. Five_Decades saw a stoic jock turn into a psychotherapist.
"There was a guy who was the stereotypical jock in high school. Very unemotional, stoic, etc.
Then he went into the military and got PTSD. Now he is a hippy and psychotherapist."
8. HarmoniumSong's husband is the most interesting guy at the reunion.
"My husband graduated from a fancy prep school. Literally over 90% of his class are lawyers and doctors now. To his parents disdain, my husband became a professional poker player. Whenever he goes to reunions there’s a circle of these super successful doctors and lawyers around him because they’d rather listen to his stories."
9. Isiildur's reunion went from wired to tired real quick.
"Had my 10 year in the past year. Lots of people came into town. During the actual reunion there was a lot of bragging and obvious flexing."
"Fast forward to the end of the night and people are planning an after party. I end up going to it and the buzz that everyone had had at the primary event is replaced with sloppy drunkenness, and the previous boastfulness is replaced with them all confessing their insecurities: their health problems, their loveless marriages, that they hate their jobs and bosses. Was a bit awkward."
10. tommygun641's former bully has received a big dose of karma.
"Not really a surprise but the guy who used to bully me all the time is basically homeless. He refuses to go back to his parents (absolutely nothing wrong with them. He just never got out of the rebel teen phase) and spends his nights either couch surfing at a mates or sleeping on the streets if no one can take him in. Any job he gets he stays at until he has enough money for whatever he wants at the time and then quits. Skates all the time and wants to go pro but spends all his time smoking weed and drinking then crying about how his life doesn’t go anywhere."
"People at the reunion were astounded that he had just...not changed one bit. He still used the slang he used back then and even tried to get his old mates to tease me like they used to but they didn’t because they’re all adults now with jobs and some even have kids. He was kicked out of the venue because he tried to pick a fight with the guy who laughed at him for how he was dressed (30 year old man dressed as a teenager)"
"EDIT: i think it’s important to note that this guy and I used to be close friends before he started bullying me. I know his parents weren’t horrible cause i saw his home life first hand and he’d lash out at them for simple things and treat them both like crap. The worst i can say about them is that they were pushovers when it came to punishing him"
11. specialdialingwand saw a formerly bullied classmate finally get some recognition.
"Not a teacher, but I went to my ten year reunion. Back in highschool we had a kid who has aspergers and was a little weird. He was, however, amazing at the yo-yo, having picked one up during middle school when we had that yo-yo trick assembly. After everyone else had stopped walking the dog in 8th grade, this guy was doing more and more elaborate tricks every day during lunch. He was bullied and teased but he continued doing what he loved."
"So, at our ten year reunion, people from every strata of high school popularity was there, including this guy. He was his same old self, but more confident. I asked him if he still yo-yos, and he busted out his custom made titanium yo-yo that he said he made on a CNC lathe. He then starts to do some tricks and a large crowd gathered around. It was quite the show, he had gotten very good. When he finished, people clapped and cheered, and even the jockiest dudes from back in the day fist bumped him and told him how badass he was."
"The most amazing transformation was everyone else. Nobody teased him for being who he was anymore, they now admired him for being so passionate about something."
12. KevWill was apparently classmates with Ryan Reynold from Just Friends.
"In high school I was pretty good friends with a guy that was a bit overweight, about 6'4", really smart and a bit nerdy. Lost track of him after high school but saw him at our ten year reunion. He was the talk of the reunion. Still tall, lost all the weight and was in great shape, had long hair like Fabio and was a doctor. He showed up with a beautiful wife. He gave us his contact info and invited us to Atlanta to stay with him in his huge house."
"After the reunion I tried to get in touch. Contact info didn't work, and thru some sleuthing I found out he was neither married nor a doctor. He was still in good shape, can't fake that, but faked everything else."
13. RedRoverLaws witnessed a tragic riches to rags story.
"I have a few. One guy was this star pupil. Smart handsome athletic everything. Dating the head cheerleader. Some hallmark movie shit. They leave go off to college and nobody thinks it’ll go wrong. Come 10 years later, she divorced him, was given the House his late grandfather built in the divorce, and lived there with her new lover while he was in a hotel. 10 year reunion happens, he’s deathly skinny and depressed. Sees the school, remembers the memories he had, goes home after reunion and kills himself. Leaving behind 2 little girls. His ex got chased out of the community last year. Death threats against her and her lover. She’s trying to get in contact with people now because the lover took her money and fled back to the Philippines and she’s homeless now."
14. Thechosendick has seen firsthand that high school really doesn't predict how a student's life will go.
"A frustrating thing as a teacher is not being able to remember all the kids you've taught. I've taught roughly 150 kids a year for 15 years, so it becomes hard to remember specific things about every student. I feel like a d-bag when a kid who really enjoyed my class comes up and asks me questions about life or the class he/she was in and I can't remember much about it. I've found that I usually remember high achieving/creative students or kids who were badly behaved (as I have a soft spot for these kids)."
"Since I usually remember the badly behaved kids I have noticed that most of them figured it out by the time they reach 30. Most have great jobs and are well adjusted. Conversely, many of the high achieving students end up dropping out of college and are working low-wage jobs. I don't believe that high school is much of an indicator of future success. As long as you graduate high school and attempt college, how you performed in high school will not be that important."
15. Dsgorman loves helping former students through dark times.
"I’m a middle school teacher of over ten years so some of my students are high school and college graduates at this point. I’m happy to say that a good number of them have reached out to me to share life stories and updates."
"The one student that comes to mind was confidentially suicidal from a broken home with identity issues. She came to me for help and we found spoken word poetry as an outlet for her emotions, anxiety and discovery of self-worth. She is currently returning to school to finish her associates degree and she was the first in her family to graduate HS. I get updates from her on my birthday each year. She still writes and performs spoken word poetry in her spare time."
*Edit: Wow I did not expect to get this kind of overwhelming response! Yes, I have a million other stories (many of which don’t have as happy of an ending.). Yes, this is why I love being a teacher and yes I love hearing from my students years later, though very few actually reach out."
16. JediTaz's former religious classmate made a 180.
"A former student of mine grew up in an ultra-conservative Christian home. He and his siblings were never allowed to socialize with other students during lunch and recess. Whenever they had free time at school they had to read their Bibles. In science class they were forbidden to learn about evolution. Every essay, short story, personal narrative, and poem he wrote for me involved some kind of Christian theme."
"When he graduated, he immediately enrolled in a big seminary in our area and that was the last I heard of him until his class invited me to their 10 year reunion. This same kid showed up with sleeve tattoos, piercings everywhere, slamming beer after beer after beer and smoking like a locomotive! When I asked what he was doing now, he responded he currently was a bouncer at a strip club."
17. Roseora's mom had the most positive reunion with a former student.
"So, not a school reunion story, but I thought i'd input a happy story since a lot of these are a bit depressing.
My mom used to be a teacher for children with severe learning disabilities. By severe, I mean the majority of students she taught could barely do anything for themselves. Now she's retired, but one day we were in the supermarket when a lady comes up to my mom and hugs her."
"She seems a bit surprised at first and asks if they know eachother, and it turns out she used to be in her class. We get in the car and mom instantly breaks down in tears, after a few minutes she explains to me that 20 years ago, that lady had been unable to speak, walk or even go to the bathroom by herself. And yet there she was, out on her own, talking to us and doing her own grocery shopping. What probably made my mom cry was that after so long and accomplishing so much, this girl actually remembered her old teacher. :3"
18. MichaeI_Gary_Scott saw a classmate beat the odds.
"Not my story, but an alumni's from my fraternity at university whom I know quite well (he graduated in 2003). In high school he was overweight, nerdy, lower class, and his extended family had multiple heroine addicts (more common than you'd think in Ohio). As you can probably guess, he had a rough life. No one seemed to acknowledge him, and he struggled in school because of personal issues holding him back."
"When it came to college, he was rejected from everywhere but a community college. So community college he went. Because he wasn't under his parents control at that point and he was surrounded by all new people, he got a job and a gym membership. He ended up getting in very good shape, and he aced all of his classes. He decided to apply to universities so he could see where the journey would take him. He got a full tuition scholarship and a pell grant, which covered the full cost of attending my school."
He graduated in 5 years with 2 BS degrees and a Masters (took classes every summer to do that). Now he is a vice president of a very large clothing company. He is my biggest inspiration and says that "No matter how much people try to hold you back, and even if you have to start from rock bottom, you can always make it to the top. You just need to stay motivated, have full dedication, and seek how to improve yourself every day both as a person and a professional".
"His idea of the key to a successful life is to have good mental health, to always try to improve yourself, be proud of what you have, and to help others do the same."
19. Curleysound's classmate turned into a full-on cult member.
"Not a teacher, but I went to my twentieth about five years ago. The woman organizing the event was in my class since 3rd grade, and was always bright, intelligent, charming and pretty. She was very active in high school and by all counts had a very bright future. Speaking to her at the reunion, it seemed that had happened for her. We talked about her self help/life coaching company and how they are growing and doing great. I asked her to send me more information when I got home (which is on the other side of the country). I got an email from her introducing me to her west coast partner who’s email was from the url esplosangeles.com which I thought sounded very contrary to what I was expecting."
"A quick look at their web site had me immediately worried and a short google later I saw that they are an off shoot of the NXIVM cult that has been all over the news. The woman I was talking to, that I knew since age 8 was Lauren Salzman, who just this week plead guilty to holding two sex slaves locked in a room for two years. She was trying to recruit me and basically everyone at the reunion into NXIVM! I noped right out of that email conversation and have been watching everything unfold for the last five years. They are all looking at some serious jail time now."
20. lifesnotperfect's classmate found his peace.
"Used to have this one kid in my art class in senior high who treated it like one of those "easy to pass" classes. He was a big guy, much bigger than the other students, and he'd use his size and strength to bully other kids. The smaller ones, he was a little bitch underneath it all."
"He would draw guns and crosses in his art book with pseudo-gangster sayings like "live by da gun, die by da gun", and "Fuck da police". You get the idea. Come reunion time, which was some 5 years later, he's found a girl who really reined him in and, kind of like a hunter taming a wolf, really turned him into a good man."
"They had a baby boy, and he's a responsible father and does yoga on the rocks by the beach. Complete 180. I do think he was a good guy underneath it all, he just needed direction from someone who could break down his walls."
21. mundotaku has had fascinating follow-ups with former classmates.
"Again, I am not a teacher but a 35 year old. I went to high school in Venezuela, I left the country when I was 17 and never saw any of them until what you might call a "virtual reunion" on facebook a few years back. The reason I got to even know they had a group? The guy everyone knew bullied me was shot and killed by his best friend at the time. Apparently he kept being a bastard after graduating and thus that was the end result. Besides that, most of my classmates moved from the country due to the crisis."
"Those who stayed are having a bad time, like everyone else in the country. It is weird seeing them in facebook in random countries and doing things which I would never expect from them as a teen. One in a cook in Sweden, other is an MMA fighter in California, one is an accountant in Australia, plenty have middle class lives in other South American countries. Simply interesting"
22. doctorfeelgood33's mom was the ideal teacher.
"Going to post my Mom's story because she doesn't have an account. She was a home economics teacher and specifically she had one class called "Relationship Psychology" where every day to start the class she would read through that cheesy "Dear Abby" newspaper advice column to talk with the class on how they would respond to the problem. One day ahead of class she noticed that a letter published talked about a kid who sounded a lot like a student in her class and was located in our hometown (they always end the letter with a name and city and my Mom was always very involved with her students and their personal lives)."
"The letter talked about a kid who was terrified of going to college and how he got rejected from all the school's he wanted to go to, had no self-confidence, abusive father, money problems, that he would lose all his close friends, couldn't stand the idea of leaving his disabled Mother, and that he felt enormous pressure as a 1st gen college student and had ultimately decided not to go to college at all. She read it to the class and they discussed and she could tell the boy in her class was very uncomfortable."
"After class she asked him about it and it was in fact a letter written by him. He never thought it would get published and responded to by the Dear Abby column and was super embarrassed. He (like most students) never even knew what the Dear Abby column was until they took her class. Afterwards she talked through everything with him and talked with his Mother and evaluated his options on how best to approach college. She taught him finances, loans, scholarship options, his Mom's condition, and everything and got him to a place where he felt better about his future."
"4 years later the kid ended up being the speaker at his college graduation of over 7,000 kids, met his wife at college, all of his groomsmen, and got a killer job through his career fair on campus before graduating. She flew out and attended as he invited her. Was always blown away by that."
23. Due_Duck witnessed a 180 from former students at her all girls boarding school.
"I went to an all girl's boarding school. This one particular hostel supervisor had been working there since she was 22 and has been there for nearly 40 years so she has definitely seen a lot. Our school's foundation day each year is attended by over 500 alumni. Some friends and I were chatting with her when this group of incredibly smart and intelligent women come up to her. After they greeted her, she told us that she never thought they would get anywhere in life."
"These girls were the most notorious of all the kids that she had to deal with, they chopped off a teachers waist length hair and stole teachers cellphones only to bury them. Put on the janitor's uniform to sneak out of school. Got fake blood and put up handprints outside the rooms of 9 and 10 year olds. Decided to summon spirits in a hostel building right after a visiting academic died of a heart attack, the rest of the girls in the hostel building were so scared that the school decided to lock down the building for nearly 5 years."
"They also took turns to stand on top of one of the buildings with a white sheet and showed it to kids in the farthest building, that's how we got our infamous resident school ghost.
They all are in their late 20s now, great jobs abroad but looking at them you would never think they could pull something off like that in their teens."
24. LizIsGreat didn't know how to feel about the news about their high school bully.
"Not a teacher, but here's a story: I avoided my high school reunion but because I didn't attend, I was contacted by an old friend who had hoped to see me there. While catching up, he asked if I had heard what happened to my old bully and gave me a few minutes to google the lady."
"The first google hit was about her being arrested for having sex with a student. I laughed my ass off until I read that she was employed at a middle school. I stopped laughing and started calling my family. My sister told me that when she was a sophomore, my bully's brother confided in her that the kids in their family were routinely sexually abused by their extremely "religious" father."
"Basically, in twenty minutes I went from not remembering that this girl existed, to remembering how shitty she treated me, to feeling schadenfreude at her failures, then utter repulsion and disgust, then heartbreak and sadness at the cycle of abuse. I would have rather just carried on not remembering that she existed."
25. lopaticaa's former classmate literally disappeared.
"I'm late to the party and will get buried, but here goes nothing. Not a teacher (well technically I am, but this is a story from my reunion) but at my school reunion everyone from my class was doing as well as or better than could be expected, except for one guy, let's call him John."
"At school John was a smart kid, well mannered, pretty quiet and taller than anyone else. We were actually pretty good friends at the time, but lost touch after a while (this was before social networks). I know he went to University to study Computer science, and the last thing I heard about him was that he had gotten married and had 2 kids."
"Anyways, I was looking forward to seeing him and finding out what he was up to for the past 15 years, but he didn't show up. Later the teacher told us that she tried to contact him, but no one knows where he is. He left one day to go to work and never came back. No bodies have been found, he hasn't contacted his wife or sister, he simply vanished into thin air. I tried finding him online numerous times, but to no avail. I still try from time to time.
I just hope he is safe and well."
26. developingwaver's former student is the ultimate success story.
"A previous student of mine grew up in a horrible home situation. This individual was really smart and I did my best to help them apply/receive many scholarships and grants, and eventually went to an ivy league school to get away from their abusive home life. They made it big and I mean BIG - big time millionaire. Made their family jealous but in the end their hard work paid off. It was great to see and I was so proud of what they'd become."
"Edit: The best thing was seeing them break the chain. The family had problems going back numerous generations and to see this generation change was all worth it."
27. DookieSpeak went to school with an incel.
"One kid grew up to be "that" guy, treading the line between jolly neckbeard and somewhat scary incel. I saw him after a full 12 years had passed."
"The worst part is, he was one of the most popular and socially adjusted kids in school. Always invited to parties, girls always trying to spend time with him, he'd always get away with absurd things in school because even the teachers liked him. He was just really funny and naturally charismatic. Not to mention fit and handsome."
"However, he was strictly religious so he never had sex with any girls. A few years after graduation, he became an atheist (or just agnostc?), but by this time he had a dead-end job at a supermarket, had gained weight and was obsessed with Dragon Ball Z because he related to "unleashing his true power".
"So he spent like 5 years desperately messaging girls from HS, trying to say "hey I can have sex now", but he was just not that attractive anymore and his social skills had deteriorated tremendously. He was rejected by every single girl that was pining over him just a few years ago, in high school."
"He ended up publicly coming out as a "proud incel" 2 years before the reunion, in a post where he "declared war" on women and socially adjusted men. He often posted about being a virgin and how Christianity basically made him an incel because he missed out every chance for sex he ever had."
"So at the reunion, he came wearing a white t-shirt with the words "Fuck you". He'd walk up to now-married women that he had previously solicited and just smirked silently, waiting for them to read the shirt. He was thrown out by the venue after about 40 minutes since so many people complained of his creepy behaviour."
28. panjier's classmate did a full 360.
"Not a teacher, but someone in my high school class did a complete 360. I’m from a small ass country town where you either worked at Walmart or drive a truck. Either way you were hooked on something."
"When I graduated I got the hell out via the military. Kept in touch with some family and 1-2 friends. Couple years later and I run across this guy from my school in the middle of Iraq. He had also signed up and was doing really well for himself. Swapped info and kept in touch for a few years. I got tired of Facebook and deleted my account so I lost contact with him."
"About 10 years later, my parents are visiting me and catching me up on local happenings. Ask my mom if she remembers this guy, and her gossip went to an 11. Apparently after he got out he had PTSD and turned to drinking and it wrecked his life. Had a few DUI’s, couple baby mommas, and I think a meth problem (mother tends to embellish so not sure how accurate)."
"Always felt bad for him because we both did the same thing to get outta our home town. He really got the short end."
29. jurassicpark4life's classmate had a full-on glow up.
"Not a teacher, but just wanted to give a shout out to the girl that’s gonna “win” our high school reunion next year. In HS, she was super quiet and... well, she was a bigger girl. She was tall too so it all compounded together. She’d try to shy away from any limelight but that was hard when she was like 8 inches taller than the rest of us."
"Anyway, she’s lost like 80 pounds in the last couple of years, found a hair style that suits her so well (she would wear it long) and has just really hit her stride."
"I want to say something, but I’m trying to maintain my total bitch status from HS so I’m not going to. (Kidding... I just don’t want to be that person that comments on weight even though I know she worked hard for it and probably wants people to say something.)"
30. Volkrisse's classmate scammed all of them.
"I refused to go to my 10 year reunion after our class president and treasurer decided to try and charge 170.00 a head to book this fancy place in a garden. Needed 100 people to book it of a class size of around 300. She got about 20 people. So instead of returning the money and picking something cheaper so we all could go. She pocketed the money and took her and her “friends” from high school out to an expensive all day romp around San Francisco., shopping/dinner/drinks included. To say people were pissed would be an understatement. Unsure if she returned the money. Everyone noped out of the class Facebook page after that stunt."
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One of the only happy weddings in the entire series that is also the most lethal one.
