What was your high school experience?

[yourlibrarian]

As part of my effort to clear stuff out of the house, I came across my old yearbooks. (BTW, if anyone has any recommendations of places that will buy or take yearbooks, please let me know. I just want them anywhere not here without having to pay for postage). As I hadn't looked at them in quite some time, I browsed through them to see what condition they were in and ended up reading a bunch of messages across different years. I noticed a lot of people referenced the fact that I was writing stories in class.

These were mostly fanfic although I did draft an original novel at the time too as well as various short stories. (These efforts were almost uniformly terrible). The point being that while people did in fact know I was fannish about different things (which was mentioned by a few) they didn't know about fanworks or about it being part of the fan experience. If they remembered anything about me, it would be that I was going to write for a living (even though I never said any such thing to anyone).

I'm curious what experience other people had and whether they'd likely be remembered as a fan by classmates and why?

Comments

[klangley56]

My first fandom is Star Trek, and ST fandom had been around only for a few years when I hooked up with it--while I was in high school. Bought my first fanzines and never looked back. Didn't have any particular reason to talk about or show any zines around at school. I did, however, give a speech in my Speech Class about how the make-up of Mr. Spock's ears was done. And in another class, when we were asked to write about our favorite book, I wrote about The Making of Star Trek (by Whitfield and Roddenberry).

Now, at work on the other hand, I wear my fandom openly -- fannish t-shirts, buttons, posters, memorabilia, etc. Play filk songs in my office. Did a "show and tell" one time on fanzines, for one of my boards.

[yourlibrarian]

That was a lucky break! I went to my first con at 11 -- also Trek -- but was too young to connect with other people. My mother took me but she wasn't fannish herself. It wasn't until after high school that I met up with people in a fandom and could make friends with people I could stay in touch with.

I imagine it's much easier to be known for being in fandom at work these days -- and also depending on the workplace. Libraries have generally been welcoming, for example. Even so I don't think anyone knew about my fandoms, certainly not in a way they identified with me, until I was going for my PhD.