Why those four years leave an imprint we can't shake. A look at the science and psychology of high school

WE decided to have some fun, Dasi and I. A non-Jewish teacher who had taught us eight years ago in high school had gotten engaged, and we were going to get a kick out of it.

Bnos Chaviva High School Chat Group

Gila: MAZEL TOV on the latest shidduch!

Dasi: Oh my, mazel tov! LOL!

Silence reigned on the chat of 83 members.

Gila: It’s SUCH a nice simchah, and such an out-of-the-box shidduch (party emoji)

Dasi: And after all these years… Wow!

Dasi and I, sitting in the staffroom where we both worked, looked at each other. We could feel the curiosity simmering, but still, silence.

Within seconds, however, both our phones and private chats began to ping.

Elisheva: Hi Gila! Haven’t spoken in ages! Just wondering — who got engaged?

Rus: Gila! What’s going on? Who got engaged???

Sara: HEYYY WHO?

Nothing, though, on the Bnos Chaviva High School Chat. It was intriguing, and mildly maddening, too. Why don’t you ask me on the chat?!” I PM’d to Sara.

Her response: Are you kidding? I wouldn’t write on our class group, of all things! Just say!

In the end, her curiosity won out, because she managed a pareve, Who got engaged? and didn’t dare emerge again when Dasi wrote the news, and everyone answered with polite “mazel tovs.”

Eighty-three listeners may make a chat awkward to respond to. But there was something else up here, more than just regular hesitancy.

And why was I left a little breathless from this back and forth? As though I had somehow staged a little rebellion by writing on our class chat?

What is it about high school peers that can make confident, normal, stable 30-year-olds revert to insecurity? I knew then, more consciously than ever, that there was something more powerful to high school than just four years of schooling. And I was determined to find out exactly what that was.

“The first 20 years are the longest half of your life, no matter how long you might live.”

— English Poet Robert Southey