NERDFIGHTERS! I NEED YOUR HELP! There's a song. I swear to god there's a song that talks exactly about what Hank was talking about, written from the point of view of a school building about...the students that were in it? I can't remember who it's by, but it's probably alt rock of some sort because that's like all I listen too. This is going to bug me forever...
i mean, there's "teardrop windows" by ben gibbard, written from the point of view of smith tower as people stop visiting it in favor of the newer and taller seattle needle. not a perfect match but along the same vein. acoustic version is sublime.
THAT'S ME AT THE END (for those saying I said "John Hank", I was trying to say John and Hank but you know when you run into Hank at school sometimes the excitement cuts out your "and")
It's really weird to visit your old school or university. on the one hand you know the place, you spent so much time there, but one the other hand you have this feeling of not belonging there anymore and that is a really weird feeling. I can actually remember how I felt, when I visited that place on a daily basis, and then this nostalgia hits me, the craving to feel that feeling again, not just remembering it... Even though there were really rough times, and I mean REALLY, rough times, there are also so many great memories at those places, for me at least. And I really miss those great times.
I'm back at my university this weekend for graduation, but I've only been gone since May. I still feel like I belong here, like this is My Place, but it's not. I'm starting new things in a different city but this place still feels like it's mine. It's going to feel weird for a while, I think, to stand in places I've stood a hundred times and remind myself that I don't belong here anymore.
My college had alumni weekend not long ago and I wasn't ready to go back - but I got all the videos and pictures sent to me. The school redid the roads and fixed up construction and a residential building had opened. It's completely different from the school I was at for 4 years in less then 6 months.
That girl, now woman, probably still has a peace-sign-shaped scar on her ankle. And Hank was there to witness it, right in that spot that we now saw too. That's why those words reverbarated so much in my mind. Think of all the places we walk by, and of how many people's lives have permanently changed in that spot (in much more drastic ways than in this example) without us knowing it.
It is so odd to have someone relatively famous make a video about somewhere I spent four years of my life. It's even weirder to have that video seen by tens of thousands of people. It's even weirder still to have seen Hank there just a few days ago. That school is no longer my school, just as it is no longer Hank's, but in a lot of ways it still feels mine. P.S. Hank, if you happened to hear a girl scream as you walked to D-Lot, that was me. Whoops.
I graduated from Winter Park High School in 2015. It was so odd to see how the buildings haven't changed and neither has my ambivalent feelings towards it has either. I remember dreading going to school, but looking at this video- mostly fond memories came rushing back. I also regret not bringing more to this high school. Thank you for a walk done memory lane(:
I think you know eventually you will be nostalgic of this place even if I consider it mundane now, that's what I think that that is, but I also say to myself that I could never be nostalgic of this place that brought me so many terrible memories. but I know precisely how you feel.
Nostalgia for times you've never had,maybe because eventually you'll live them but you wont live them because they wont be exactly thecway you imagine and mis-imagine them? Idk,language defies meaning to me sometimes...
When I think about my high school and middle school experiences and I think about different people having both the same and completely different experiences in those same places now, it fills me with a feeling that I think is exemplified in the line "Nothing gold can stay." I remember my 8th grade Reading teacher reading us that line and telling us that we would spend our lives learning what it meant, and that has proved true. I am still learning what it means. I had some terrible times in middle school and high school, but I also had amazing friends and fantastic teachers and incredible experiences. There will be people who go to the schools I went to and have the same classes I took, often with the same teachers, but not one of them will have the same experience I had. We will have shared experiences, but my highs and lows are mine alone, and I find that those highs and lows are inextricably linked to the place I was when they happened. The buildings don't mean anything, but we give them meaning by interacting, growing, and living our lives inside of them.
That line reminds me that we are as focused on loss (or maybe more) than gain in life. But the gold can constantly be replaced again and again. It just seems it happens more fast paced in school. I craved such a dynamic and creative environment. Wish I journaled more on how each day went.
Quick shout out to all the teachers who dedicate decades of their lives to a single school, the ones who are there to witness the changes year after year and do their best to cherish and adapt to each new class. While the students come and go every 3-4 years, you are steadfast. Your perseverance is often over looked, but I'm so grateful for your commitment in the schools where I was a student, the schools where I have been a young teacher, and in any school you have chosen as home. DFTBA.
Hank, you made me feel nostalgic for a place I've never been, and it's a really weird feeling, and I don't know how to feel about that, but I guess well done to you, hank.
Same here. I could relate a lot of what he was talking about to my own high school and at the same time, feel vicarious nostalgia for his own school, too.
I haven't been out of high school that long, I'm 21. And yet if I were to go back now there wouldn't be a single student there I know. It would be very weird to go back, even just driving past feels strange.
I'm the same age and I literally just did that a month ago. Some of my teachers had retired and i knew zero students. It was so surreal. But at the same time it was nice to know somethings didn't change.
Only been out of high school for 3 years but the days of high school feel so distance now. I bring my sister to my old high school a lot and it's weird Every time I go back. Time is such a strange thing.
For me the end of high school was really weird. For one, I felt like I was already disconnected before my last school year was even over let alone after that. The year after I left, my second favorite faculty member(the librarian, I was a member of the Library Club and spent more time in there than some of my class rooms) along with another teacher who I liked a lot.
I love how hank and John can be both so incredibly thoughtful and think deeply about topics, and also at the same time be silly and fun. This is the content I signed up for.
when you showed the yearbook i was like "oh that was in john's video too!" and john yelling "you can't use this! this is for my video!" really made me chuckle
I lost my brother ten days ago in a tragic accident that claimed his life. Though I feel robbed of the entire lifetime ahead we were supposed to share together, this channel brings me immense comfort. Thanks to Hank and John for your weekly expressions of affection and kindness.
This is so interesting because you are in the business of creating places that embody this idea in a very intense way. A con is not the convention center, it's all the people who show up for three or four days and create a special place.
it just hit me that i've been watching John and Hank since I was 10 years old, i cant think of anything or any person (except for my family and my art) that has remained in my life for that long! i cant believe that this random channel would influence me so much throughout middle school and as i complete high school. thank you, john, for inspiring me to continue writing and making art, and hank, to pursue my interests in science and mathematics. this was a great video!
I graduated from Winter Park High in 2008, haven’t been back on the campus since so this was neat footage to see! Really takes me back. Honestly high school was a pretty fun time, I don’t know why it’s such a common sentiment to act like it sucks and you should want to fast forward to college - UCF was cool too for me but I feel like I had more meaningful friendships with more people in high school than in college myself. I do regret falling out of touch with so many though. Can you do a 9th Grade Center video next?
Hank - you're speaking to a whole swath of us out there and our highschool days. Your insight is always thoughtful and refreshing. Also - I am loving these rough-cut vlogbrothers videos! I man, I do enjoy the more refined and professional videos too, but there's always something special about these. DFTBA.
There's a word that describes that weird feeling in an empty place that's usually full of people: "Kenopsia (n) the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet".
I’m a senior in high school and this video inspires me to embrace the time I have left and do something with it rather than wait for the day when I get out of it. Thank you, hank.
I'm currently in high school, but I still connect with this strongly. I understand exacly where he's coming from, but idk why. I'll definitely think about this when I go back next week though.
I just got back from the Bay Area yesterday. I grew up there and then moved away for stuff and got sick. Being sick made travel really hard. So I didn't go back "home" in almost 6 years. I went back for medical stuff that could only be done there but stayed for 2 1/2 weeks. It was a strange experience. I saw my sister for the first time in half a decade, along with a lot of other family. I ate my favorite foods, went to my old stomping grounds, etc. I kept noticing how it was the memory of a place, with some remnants, that I loved, not the place itself. The place itself mattered for the people (and the best pizza, chinese food, and cafe ever). I was also struck by how much I had changed. We bury ourselves every night, and are born anew every morning. Most parts of us come along, but some change, some die, and some new parts are added. Six years of that makes for a very different person with a very different life and set of experiences. Going back made for a good "noticing" moment for that.
Revisiting your old schools is one of the weirdest feelings. I lived near my old junior high for like almost 15 years so I’d pass by a lot and one day realized I hadn’t gone to school there in ten years. TEN YEARS. But I still had weird snippets of memories very crisp. Or sometimes I pass my old preschool and I’m just like how was I ever so small and uneducated.
I went to Winter Park before joining the Marines and seeing it now, relatively unchanged from when I was there, I feel what you're saying. The place doesn't change, the people do, and our perspective of it has been altered from the winding path we took from it, that happened to loop back around. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Hank! Always a fan of your work!
I think about this a lot, actually...and not to step on your enthusiasm here...I think about it as an example of imagining the world poorly. I felt like I was beating the system getting those free mountain dews. But what I actually ended up doing was stealing from the small business that stocked the soda machines, and in the end getting the machines removed entirely from campus (for a while, they seem to be back.)
We had a Pizza Hut at our school. I had stuff crust pizza with a side of french fries and either potato wedges and mashed potatoes every day for a year. BTW, I agree with Hank. I mean, Hurray for theft? Really?
pyrotheevilplatypus I believe that that small business person still needs to come and refill CO2 tanks. They will get the same money from the machine, but students will get an altered beverage. Am I missing something?
Sexy scientist I don’t think it was that kind of soda machine- I think it had cans, judging by the ones I saw inside when hank showed that footage. I’m not American but I don’t know how a pay per use type of non-can machine would even work...
There's so much to love about this video. I love the walk down memory lane, the fascinating thoughts and feelings about Hank's old high school and John claiming the year book for his own video. So much awesome crammed into less than four minutes. What magic is this??
As a high school teacher and student council advisor, this resonates so much with me. Recently, the school underwent major renovations and we share our building with a trade school. Students were up in arms about the massive change: hallways were no longer accessible, hangouts were closed off, etc. I told students the school hasn't changed really because they are still in it. They make the school, they set the tone and the "vibe" in the school. A building is just that: a building. We determine what that building becomes. Keep up the awesome work!
I went back to my high school yesterday to record the eighth year of the Kaleidiscope concert. A project of mine that is eight years in the making on TH-cam. The choral groups use them to study. I love how you put it, Hank. Broad rather than deep. Even after clubs and waiting for my dad to finish school work because he teaches, I loved the uncanniness of my schools. Seeing it go from empty, to full, and back again really sat well with me. I remembered filling it with all my conversations and projects and friends. It felt new and old. Broad and deep. It was so much about people and creating value for me, and that's why I still love it and miss it so much.
I can’t wait to hear you guys speak in St Paul today! Your videos are always so thoughtful and John’s books are so deliciously well written. I hope you both can find some relaxation beforehand, I know these tours can be taxing.
There's something more freaky that there's a constant chain of people from the moment you stepped into that door down to the current student inhabiting the school. You may have passed a bit of information to a kid in the year below who subsequently did it to a freshman the next year and on and on it goes finally leading to the present. These places don't become new much like our bodies don't become new everything we process every cell... It's just, different.
I thought about this...but less about individual pieces of information and more just...attitude. It's very hard to track out values and perspectives propagate, but I wouldn't be surprised if high schools are pretty good at propagating them.
I think about this with those elementary school games and chants and songs that everyone just somehow knows from generation to generation. Sometimes they're changed a little, but they seem to last across time and space. I think we pass more of ourselves and our experiences down to others than we know
I got to see a great example of this with a unique school I went to; a juniors & seniors only art high school with optional dorms for farther away students. I met a girl who went to the school 20 years prior to me, some traditions still existed, some were new past her time there, and some faded away some year or another. It was wonderful to see and hear that the heart of the school remained over such a long period of time, though. I might be able to visit the school alumni day this year after four years of not seeing it at all, and I'm really excited for that opportunity
And I thought my secondary school was big (it only had about 1300 students across six grades and three different levels of education). Mind you, this was a school in a rural area of the Netherlands, so it was in fact quite big for the area. I am always astounded at the size of American High schools when I see them in movies/series and am happy I didn't have to go there, because my school was already very overwhelming for me...
mythologiefan I know right?! I'm also Dutch and I knew almost everyone in my 700 people high school. Not all by name of course, but still. Everything in America seems so big
The high school that I went to had a little over 2000 students. And my graduating class was about 500 students. Now I go to a university that has 37,000 students. I live in a metroplex that has almost 7 million people. To me it's not overwhelming, it's just normal. Although traffic and driving can be stressful at times.
I have lived in Amsterdam as well, and am to never repeat that again. Funny thing is: my sister loooves it in the big city (Amsterdam). I hate it though... I think I hate it in part because I have autism and ADD, which doesn't at all go well with big groups of people...
I know this video was posted 6 years ago as I type this now, but I had no idea Hank Green went to my high school. Let alone that he graduated two years after I did (I'm Class of 1996, Hank is Class of 1998). Some of this footage brings memories back to me, too. Although I was full-on a drama kid Thespian and most of high school memories revolve around the Ann Derflinger Auditorium (although I'm not sure if that's what it's still called). Aside from several years outside of the city, I've lived most of my life in Orlando/Winter Park and have been living back here for the last 20 years. It makes me wonder if I ever saw or ran into Hank while I was there. Or if he attended any of the shows the drama department put on. It's wild when you think about the people who were in high school when you were and what some of them are doing now.
And despite not being a computer geek or sitting with my friends doing math homework, I was also not a popular kid and something of a nerd/geek in my own way during those years. High school was a mix of great and awful memories for me as well. But I suspect this is probably the case for most other LGBTQIA+ people around my age.
it’s insane how i go to winter park highschool right now. i just got back from school. i agree with every single point in this video the kids put all the life into it. it’s a certain vibe that you get going to school and walking through the halls with all your friends or when you’re camping back to something you haven’t experienced in awhile. insane how well you explained it. couldn’t have said it better
yeah. i'm in second year university. man, i always say i fear permanence, not change, but what i had in high school...a little group of good friends, a dependable routine...as far as temporary permanence goes, it wasn't bad at all. i mean, now i'm realizing my literal lifelong dream and living on my own (+ roommate) in the middle of the awesome city in which i was born and it's exciting but it's not easy, it's not familiar...sometimes i wish i could go back, just for a day. like not just visit my old high school with my old friend because i've done that and wow, it's weird, but just live a day like any other back then. like you, i totally expected this in grade 12, but what are you going to do but enjoy now and whatever comes next?
I was in your position many times, I'm only in my first year of university so I hadn't given much thought to my high school with graduation being not even 6 months ago but when my younger sister sent me pictures from my old school I sorta realized it's still going on and I sorta missed that.
HazelPineapple Speaking as someone who just graduated, I feel like you kind of end up idealizing it a lot? I think it really depends on your experiences, and whether you latch on to the good or the bad.
Eh. I graduated 14 years ago and I've never really missed it. I wasn't bullied or anything in high school, it was just a period of my life where I really, really didn't know who I was. Now that I'm in my 30's I'm really finding my true self and it's a much happier place. So: your mileage may vary.
I now work for the school board that runs the school I did my last three years of high school in. I went back for work a couple years ago and it was a weird experience. High school wasnt a great time for me in a lot of ways. I nearly turned down the work, but I needed the money and so I was on the verge of panic attack most of the way there. Running into teachers who knew high school me was strange, but other than that it was just another job with the bonus that I didn't get lost in the huge building. It brings back some memories, but I'm not high school me anymore, so the physical building means different things to me now.
It has been more than 15 years since I went to American Public High School. Watching you walk around that school filled me with a sense of what I can only describe as *dread*. The simple things like the shape of the benches, the color of the lockers, the structure of the hallways lined with classroom doors... even though it wasn't my school, it is the same kind of place as many many other places in the country, the same kind of place as the place I went to, with the same weight to it. Where you felt broadly many things about the variety of memories there, I couldn't help but feel only that profound dread, that terror of being young and sick and lost and alone all the time. That existential dread of Sisyphus combined with the horror of social alienation and the pain only someone with an unknown and undiagnosed mental illness being forced to go five days a week to their personal Hell can understand. Those simple walls and lockers, those bulletin boards and benches, the halls and doors... they conjure up a specter that will never stop haunting me. It was a place made of people... and I fear I will never escape it.
So now since the only time I've ever been to Winter Park HS was to see John and Hank Green, it'll forever be occupied with all of the amazing Nerdfighters I met waiting in line, and sat next to in the auditorium, and the student helpers who wore orange tie-dye shirts and told me where the bathroom was, and Hank playing Marilyn Hanson trying not to cry on stage, and John making everyone sing "we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here..." which made /us/ all cry. This was the first time I ever saw them irl, and it probably won't happen again for several years if ever. And I have so many feelings about that day and this video.
Thank you for sharing your return to your high school. I really like how you have clips of John and the snippet of your conversation with someone to the side.
Man. I'm in high school right now, and this made me reflect on so much. I consider myself a steward of the place, both physically (I clean up the place a lot, especially the bathrooms) and emotionally. I'm going into my Senior year this coming fall, and this video reminds me of what my legacy of myself from the perspective of myself (that's a weird phrase) will be after I leave. And I want to make it a good one. Exhibit A: those memories in the video are especially weird and wonderful and thoughtful. I'll keep this video in mind whenever anything come up. Thanks Hank. Hopefully that made sense.
Just had to go back and rewatch this one. It’s so incredibly true, and im so grateful someone helped me to see this perspective while im still in high school. Thank you hank
Great video Hank! Much love from Lamp in the MN! I think high school is a lot like a play. you have the stars, the supporting cast, and then the extras. It can be a cutthroat world sometimes, as most extras want to get their shot at an Oscar, and the stars taking out any challengers who might try and take their roles. But it can also be a deeply fulfilling feeling of learning.
I love love love thoughts from places videos. My highschool was very very different. Only about 300 kids. And it was a boarding school. And its in India. But I felt the same way when I went back to visit. Not deep or particularly intense feelings, but a wide wide range of them. I guess we give places only what we know to give. And maybe that's why the library was so much more important to me than anywhere is. Because I knew exactly what to give.
I WAS HERE! This show was so awesome, and it was so interesting to hear Hank talk about all the people that are still here that had a huge effect on him.
As a current senior WPHS inhabiter, D lot trekker, a waddler from the 700 to the the 300, a homework procrastinating nerd, and a giant John AND HANK (ILYSM) Green fan, this is so amusing. I come back every once in a while and re-watch this video because it's easy to slip into a hateful mindset regarding school, and this makes me thankful for the experiences and memories I have of this place, both good and bad.
About the labyrinth that is your former high school: I had a neck of a time finding where the entrance was to park! We drove around, saw something.... nope! Gated off. Drove around more.... nope all other places were gated. Finally found the right entrance! And nice to see the kid you mentioned during the show who couldn't make the show because he had band. Both my daughter and I were talking about that and, yeah, running into you in person is cooler than seeing you in the show. Not a bad tradeoff! Thanks for coming to Orlando! It was a great show 🙌
It really resonated with me when you said you wished you had brought more to this place. I tried to get through high school as unnoticed as possible. I wish I could tell my high school self to put myself out there more and try to make more friends and do more of the extracurricular activities I thought were so dumb. But I know I would've rolled my eyes and never listened that advice. I could've been so much happier in high school if I had put effort into anything other trying to stay invisible.
As somebody who went to 3 different high schools over the 4 years that high schools cover in Nebraska, while I don't have that sense of really deep pondering that everyone has and that I have for almost every other video you guys make, I definitely agree with your points. With each school, I distinctly remember times in which I was the one changing the school's environment by a miniscule amount, but I also remember the school changing me. Not the people in the school, but the school itself. You wander down hallways that only janitors and the occasional lost new kid (me) ever see, and you see what the school is trying to show you. The musty smell that's somehow the smell of high school but also older, more historical, and is filled with old posters people put up but forgot to take down, or old trophy cases and pictures of alumni who's great grandkids are walking around in school, it's all telling you that what you do there will matter, but only for a few years. then it will be all forgotten and placed in that hallway, or that old trophy case. Only to be seen by the janitors and the lost new kid, who will figure out where his classes are after a day or two, and never end up seeing that hallway again. Thank you once again Hank for the magical ability you and your brother have to inspire me to think deeply about almost everything.
This may be the best video you've ever done. Maybe that is because I also went to that high school. Okay not "THAT" high school, but Citrus High School in Inverness, FL. It is much like your high school, and it brings back that same nostalgia for me. That could be because we are similar in age, or because like you I existed in high school more than I think I did anything else. Either way, thank you, that brought back great memories for me.
I love how you have expressed this. I am usually quite prone to nostalgia but I went back to my high school a while ago and felt very little. It was weird. Bits of the buildings had changed but mostly it just wasn't full if the people I knew. You are right - some places are the people they are filled with.
This made me think of my own life, and of the husks of institutions which I have and do inhabit. It makes me feel regret for how I wasted my time in some places and feel pride for bringing prestige in others. I usually have just "slipped by", not making the most of it all. Here I am, finally getting ready to exit upper education, wondering what I will do with my life, and how I can make the most of what I'm carrying over into this next phase of my life. What a weight to be conscious of. All in all, thanks for the video :) I can only hope to impart what I've learned from this video and reflecting on my own life to someone else down the line. Thank you :)
i graduated in june of this year and tonight was the first time back to my high school since i picked up my diploma on the day after graduation. i went to see coffeehouse night, which was the first concert series i performed in when i was a freshman. seeing the halls again, but in this new graudate light gives me the same feelings as you, hank. and i've only been out for 4 months.
I needed this. Don't know why but....I did. This made me smile and think about where I am from an entirely different perspective and I feel better. Thank you for this, Hank.
I recently revisited my high school in January after seven years. I had some similar experiences, but also a lot of fear and discomfort. Not because it had changed, but because of what it had changed into. What used to be open spaces and places to walk freely were gated with thick black metals bars, all exits to the schools having locks on them DURING school hours to prevent students sneaking off during lunch. The atmosphere was so much darker and the students just looked empty. Made me really sad.
I can relate. My parents live really close to my old high school. I really loved being at that place with the people who made it in the late 90s. I will always have that experience with me, as a long list of fond memories. that place is a big part of me, but now those buildings and the surrounding areas is a completely different place. When I walk past it always feel strang. I really hope the students currently attending this high school enjoy it as much as I did.
The senior side walk! Schools do become entirely new places as the people move on. What a time. I loved listening to your thoughts on this place that we once for a brief moment shared space in.
I'm in my last year of high school and have finally decided to let myself define myself by what I love and not by what I hate. As always, thank you Hank for an insightful and lovely video.
Damn. This is a great video. My drama teacher let the seniors paint bricks in the theatre when we graduated, and I know the new drama teacher is keeping them up/continuing the tradition but I hope its still there when I'm even older (currently 21 and still have siblings at old school). Might not be, but wouldn't that be cool, to see something I made when I was 17 when I'm 30 or something, something reinterpreted by the thousands of other kids who would be bound to see it since 2014. I'll say it again, great video Hank
I just celebrated my 20 year reunion. We didn't go back to the actual high school this year, but you are so right about it being more the people that inhabited it then the physical space. It was interesting to see the dynamics of the people. We have all broadened, and the clicks didn't form quite as strongly, but they were still apparent. Even in the golf course club house, we were very much East Waterloo, Ia Class Of 1997!
Always a fan of Thoughts from Places videos and the work it takes to make them. Around my old schools and places to be, the trees have mostly been cleared away. The kids at the hangouts are downright vicious, but the ones I taught at a school nearby were considerate and full of potential. Or maybe they were the same? Places can be defined by their people, but even moreso by where you find yourself among them.
Wow, I love this video. I'm grateful for you that your group went mostly unnoticed in such a big place, as you said. I was lucky enough to go to a high school full of weirdos who weren't interested in the social games that we all agreed sucked and were best left in middle school... and I'm very aware that that's not the usual experience.
I'll just drop a quick Thank you here cause I'm too tired to elaborate. It's great and I'm incredibly grateful for how simply seeing a new vlogbrothers video, clicking on it and hearing that familiar voice has a way of making me smile and relax, no matter how stressed out my brain is with uni stuff or any other concerns. Dftba :'D
I'm currently going to winter park right now and it's a very large school. When I was going to the freshman campus my first day I thought that was big lol nope. When they came back here I went to the book tour and they were wonderful. It was one of my favorite things I've ever done and I made a really good friend afterwards too because of the girl who sat next to me 💕
I don't know if what I'm about to type is worth much, but I want to try and add something to Hank's thoughts. My experience with High School and my handling of nostalgia is very different. My family and I moved quite often. I had, in total, three high schools in two states. I never grew to love any one school. The school I did graduate from has memories, but almost all the memories big or small we're recorded through Myspace then later Facebook. I am 27, a decade out of high school and drove past my Alma mater recently and just thought "Oh man. That's the place. That's neat". High School was one of a series of small turns and speed bumps in my life. Nostalgia does not come as heavily as when I remember the churches I went to or even the places I've worked. I think it's because I didn't contribute to those schools. I was never in them long enough. I do still hold those friendships dear because I DID contribute to those and they helped build me into who I am today. Like Hank, my schools all stand as like insect husks, but my friendships are alive. I wish I had contributed more to the schools themselves, but that only encourages me more now to contribute to my church and work even more so. End of line. Thanks for making it this far into the comment.
i’m a sophomore there and i just found this video! it’s crazy seeing everything from your point of view and i find this so interesting, even though i kind of hate watching videos about my school on a saturday. but we have a new principle who renovated the cafeterias recently and they’re fixing things up. it’s nice but we also have a rat problem that they are trying to hide from everyone. i love film and it’s cool to see that you went to this shitty school but now have millions of subscribers and enjoy making videos! gives me hope :)
I actually also went back to my high school recently (while it was mostly empty!) and...yeah. You express the experience very well, in ways I couldn't at the time.
Love it when you guys do this kind of vidoes visting old places gives me great anxiety but I love it Yesterday i went to my old high school too not after years but after 5 6 months and i just want to go back i want my friends back now i am a mess with depression and anxiety thanks for this
I was in the same school from kindergarten to high school, and had classes with the same hundred-something people for twelve years. I don't miss any of them, not even the ones I used to hang out with regularly, and seeing the campus just gives me this wave of sadness that my high school life was so shitty and relief that it had been over for a long time now. My sister? She gives the building the finger when we pass by it. That tells you all you need to know about how she feels about our high school.
I come from a town that is, for the area, tiny. My high school currently has just about 800 students, with around 200 per grade, and most of us have gone to school with the same people all our lives. My graduating class is super involved in our school. We staged a sophomore takeover at the homecoming pep rally, we were the first freshmen to ever win the hallway decorating contest last year, and despite our typical high school cliquiness, we still cheer the loudest of any other grade for each other. I was thinking a lot today about our current seniors. I’m friends with a ton of them - my gsa vp, my girlfriend’s brother, people in my theater classes - and individually there are a ton of great people, but they haven’t had that sense of community. Some of them, especially the jockier ones, have school spirit, but each group is so isolated that they never come together. It’s so painful to see how bored they all are because they’re all so concerned about their images. The jocks don’t want to be like the weirdos, the weirdos don’t want to be like the video game nerds, the video game nerds don’t want to be like stuco, and everyone is separate. I don’t like everyone in my class, but it’s fun to show some pride and just yell sometimes. Life is way more fun when you can stop trying to be something and just be part of a group bigger than yourself, even if it’s just to cheer for your class in a bottle flipping contest.
This is one of the reasons that I loved making friends from all over different groups. I had a solid core of a handful of friends, but I loved making friends with good people from all over. Like a group of people from all groups that all believed in doing awesome. Life is indeed way more fun with that approach. To make awesome promises and keep them, instead of fitting in to be overlooked. Standing out for good reasons.
Oh Jeeze, this is EXACTLY how I felt wandering through my old high school a couple years ago before all the buildings were torn down and replaced. Thanks Hank. This was truly uncanny to watch.
I feel the same way about my church. I clean my church every week and it's almost like there is nothing particular sacred or special about the building itself, actually it's pretty run down but when I go Sunday morning everything sacred everything lovely and beautiful about my church is accentuated. The little kids running around, the singing of the Psalms and the abounding love and care shown from the people around exudes everything that I know and love about church.
Something inside me loves seeing a space come to life with the meaning people give it. Like helping prep and clean up a party from start to finish. You definitely reminded me of that.
This is exactly the kind of high school we in the UK think of when we think American high school. Every little piece of it. Except the yellow school buses are missing, which we love and it seems Americans hate haha
WinslowHomie yesss! I am a frequent flyer bc my family lives in a different (but nearby) country and there is such a difference between the same airport depending on if it's full of business people or students going home or families waiting to go on holiday.
Yeah, i totally agree with you. A place is made of the people it inhabits and not the walls and rooms. Whenever i go back to my school , i also get this feeling because the teachers are new , the students are new and i feel quite lonely there but still i visited it because that's the place which is home to a lot of memories. Thank for this video, you spoke our minds.DFTBA.
I just went back to visit my college for the first time since graduation and I was thinking so much about this. The whole trip reminded me of this Tennessee Williams quote that I didn't get before: "Time is the longest distance between two places".
when I go back through my school it feels so small compared to how I remembered it, like were those classrooms always so little? were the hallways always that close. When you're a student and you have friends and classmates all around you it feels like this big world, four years of my life, but when you go back alone, it feels tiny and you can look back and say I was ONLY here for four years. I'm coming up on 27 so I haven't been there as a student for a long time. Though I should mention my school was literally tiny as well. we had grades 9-12 for two years of my time there, but because of lack of students that became grades 7-12, and still we had less then a thousand students. My graduating class was the smallest as well at only 34.
I went to this book event!!! It was also weird for me to be at the high school that you and John went to lol... made you guys seem more mysterious, like I know a little bit more about you two, but it generated a whole lot of questions and made me wonder a lot more lol. It was really cool to finally meet you guys though! Loved the show!
I was a substitute teacher for two months in my old school, I was there from kindergarten till grade 9. Now it’s just little boys school “1st-5th”. It was very weird when I first walked in. It was exactly the same but so different at the same time, and it was very small! In my head it was huge! How did it shrink? You brought back a lot of memories back
Hank, I definitely feel you on the whole 'they covered up the places I used to hang out with construction' thing. Right after I graduated from my high school they promptly tore down the old cafeteria and replaced it with a whole new gigantic building and the few times I went to go see it, everything felt so unsettling because I was seeing something familiar and yet I was somewhere foreign.
NERDFIGHTERS! I NEED YOUR HELP!
There's a song. I swear to god there's a song that talks exactly about what Hank was talking about, written from the point of view of a school building about...the students that were in it? I can't remember who it's by, but it's probably alt rock of some sort because that's like all I listen too.
This is going to bug me forever...
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i mean, there's "teardrop windows" by ben gibbard, written from the point of view of smith tower as people stop visiting it in favor of the newer and taller seattle needle. not a perfect match but along the same vein. acoustic version is sublime.
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THAT'S ME AT THE END (for those saying I said "John Hank", I was trying to say John and Hank but you know when you run into Hank at school sometimes the excitement cuts out your "and")
Mitchell Thomas I was sad you'd never get to meet John Hank, thanks for clarifying lol
Lol. You sound adorable.
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That's wonderful!
This is Hank's most John video. And it works. Really well.
What?!
I can't fully enjoy a vlog brother's video when almost nobody has commented on it yet, that is like half the experience.
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Well, thanks for being here for us.
Well, thanks for being here for us.
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That's a lovely thing to hear.
It's really weird to visit your old school or university. on the one hand you know the place, you spent so much time there, but one the other hand you have this feeling of not belonging there anymore and that is a really weird feeling. I can actually remember how I felt, when I visited that place on a daily basis, and then this nostalgia hits me, the craving to feel that feeling again, not just remembering it... Even though there were really rough times, and I mean REALLY, rough times, there are also so many great memories at those places, for me at least. And I really miss those great times.
I'm back at my university this weekend for graduation, but I've only been gone since May. I still feel like I belong here, like this is My Place, but it's not. I'm starting new things in a different city but this place still feels like it's mine. It's going to feel weird for a while, I think, to stand in places I've stood a hundred times and remind myself that I don't belong here anymore.
My college had alumni weekend not long ago and I wasn't ready to go back - but I got all the videos and pictures sent to me. The school redid the roads and fixed up construction and a residential building had opened. It's completely different from the school I was at for 4 years in less then 6 months.
Getting old sucks. Luckily I'm a hard drug user.
A girl carved a peace sign into her ankle with an X-ACTO knife.
That's...quite the image.
i know it hurts just thinking about it
Welcome to school in the 90's. : /
And current school really, although it’s a little more hidden.
That girl, now woman, probably still has a peace-sign-shaped scar on her ankle. And Hank was there to witness it, right in that spot that we now saw too. That's why those words reverbarated so much in my mind. Think of all the places we walk by, and of how many people's lives have permanently changed in that spot (in much more drastic ways than in this example) without us knowing it.
doesn't sound very peaceful
It is so odd to have someone relatively famous make a video about somewhere I spent four years of my life. It's even weirder to have that video seen by tens of thousands of people. It's even weirder still to have seen Hank there just a few days ago. That school is no longer my school, just as it is no longer Hank's, but in a lot of ways it still feels mine.
P.S. Hank, if you happened to hear a girl scream as you walked to D-Lot, that was me. Whoops.
I graduated from Winter Park High School in 2015. It was so odd to see how the buildings haven't changed and neither has my ambivalent feelings towards it has either. I remember dreading going to school, but looking at this video- mostly fond memories came rushing back. I also regret not bringing more to this high school. Thank you for a walk done memory lane(:
YOU WEN TTO THE SAME SCHOOL AS HANK GREEN
yep, sure did!
watching this as a high school senior. lots of feelings. not sure what they are.
Bridget Beck nostalgia for a time you're still living in?
Bridget Beck sophmore but Im feeling things too. I know. I feel you
I think you know eventually you will be nostalgic of this place even if I consider it mundane now, that's what I think that that is, but I also say to myself that I could never be nostalgic of this place that brought me so many terrible memories. but I know precisely how you feel.
Like you're slowly getting ready to say goodbye :)
Nostalgia for times you've never had,maybe because eventually you'll live them but you wont live them because they wont be exactly thecway you imagine and mis-imagine them? Idk,language defies meaning to me sometimes...
When I think about my high school and middle school experiences and I think about different people having both the same and completely different experiences in those same places now, it fills me with a feeling that I think is exemplified in the line "Nothing gold can stay." I remember my 8th grade Reading teacher reading us that line and telling us that we would spend our lives learning what it meant, and that has proved true. I am still learning what it means. I had some terrible times in middle school and high school, but I also had amazing friends and fantastic teachers and incredible experiences. There will be people who go to the schools I went to and have the same classes I took, often with the same teachers, but not one of them will have the same experience I had. We will have shared experiences, but my highs and lows are mine alone, and I find that those highs and lows are inextricably linked to the place I was when they happened. The buildings don't mean anything, but we give them meaning by interacting, growing, and living our lives inside of them.
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Wow! Dftba! Thanks for existing
That line reminds me that we are as focused on loss (or maybe more) than gain in life. But the gold can constantly be replaced again and again. It just seems it happens more fast paced in school. I craved such a dynamic and creative environment. Wish I journaled more on how each day went.
Quick shout out to all the teachers who dedicate decades of their lives to a single school, the ones who are there to witness the changes year after year and do their best to cherish and adapt to each new class. While the students come and go every 3-4 years, you are steadfast. Your perseverance is often over looked, but I'm so grateful for your commitment in the schools where I was a student, the schools where I have been a young teacher, and in any school you have chosen as home. DFTBA.
Hank, you made me feel nostalgic for a place I've never been, and it's a really weird feeling, and I don't know how to feel about that, but I guess well done to you, hank.
Same here. I could relate a lot of what he was talking about to my own high school and at the same time, feel vicarious nostalgia for his own school, too.
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I haven't been out of high school that long, I'm 21. And yet if I were to go back now there wouldn't be a single student there I know. It would be very weird to go back, even just driving past feels strange.
And if you're from a small town, and go abroad for college, in a couple of years the same thing essentially happens to the entire town.
Lee Mac Okay yeah that's really weird.
I'm the same age and I literally just did that a month ago. Some of my teachers had retired and i knew zero students. It was so surreal. But at the same time it was nice to know somethings didn't change.
Only been out of high school for 3 years but the days of high school feel so distance now. I bring my sister to my old high school a lot and it's weird Every time I go back. Time is such a strange thing.
For me the end of high school was really weird. For one, I felt like I was already disconnected before my last school year was even over let alone after that. The year after I left, my second favorite faculty member(the librarian, I was a member of the Library Club and spent more time in there than some of my class rooms) along with another teacher who I liked a lot.
I love how hank and John can be both so incredibly thoughtful and think deeply about topics, and also at the same time be silly and fun. This is the content I signed up for.
Me too! They cover embracing healthy goofiness and sincerity so freakin well.
when you showed the yearbook i was like "oh that was in john's video too!" and john yelling "you can't use this! this is for my video!" really made me chuckle
John was just a little too gleeful about that. Video needed a trigger warning about big brother bullying too.
john is so competitive 😂
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I lost my brother ten days ago in a tragic accident that claimed his life. Though I feel robbed of the entire lifetime ahead we were supposed to share together, this channel brings me immense comfort. Thanks to Hank and John for your weekly expressions of affection and kindness.
This is so interesting because you are in the business of creating places that embody this idea in a very intense way. A con is not the convention center, it's all the people who show up for three or four days and create a special place.
WOAH. Awesome connection there. It's definitely like his work is fostering special places in certain kinds of awesome.
it just hit me that i've been watching John and Hank since I was 10 years old, i cant think of anything or any person (except for my family and my art) that has remained in my life for that long! i cant believe that this random channel would influence me so much throughout middle school and as i complete high school. thank you, john, for inspiring me to continue writing and making art, and hank, to pursue my interests in science and mathematics. this was a great video!
I graduated from Winter Park High in 2008, haven’t been back on the campus since so this was neat footage to see! Really takes me back. Honestly high school was a pretty fun time, I don’t know why it’s such a common sentiment to act like it sucks and you should want to fast forward to college - UCF was cool too for me but I feel like I had more meaningful friendships with more people in high school than in college myself. I do regret falling out of touch with so many though.
Can you do a 9th Grade Center video next?
Hank - you're speaking to a whole swath of us out there and our highschool days. Your insight is always thoughtful and refreshing.
Also - I am loving these rough-cut vlogbrothers videos! I man, I do enjoy the more refined and professional videos too, but there's always something special about these.
DFTBA.
There's a word that describes that weird feeling in an empty place that's usually full of people: "Kenopsia (n) the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet".
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I’m a senior in high school and this video inspires me to embrace the time I have left and do something with it rather than wait for the day when I get out of it. Thank you, hank.
John is fighting for that content.
maishi ahahaha
I'm currently in high school, but I still connect with this strongly. I understand exacly where he's coming from, but idk why. I'll definitely think about this when I go back next week though.
I wish i saw this when I was in high school. It may have really caused me to create more awesome while I was there.
I just got back from the Bay Area yesterday. I grew up there and then moved away for stuff and got sick. Being sick made travel really hard. So I didn't go back "home" in almost 6 years. I went back for medical stuff that could only be done there but stayed for 2 1/2 weeks. It was a strange experience. I saw my sister for the first time in half a decade, along with a lot of other family. I ate my favorite foods, went to my old stomping grounds, etc. I kept noticing how it was the memory of a place, with some remnants, that I loved, not the place itself. The place itself mattered for the people (and the best pizza, chinese food, and cafe ever). I was also struck by how much I had changed. We bury ourselves every night, and are born anew every morning. Most parts of us come along, but some change, some die, and some new parts are added. Six years of that makes for a very different person with a very different life and set of experiences. Going back made for a good "noticing" moment for that.
Revisiting your old schools is one of the weirdest feelings. I lived near my old junior high for like almost 15 years so I’d pass by a lot and one day realized I hadn’t gone to school there in ten years. TEN YEARS. But I still had weird snippets of memories very crisp. Or sometimes I pass my old preschool and I’m just like how was I ever so small and uneducated.
So this is the home of lipstick and eyeliner Hank. Long live
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I went to Winter Park before joining the Marines and seeing it now, relatively unchanged from when I was there, I feel what you're saying. The place doesn't change, the people do, and our perspective of it has been altered from the winding path we took from it, that happened to loop back around. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Hank! Always a fan of your work!
Dude salt water soda machine guy rocks. Not all hero’s wear capes.
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I think about this a lot, actually...and not to step on your enthusiasm here...I think about it as an example of imagining the world poorly. I felt like I was beating the system getting those free mountain dews. But what I actually ended up doing was stealing from the small business that stocked the soda machines, and in the end getting the machines removed entirely from campus (for a while, they seem to be back.)
We had a Pizza Hut at our school. I had stuff crust pizza with a side of french fries and either potato wedges and mashed potatoes every day for a year.
BTW, I agree with Hank. I mean, Hurray for theft? Really?
pyrotheevilplatypus I believe that that small business person still needs to come and refill CO2 tanks. They will get the same money from the machine, but students will get an altered beverage. Am I missing something?
Sexy scientist I don’t think it was that kind of soda machine- I think it had cans, judging by the ones I saw inside when hank showed that footage. I’m not American but I don’t know how a pay per use type of non-can machine would even work...
There's so much to love about this video. I love the walk down memory lane, the fascinating thoughts and feelings about Hank's old high school and John claiming the year book for his own video. So much awesome crammed into less than four minutes. What magic is this??
As a high school teacher and student council advisor, this resonates so much with me. Recently, the school underwent major renovations and we share our building with a trade school. Students were up in arms about the massive change: hallways were no longer accessible, hangouts were closed off, etc. I told students the school hasn't changed really because they are still in it. They make the school, they set the tone and the "vibe" in the school. A building is just that: a building. We determine what that building becomes. Keep up the awesome work!
I went back to my high school yesterday to record the eighth year of the Kaleidiscope concert. A project of mine that is eight years in the making on TH-cam. The choral groups use them to study. I love how you put it, Hank. Broad rather than deep. Even after clubs and waiting for my dad to finish school work because he teaches, I loved the uncanniness of my schools. Seeing it go from empty, to full, and back again really sat well with me. I remembered filling it with all my conversations and projects and friends. It felt new and old. Broad and deep. It was so much about people and creating value for me, and that's why I still love it and miss it so much.
I can’t wait to hear you guys speak in St Paul today! Your videos are always so thoughtful and John’s books are so deliciously well written. I hope you both can find some relaxation beforehand, I know these tours can be taxing.
There's something more freaky that there's a constant chain of people from the moment you stepped into that door down to the current student inhabiting the school. You may have passed a bit of information to a kid in the year below who subsequently did it to a freshman the next year and on and on it goes finally leading to the present. These places don't become new much like our bodies don't become new everything we process every cell... It's just, different.
I thought about this...but less about individual pieces of information and more just...attitude. It's very hard to track out values and perspectives propagate, but I wouldn't be surprised if high schools are pretty good at propagating them.
I think about this with those elementary school games and chants and songs that everyone just somehow knows from generation to generation. Sometimes they're changed a little, but they seem to last across time and space. I think we pass more of ourselves and our experiences down to others than we know
I got to see a great example of this with a unique school I went to; a juniors & seniors only art high school with optional dorms for farther away students. I met a girl who went to the school 20 years prior to me, some traditions still existed, some were new past her time there, and some faded away some year or another. It was wonderful to see and hear that the heart of the school remained over such a long period of time, though. I might be able to visit the school alumni day this year after four years of not seeing it at all, and I'm really excited for that opportunity
And I thought my secondary school was big (it only had about 1300 students across six grades and three different levels of education). Mind you, this was a school in a rural area of the Netherlands, so it was in fact quite big for the area.
I am always astounded at the size of American High schools when I see them in movies/series and am happy I didn't have to go there, because my school was already very overwhelming for me...
mythologiefan I know right?! I'm also Dutch and I knew almost everyone in my 700 people high school. Not all by name of course, but still. Everything in America seems so big
The high school that I went to had a little over 2000 students. And my graduating class was about 500 students. Now I go to a university that has 37,000 students. I live in a metroplex that has almost 7 million people. To me it's not overwhelming, it's just normal. Although traffic and driving can be stressful at times.
I have lived in Amsterdam as well, and am to never repeat that again.
Funny thing is: my sister loooves it in the big city (Amsterdam).
I hate it though... I think I hate it in part because I have autism and ADD, which doesn't at all go well with big groups of people...
mythologiefan I think you may be my long lost identical twin
I know this video was posted 6 years ago as I type this now, but I had no idea Hank Green went to my high school. Let alone that he graduated two years after I did (I'm Class of 1996, Hank is Class of 1998). Some of this footage brings memories back to me, too. Although I was full-on a drama kid Thespian and most of high school memories revolve around the Ann Derflinger Auditorium (although I'm not sure if that's what it's still called). Aside from several years outside of the city, I've lived most of my life in Orlando/Winter Park and have been living back here for the last 20 years. It makes me wonder if I ever saw or ran into Hank while I was there. Or if he attended any of the shows the drama department put on. It's wild when you think about the people who were in high school when you were and what some of them are doing now.
And despite not being a computer geek or sitting with my friends doing math homework, I was also not a popular kid and something of a nerd/geek in my own way during those years. High school was a mix of great and awful memories for me as well. But I suspect this is probably the case for most other LGBTQIA+ people around my age.
it’s insane how i go to winter park highschool right now. i just got back from school. i agree with every single point in this video the kids put all the life into it. it’s a certain vibe that you get going to school and walking through the halls with all your friends or when you’re camping back to something you haven’t experienced in awhile. insane how well you explained it. couldn’t have said it better
Im still in high school and I lowkey hate it but I feel like im gonna miss it when im older
yeah. i'm in second year university. man, i always say i fear permanence, not change, but what i had in high school...a little group of good friends, a dependable routine...as far as temporary permanence goes, it wasn't bad at all. i mean, now i'm realizing my literal lifelong dream and living on my own (+ roommate) in the middle of the awesome city in which i was born and it's exciting but it's not easy, it's not familiar...sometimes i wish i could go back, just for a day. like not just visit my old high school with my old friend because i've done that and wow, it's weird, but just live a day like any other back then. like you, i totally expected this in grade 12, but what are you going to do but enjoy now and whatever comes next?
Elise - I can relate so much. Hazel - I remember being in year 12 and thinking that. I knew I was going to miss it.
I was in your position many times, I'm only in my first year of university so I hadn't given much thought to my high school with graduation being not even 6 months ago but when my younger sister sent me pictures from my old school I sorta realized it's still going on and I sorta missed that.
HazelPineapple Speaking as someone who just graduated, I feel like you kind of end up idealizing it a lot? I think it really depends on your experiences, and whether you latch on to the good or the bad.
Eh. I graduated 14 years ago and I've never really missed it. I wasn't bullied or anything in high school, it was just a period of my life where I really, really didn't know who I was. Now that I'm in my 30's I'm really finding my true self and it's a much happier place.
So: your mileage may vary.
I now work for the school board that runs the school I did my last three years of high school in. I went back for work a couple years ago and it was a weird experience. High school wasnt a great time for me in a lot of ways. I nearly turned down the work, but I needed the money and so I was on the verge of panic attack most of the way there. Running into teachers who knew high school me was strange, but other than that it was just another job with the bonus that I didn't get lost in the huge building. It brings back some memories, but I'm not high school me anymore, so the physical building means different things to me now.
It has been more than 15 years since I went to American Public High School. Watching you walk around that school filled me with a sense of what I can only describe as *dread*. The simple things like the shape of the benches, the color of the lockers, the structure of the hallways lined with classroom doors... even though it wasn't my school, it is the same kind of place as many many other places in the country, the same kind of place as the place I went to, with the same weight to it.
Where you felt broadly many things about the variety of memories there, I couldn't help but feel only that profound dread, that terror of being young and sick and lost and alone all the time. That existential dread of Sisyphus combined with the horror of social alienation and the pain only someone with an unknown and undiagnosed mental illness being forced to go five days a week to their personal Hell can understand.
Those simple walls and lockers, those bulletin boards and benches, the halls and doors... they conjure up a specter that will never stop haunting me. It was a place made of people... and I fear I will never escape it.
This vlog was so so beautiful and I love how deep the both of you are. This is why I keep coming back.
Rejected Fan Theory: Hank Green was one of the Wildcat extras in HSM as one of the Decathalon nerds.
Omg 110% YASSSSS
So now since the only time I've ever been to Winter Park HS was to see John and Hank Green, it'll forever be occupied with all of the amazing Nerdfighters I met waiting in line, and sat next to in the auditorium, and the student helpers who wore orange tie-dye shirts and told me where the bathroom was, and Hank playing Marilyn Hanson trying not to cry on stage, and John making everyone sing "we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here..." which made /us/ all cry.
This was the first time I ever saw them irl, and it probably won't happen again for several years if ever. And I have so many feelings about that day and this video.
Some places are not themselves, they are the people in them.
Always a good quote 💖
Thank you for sharing your return to your high school. I really like how you have clips of John and the snippet of your conversation with someone to the side.
Man. I'm in high school right now, and this made me reflect on so much. I consider myself a steward of the place, both physically (I clean up the place a lot, especially the bathrooms) and emotionally. I'm going into my Senior year this coming fall, and this video reminds me of what my legacy of myself from the perspective of myself (that's a weird phrase) will be after I leave. And I want to make it a good one. Exhibit A: those memories in the video are especially weird and wonderful and thoughtful. I'll keep this video in mind whenever anything come up. Thanks Hank.
Hopefully that made sense.
Just had to go back and rewatch this one. It’s so incredibly true, and im so grateful someone helped me to see this perspective while im still in high school. Thank you hank
Can we just stop and appreciate for a minute that he's a band geek, who has now leveled up to another plane of awesomeness?
Great video Hank! Much love from Lamp in the MN!
I think high school is a lot like a play. you have the stars, the supporting cast, and then the extras. It can be a cutthroat world sometimes, as most extras want to get their shot at an Oscar, and the stars taking out any challengers who might try and take their roles. But it can also be a deeply fulfilling feeling of learning.
Hey I hope everyone has a great Friday!!!
Thanks! I hope you do too!
I love love love thoughts from places videos. My highschool was very very different. Only about 300 kids. And it was a boarding school. And its in India. But I felt the same way when I went back to visit. Not deep or particularly intense feelings, but a wide wide range of them. I guess we give places only what we know to give. And maybe that's why the library was so much more important to me than anywhere is. Because I knew exactly what to give.
Thunder the Starbug hi fellow indian!! Dftba 😊
Arushi Seth helooooo there
I WAS HERE! This show was so awesome, and it was so interesting to hear Hank talk about all the people that are still here that had a huge effect on him.
As a current senior WPHS inhabiter, D lot trekker, a waddler from the 700 to the the 300, a homework procrastinating nerd, and a giant John AND HANK (ILYSM) Green fan, this is so amusing. I come back every once in a while and re-watch this video because it's easy to slip into a hateful mindset regarding school, and this makes me thankful for the experiences and memories I have of this place, both good and bad.
About the labyrinth that is your former high school: I had a neck of a time finding where the entrance was to park! We drove around, saw something.... nope! Gated off. Drove around more.... nope all other places were gated. Finally found the right entrance!
And nice to see the kid you mentioned during the show who couldn't make the show because he had band. Both my daughter and I were talking about that and, yeah, running into you in person is cooler than seeing you in the show. Not a bad tradeoff!
Thanks for coming to Orlando! It was a great show 🙌
“We live in a house made of each other and if that sounds strange that’s because it is.”
Elijah Levinsohn I made a pillow fort out of my victims. I'm so glad I moved out of my parent's house.
It really resonated with me when you said you wished you had brought more to this place. I tried to get through high school as unnoticed as possible. I wish I could tell my high school self to put myself out there more and try to make more friends and do more of the extracurricular activities I thought were so dumb. But I know I would've rolled my eyes and never listened that advice. I could've been so much happier in high school if I had put effort into anything other trying to stay invisible.
As somebody who went to 3 different high schools over the 4 years that high schools cover in Nebraska, while I don't have that sense of really deep pondering that everyone has and that I have for almost every other video you guys make, I definitely agree with your points. With each school, I distinctly remember times in which I was the one changing the school's environment by a miniscule amount, but I also remember the school changing me. Not the people in the school, but the school itself. You wander down hallways that only janitors and the occasional lost new kid (me) ever see, and you see what the school is trying to show you. The musty smell that's somehow the smell of high school but also older, more historical, and is filled with old posters people put up but forgot to take down, or old trophy cases and pictures of alumni who's great grandkids are walking around in school, it's all telling you that what you do there will matter, but only for a few years. then it will be all forgotten and placed in that hallway, or that old trophy case. Only to be seen by the janitors and the lost new kid, who will figure out where his classes are after a day or two, and never end up seeing that hallway again.
Thank you once again Hank for the magical ability you and your brother have to inspire me to think deeply about almost everything.
This may be the best video you've ever done. Maybe that is because I also went to that high school. Okay not "THAT" high school, but Citrus High School in Inverness, FL. It is much like your high school, and it brings back that same nostalgia for me. That could be because we are similar in age, or because like you I existed in high school more than I think I did anything else. Either way, thank you, that brought back great memories for me.
I love how you have expressed this. I am usually quite prone to nostalgia but I went back to my high school a while ago and felt very little. It was weird. Bits of the buildings had changed but mostly it just wasn't full if the people I knew. You are right - some places are the people they are filled with.
This made me think of my own life, and of the husks of institutions which I have and do inhabit. It makes me feel regret for how I wasted my time in some places and feel pride for bringing prestige in others. I usually have just "slipped by", not making the most of it all. Here I am, finally getting ready to exit upper education, wondering what I will do with my life, and how I can make the most of what I'm carrying over into this next phase of my life. What a weight to be conscious of.
All in all, thanks for the video :) I can only hope to impart what I've learned from this video and reflecting on my own life to someone else down the line.
Thank you :)
That last minute or so was sooo incredibly deep in many ways and i just want it to stay carved in my memory forever.
I remember I went back to elementary school a decade ago and this brought back all the feels from *that* going back for feels. So many feels.
i graduated in june of this year and tonight was the first time back to my high school since i picked up my diploma on the day after graduation. i went to see coffeehouse night, which was the first concert series i performed in when i was a freshman. seeing the halls again, but in this new graudate light gives me the same feelings as you, hank. and i've only been out for 4 months.
I needed this. Don't know why but....I did. This made me smile and think about where I am from an entirely different perspective and I feel better. Thank you for this, Hank.
I recently revisited my high school in January after seven years. I had some similar experiences, but also a lot of fear and discomfort. Not because it had changed, but because of what it had changed into. What used to be open spaces and places to walk freely were gated with thick black metals bars, all exits to the schools having locks on them DURING school hours to prevent students sneaking off during lunch. The atmosphere was so much darker and the students just looked empty. Made me really sad.
I can relate. My parents live really close to my old high school. I really loved being at that place with the people who made it in the late 90s. I will always have that experience with me, as a long list of fond memories. that place is a big part of me, but now those buildings and the surrounding areas is a completely different place. When I walk past it always feel strang.
I really hope the students currently attending this high school enjoy it as much as I did.
The senior side walk! Schools do become entirely new places as the people move on. What a time. I loved listening to your thoughts on this place that we once for a brief moment shared space in.
I'm in my last year of high school and have finally decided to let myself define myself by what I love and not by what I hate. As always, thank you Hank for an insightful and lovely video.
I've been a long time fan (over 5 years at least) and for me this was the best video you've put out in years. Great work!
Damn. This is a great video. My drama teacher let the seniors paint bricks in the theatre when we graduated, and I know the new drama teacher is keeping them up/continuing the tradition but I hope its still there when I'm even older (currently 21 and still have siblings at old school). Might not be, but wouldn't that be cool, to see something I made when I was 17 when I'm 30 or something, something reinterpreted by the thousands of other kids who would be bound to see it since 2014. I'll say it again, great video Hank
I just celebrated my 20 year reunion. We didn't go back to the actual high school this year, but you are so right about it being more the people that inhabited it then the physical space. It was interesting to see the dynamics of the people. We have all broadened, and the clicks didn't form quite as strongly, but they were still apparent. Even in the golf course club house, we were very much East Waterloo, Ia Class Of 1997!
Always a fan of Thoughts from Places videos and the work it takes to make them. Around my old schools and places to be, the trees have mostly been cleared away. The kids at the hangouts are downright vicious, but the ones I taught at a school nearby were considerate and full of potential. Or maybe they were the same? Places can be defined by their people, but even moreso by where you find yourself among them.
Wow, I love this video. I'm grateful for you that your group went mostly unnoticed in such a big place, as you said. I was lucky enough to go to a high school full of weirdos who weren't interested in the social games that we all agreed sucked and were best left in middle school... and I'm very aware that that's not the usual experience.
I'll just drop a quick Thank you here cause I'm too tired to elaborate. It's great and I'm incredibly grateful for how simply seeing a new vlogbrothers video, clicking on it and hearing that familiar voice has a way of making me smile and relax, no matter how stressed out my brain is with uni stuff or any other concerns. Dftba :'D
I'm currently going to winter park right now and it's a very large school. When I was going to the freshman campus my first day I thought that was big lol nope. When they came back here I went to the book tour and they were wonderful. It was one of my favorite things I've ever done and I made a really good friend afterwards too because of the girl who sat next to me 💕
I don't know if what I'm about to type is worth much, but I want to try and add something to Hank's thoughts.
My experience with High School and my handling of nostalgia is very different. My family and I moved quite often. I had, in total, three high schools in two states. I never grew to love any one school. The school I did graduate from has memories, but almost all the memories big or small we're recorded through Myspace then later Facebook. I am 27, a decade out of high school and drove past my Alma mater recently and just thought "Oh man. That's the place. That's neat".
High School was one of a series of small turns and speed bumps in my life. Nostalgia does not come as heavily as when I remember the churches I went to or even the places I've worked. I think it's because I didn't contribute to those schools. I was never in them long enough. I do still hold those friendships dear because I DID contribute to those and they helped build me into who I am today. Like Hank, my schools all stand as like insect husks, but my friendships are alive. I wish I had contributed more to the schools themselves, but that only encourages me more now to contribute to my church and work even more so.
End of line. Thanks for making it this far into the comment.
i’m a sophomore there and i just found this video! it’s crazy seeing everything from your point of view and i find this so interesting, even though i kind of hate watching videos about my school on a saturday. but we have a new principle who renovated the cafeterias recently and they’re fixing things up. it’s nice but we also have a rat problem that they are trying to hide from everyone. i love film and it’s cool to see that you went to this shitty school but now have millions of subscribers and enjoy making videos! gives me hope :)
I actually also went back to my high school recently (while it was mostly empty!) and...yeah. You express the experience very well, in ways I couldn't at the time.
Love it when you guys do this kind of vidoes visting old places gives me great anxiety but I love it
Yesterday i went to my old high school too not after years but after 5 6 months and i just want to go back i want my friends back now i am a mess with depression and anxiety thanks for this
It's videos like this that make me excited to read your book. Love the commentary.
I was in the same school from kindergarten to high school, and had classes with the same hundred-something people for twelve years. I don't miss any of them, not even the ones I used to hang out with regularly, and seeing the campus just gives me this wave of sadness that my high school life was so shitty and relief that it had been over for a long time now.
My sister? She gives the building the finger when we pass by it. That tells you all you need to know about how she feels about our high school.
I come from a town that is, for the area, tiny. My high school currently has just about 800 students, with around 200 per grade, and most of us have gone to school with the same people all our lives. My graduating class is super involved in our school. We staged a sophomore takeover at the homecoming pep rally, we were the first freshmen to ever win the hallway decorating contest last year, and despite our typical high school cliquiness, we still cheer the loudest of any other grade for each other. I was thinking a lot today about our current seniors. I’m friends with a ton of them - my gsa vp, my girlfriend’s brother, people in my theater classes - and individually there are a ton of great people, but they haven’t had that sense of community. Some of them, especially the jockier ones, have school spirit, but each group is so isolated that they never come together. It’s so painful to see how bored they all are because they’re all so concerned about their images. The jocks don’t want to be like the weirdos, the weirdos don’t want to be like the video game nerds, the video game nerds don’t want to be like stuco, and everyone is separate. I don’t like everyone in my class, but it’s fun to show some pride and just yell sometimes. Life is way more fun when you can stop trying to be something and just be part of a group bigger than yourself, even if it’s just to cheer for your class in a bottle flipping contest.
This is one of the reasons that I loved making friends from all over different groups. I had a solid core of a handful of friends, but I loved making friends with good people from all over. Like a group of people from all groups that all believed in doing awesome. Life is indeed way more fun with that approach. To make awesome promises and keep them, instead of fitting in to be overlooked. Standing out for good reasons.
I love hanks thoughtful videos! I always learn something new about myself.
Oh Jeeze, this is EXACTLY how I felt wandering through my old high school a couple years ago before all the buildings were torn down and replaced. Thanks Hank. This was truly uncanny to watch.
It's so great knowing you hail from right here in Central FL :)
Your thoughts in this video are beautiful. keep spreading love hank!
I feel the same way about my church. I clean my church every week and it's almost like there is nothing particular sacred or special about the building itself, actually it's pretty run down but when I go Sunday morning everything sacred everything lovely and beautiful about my church is accentuated. The little kids running around, the singing of the Psalms and the abounding love and care shown from the people around exudes everything that I know and love about church.
Something inside me loves seeing a space come to life with the meaning people give it. Like helping prep and clean up a party from start to finish. You definitely reminded me of that.
This is exactly the kind of high school we in the UK think of when we think American high school. Every little piece of it. Except the yellow school buses are missing, which we love and it seems Americans hate haha
This makes me SO ridiculously excited to read his book when it eventually comes out. Such a way with words, it must run in the family!
I feel a similar way about airports- they are the people who inhabit them. It's just a unique feeling
WinslowHomie yesss! I am a frequent flyer bc my family lives in a different (but nearby) country and there is such a difference between the same airport depending on if it's full of business people or students going home or families waiting to go on holiday.
Yeah, i totally agree with you. A place is made of the people it inhabits and not the walls and rooms. Whenever i go back to my school , i also get this feeling because the teachers are new , the students are new and i feel quite lonely there but still i visited it because that's the place which is home to a lot of memories. Thank for this video, you spoke our minds.DFTBA.
Oh man, this captured SO WELL how I felt when I went back to my old high school.
Ditto.
I just went back to visit my college for the first time since graduation and I was thinking so much about this. The whole trip reminded me of this Tennessee Williams quote that I didn't get before: "Time is the longest distance between two places".
when I go back through my school it feels so small compared to how I remembered it, like were those classrooms always so little? were the hallways always that close. When you're a student and you have friends and classmates all around you it feels like this big world, four years of my life, but when you go back alone, it feels tiny and you can look back and say I was ONLY here for four years. I'm coming up on 27 so I haven't been there as a student for a long time.
Though I should mention my school was literally tiny as well. we had grades 9-12 for two years of my time there, but because of lack of students that became grades 7-12, and still we had less then a thousand students. My graduating class was the smallest as well at only 34.
I went to this book event!!! It was also weird for me to be at the high school that you and John went to lol... made you guys seem more mysterious, like I know a little bit more about you two, but it generated a whole lot of questions and made me wonder a lot more lol. It was really cool to finally meet you guys though! Loved the show!
I was a substitute teacher for two months in my old school, I was there from kindergarten till grade 9. Now it’s just little boys school “1st-5th”.
It was very weird when I first walked in. It was exactly the same but so different at the same time, and it was very small! In my head it was huge! How did it shrink?
You brought back a lot of memories back
Hank I Always Adore You . There Is Something Interesting In Anything You Find and Make It Awesome ...
DFTBA
Hank, I definitely feel you on the whole 'they covered up the places I used to hang out with construction' thing. Right after I graduated from my high school they promptly tore down the old cafeteria and replaced it with a whole new gigantic building and the few times I went to go see it, everything felt so unsettling because I was seeing something familiar and yet I was somewhere foreign.
I love the thoughts from places videos because they help me see good examples of ways to think :3
Friday's have just become 10 times better after I discovered the vlogbrothers. Tuesday is now my second favorite day