When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school...

... it's a wonder I can think at all. Here's another October 2002 entry, this about the joy of trying to be young again, or something like that.

Cafeteria pizza seems to have gotten better.

That’s not my main sentiment coming out the first ever Clinton High School Media Day on Thursday, but I mean it when I say my high school never had hand-tossed Pizza Hut pepperoni at its disposal.

While a free lunch is the highlight of most days, especially when it includes some good, honest Midwest food like ham and scalloped potatoes, I got much, much more out of my Media Day experience.

I already knew a lot of the background on the changes to closed campus and block scheduling, but as the semester goes on it’s nice to hear that more and more people are really in favor of the trimester plan. Of particular note was Wes Golden, who attended the “old” Clinton High School, then returned to teach at it. In this, his sixth year at his alma mater, he can say with complete volition that the new system is really working out well.

But the real highlight of the day, for me, was getting to sit in the high school cafeteria (commonly “The Commons”) and enjoy a tour of the CHS campus. No more than six years ago, I did’t think I’d ever see high school lunch and classrooms as a novelty, but certain things change when you leave college and hit the real world.

The tour was led by Sonja Young, community relations director for the district. It was unofficially led by Brad Seward, a former senior class president at CHS and current employee of KCLN-AM radio. We got to see Seward’s old locker, learned who taught where and got insight into what the cafeteria really used to be like.

For a while I thought he was a bit too giddy at the chance to roam his old stomping grounds. But I soon realized that I would have the exact same attitude if I could lead my colleagues through the halls of my high school.

It’s a weird thing to be a 23 year-old in a high school. All the kids know you don’t fit in, but at the same time, there’s 17-year-olds who can grow more facial hair in second period than I could in a month. I look at all of these miniature adults and they seem a world apart from me, even though my brother, sister and sister-in-law are all seniors in high school this year.

In the professional world, I feel light years away from people who own houses and have kids in junior high. At the same time, I’m way too old to be hanging out with high school kids on a regular basis. Plus, my wife would probably like me to stay at home. As a teacher, she’s no longer thrilled by the novelty of being around students.

It’s all about perspective. To her, school is a workplace. The kids we talked to yesterday may be excited about getting their name in the paper, something that’s an everyday occurrence for me. To my parents, I may be more of an adult since I got married, but I’ll always be one of their kids.

So my trip to the high school wasn’t really a novelty — no more a novelty than anything else my job as a reporter exposes me to, be it a trip to the Mississippi Belle II offices or some inside information on local government.

But life in itself is a novelty, each day a new experience even if it happens in the same place we go to every day. Live for the little things, I guess. Sweat the small stuff. Without that, life just blurs, and that’s no fun at all.