but oh this is the show we're talking about stuff we are people who talk and you're a people who listen to your people who  undershirts and we're talking about something really important and something that you only experience once in your life doug we're talking about high school do you remember your first day of high school i just moved to florida yeah i was just in a new school i didn't know anything about it was when a huge ones like that was in kids and i just remember kind of being uncomfortable really i remember going there and there was this kid who  kind of lived and i was down the farms but he lived a little further on the farms and i remember we were sitting there in the study hall and he kind of looks all starry eyed and he said i never thought i'd make it this far but just seemed really strange to me but i guess when you're a little little little kid you think of high school you think of the like all it's like this cool place you know and i hope i can get there someday and that's what he was expressing on that day because all the movies make it look like you know that yeah that is likely the brady bunch kids lived in that's where glee happens in high school like it's a man i want to go there right now we've brought on an expert to this show to help us understand high school you are not an expert doug you just think you're an expert so we have another expert just so we've brought in kristen who is a high school student welcome to the show now what do you remember about your first day of high school my first day of high school was kind of scary because i didn't know it was going to happen at all now you were going with many of the same kids you had been in middle school so did that make it feel little more comfortable or less comfortable because now  everything could change and be shaken up i think it was kind of both and so you show up and you're in the school and what did it feel like the first day did you i remember my first day of school it was always like i really have to do this school with lots of different wings and so it's hard to find your classroom and it's hard to get out i just thought that too at the beginning but now it's like oh i know all these different locations you know i went three different high schools really and had in three very different locations one was in new england north of boston yeah you know i was in florida as you said right when the other one middle one was in very rural maryland oh so you went from florida to maryland to new england yes and how long did you spend in maryland two and a half years the most of it was spent and meryl second half of one to grade through eleventh grade out in maryland was one of the schools any any of the schools better than any of the others and what did you have trouble like catching up when you got moved probably to the schools were clearly very different florida was you know a huge metropolitan type school maryland was the absolute worst little rural school you know the high school in my everybody now high school is a time when lots of firsts happen for many people often you know first kiss or first death first time i died was an i know high school killed himself really oh my god we didn't have any of that and it just was you know just shocked the whole school because that's when you realize you never really understand what someone's going through because here's the kid every all thought he was on top right he was the one everyone wanted to be like he was a liked by everyone and yet something and do kids really get that or did they just say oh what the heck was that well i think even when you're on top you still feel like an outsider you still feel like people are looking at you and judging you and no one likes you i think that's the whole biggest part of the high school experience is everyone feels like no one understands me and they don't understand that everyone feels that so they do understand each other  and can you if you tell them you know i understand that they still can't believe you're right everyone is going through very much the same thing and they feel so alone even though they're going through it together yeah now you didn't play sports in high school did you  crazies kids around baseball team but and actually many of the same craziest kids were on the football team but football was sort of like easier for me because i was better at it now kristen you you've only dabbled here and there in sports at different times yeah i did trackings seventh grade and failed miserably and i don't really do sports because i hate them i you know when i played football and baseball when i was a senior i decided to winter track indoor track and i decided to do race walking because i thought it was the funniest looking sport and i thought you know what this is the only time in my life i would ever do such a funny looking sport so i wanted to do i saw that one time on line that looks like it's really easy but it's really  hard yeah it is really working your legs i've done like run walking in p last year and it's it's it's a real workout well tell you when you see like six or seven of those kids race walking down the scenery in the leader is yeah it's like you look like a bu we're back and we're talking to our resident expert high schooler hello currently what's the worst thing about high school feeling judged or being put on the spot from like other kids from teachers from parents what everyone in read all the kids a job or even your cell do people actually judge or do you just feel it is it something that kind of people really say things very much or is it something like you just worry that that's going to happen i know people do judge but mostly it's just thought that people do now if you're trying to get someone to feel better about it what do you do to help a friend you just have to try and support them and tell them that like everything's ok and try to reassure their feelings well that's a very astute comment as well because feelings that really interesting because we want to be able to feel that it's ok for us to have our feelings for many people from you know even a little thing you know there when there are three or four and they cry and their parent tells them not to cry and they just somehow internalized very early on that somehow i have to manage my feelings to keep you ok with me and so therefore my feelings aren't the important thing or aren't  acceptable and so they don't really accept them themselves for me of course you know i always get into the situation where i feel there's a crisis moment right now oh my god there's a crisis moment right now and i got to do whatever it takes to deal with this crisis hi everybody we're back we're talking about fun things today the pain of existence we're not just high school but everything because we're all still in high school own little way and i'm so what i've early cancel cable get rid of your television and listen to the tom and duck show hi everybody we're back on the show but i think one of the things that makes high school yeah so difficult and chris and you can tell me if this is your experience or not is that on the one hand you're being told you've got all this potential you've got all these different opportunities and yet you're in this place where you can't actually do any of them yet right and you don't know how you're going to get to there you can't even see the path it's there's such a disconnect between knowing that there's this thing of adult relationships adult careers adult interests and the only things you actually are allowed to do right now you can't see how they relate to each other well i think that it struck me the first thing when i went to college was the moment when you realize that you can fail and you are responsible for that when i got to college they could not care less if you felt that you failed they would just mark you an app and be done with it and i was sort of like wow i have some control over my own life here that was very powerful thing for me to define when i was eighteen years old but i think that's also scary for kids because it can be because you still get dragged down by all these responsibilities and future you could have so you know that these things are out there for you you're going to have to earn enough to pay your rent or you're going to that it's like even more stressful i think you know that's part of what makes high school so stressful is you've been given this idea of what you're going to be and what you can be and you can't see how the things that you're spending your time on now relate to that i mean there are lots of differences between us and kristen and it's hard to know whether the times you are diffuse are times you are male she's female or whether it's just personalities right i know part of mine is personality i knew you know i schooled no matter what i do i'm going to succeed you know i just had the supreme confidence zero it's so christian what is it about your experience that makes you worry that things won't work out irrational fear is well that's good that's awesome mansor in my own experience i think that my fears feel funny and they feel irrational but i usually find that they're based on my mis understanding something that i really understand i have glimpse of something that nobody else can see at all when that's the way that's always the scariest thing right when there's just a half glimpse off the side of the screen and you know  something's there but you don't really know what it is nobody else can see it at all so what you need is a theater full of people saying don't go in that door don't know don't do that don't know no it's not necessary to hear the music not necessarily a bad thing it's just that i don't know what is now you have a weird relationship with fear the i like to be knowing you like opportunity fear gives you to jump into it that's not quite right ok x what it it what it what it feels like is i have a comfort level with the fact that most of my assumptions about the world are true so most of the time people have a lot of faith in their ability to predict how the world is going to react because they think that they understand how the world reacts and i think that they're all wrong everybody's assumptions about the wrong world are wrong and that gives me comfort it sort of gives me comfort to see that the world is not exactly the way one would predict it to be and that sort of means that there's opportunities if the world is not set in stone in the world is not the way it's appears like it's supposed to be that means that this opportunity you have much more freedom that there's freedom there's more possibilities because hey all this stuff that i was so sure was to happen isn't necessarily going to happen because i don't quite understand everything until now what if that's not what i want what if i feel like the thing that would make me feel good is to know that there is something that's the way i expected to be and then i know him because this is what i think that the high schoolers you know often fear is that they don't understand you know what their path is but if they felt like they did that would help them well would that help them with the fear when you're that age yes because you have to know what your next step is so when you're a young person you have to when your baby you have to know when your next meal is coming from you know you when you're a toddler you have to know what you're going to do after school and not  being trying to get a six year old to understand everything in the whole world is not really fair so i think that it's the same thing when you're eighteen you sort of you shouldn't sort of take on more responsibilities than what you're really prepared to do and then it works that same way when you're fifty four so as you get older you should still be trying to expand your ability to understand the world and understand what you don't understand about the world the magic number is seven hundred fifty three back you're listening to our show again next week same time thanks thank you bye