The Social Pageantry of High School Reunions
By: Aimee Dyamond
Tags: Culture, Social Psychology, Self, Psychology, High School

There’s surprisingly little academic research to be found on the social function of the high school reunion. Commentary available in the public domain is decidedly skeptical of the tradition, which is often seen as obsolete in the social media age. After all, if we wanted a temporary insight into our former classmates’ lives, to check in on their supposed progress as they navigate adulthood, a visit to their social pages would usually suffice. Social media offer a one-sided view, the curated one that emphasizes breezy success and often conceals life’s inevitable failures and disappointments.

High school reunions are messier. They possess untapped potential to dislodge carefully arranged public personas with waves of nostalgia, to lay bare old desires with resurgences of adolescent romantic regret and see shiny, post-high school reputations tainted by the sheer temptation to let it all go with a collection of near-strangers who resemble people you once knew for a while.

Return to the Alma Mater

Etymologically, alumnus/alumna means ‘foster son/daughter’. Alma mater means ‘nurturing mother’. The institution, (school, college) is the symbolic parent who instills in its progeny a social script, a set of role expectations to guide them through society after graduation. At reunions, the ersatz children are expected to return briefly to their institutional parents’ arms to demonstrate how well they’ve been living up to their alma mater’s teachings. A reunion is a sort of pilgrimage to a site of seminal importance, one that is associated with fond memories for some lucky alumni, or years of misery for others.

Like any inevitable quasi-obligatory gathering after a period of absence, the high school reunion is a different experience depending on who you are — or were — as a high schooler. It has the makings of a darkly funny ensemble comedy akin to Death at a Funeral: a gathering of oddball characters at the funeral of your high school years. Your adolescence in memorium. It’s no surprise that the class reunion has served as the main dramatic setting in a number of popular movies over the years.

The Linoleum-Floor Time Warp

Walking through your old school corridors, breathing in the familiar smell of that same linoleum floor polish and glimpsing your reflection in the dusty trophy cabinets, you find yourself in a time warp, all at once disorientating, familiar, comforting, and traumatic. For a moment, you’re fifteen again. Only, you’re not. You’re older. The rules and hierarchies that once prevailed over your teenaged existence no longer apply to you. The new generation will roam these halls come Monday morning, but you — you’ve been released from it all.

Inside the gymnasium, decorated with a ‘Class Of’ banner and clusters of festive balloons, a temporary bar set up on one side, is a sea of familiar faces, each changed by whatever time has done to them. You stand among the very same people who gave you your first lessons in social hierarchy, who, for a time, determined your sense of self-worth and position in the social pecking order.

One thing is certain: attending your high school reunion is guaranteed to deliver a few surprises. In conventional American terms observe which former classmates are most embroiled in the rat race — and those who’ve rejected it entirely. The reality of the people you find there won’t match your expectations. You’ll realize who you remarkably underestimated — the uber-successful person, who, in a recent interview with Forbes/Time/Vanity Fair, mentions, somewhat nonchalantly, how they were told they were a failure in high school, denigrated for whatever trait has made them astoundingly successful in the first place. You’ll also recognize— to your private embarrassment — those who you grossly overestimated. People whose opinions you placed on lofty pedestals, who you exceedingly allowed to determine your worth, who, as you look at them now over the rim of your punch glass, you probably wouldn’t look twice at in a different setting.

Deck The Halls With Social Comparison

As your retrace your steps in the halls of your youth, you’re reminded of the social hierarchies that have long since shifted or disappeared entirely. Undoubtedly, many will experience the high school reunion as something of a leaderboard, where each player is silently judged on yardsticks of physical appearance, social mobility, wealth, influence or family life, perceived cultural and social values of the dominant culture preserved by the American Ivy Leagues, but not the exclusive domain of hard-nosed American ambition. The desire for power, position and status also exists in non-US cultures, like China and Japan.

Social comparison theory is at the heart of the high school reunion. More than fifty years ago, social psychologist Leon Festinger recognized individuals’ innate need to establish accurate self-evaluations of their abilities. We do this by comparing themselves to others. We’re also more likely to compare ourselves to people we perceive as similar to us.

The fallacy of the high school reunion is that, in the proverbial race for success, every runner has left the gate at exactly the same time. Under the illusion of a level playing field, everyone went to the same high school, grew up in the neighborhood and had access to the same extracurriculars and college application counselling. We know that’s not true — Malcolm Gladwell makes it quite clear in Outliers that a large part of achieving conventional success depends on factors outside of our control. It’s unsurprising then, that a high school reunion can turn out to be a minefield of status anxiety: each person with whom you make small talk could make you painfully aware of your shortcomings over the last ten years and drive you right back to the mini-bar.

The kind of social comparison that happens at high school reunions relies on a cosmetic sense of similarity. Since you’re part of a cohort that attended the same school in the same time at a specific time in history, you’re more likely to compare yourself to former classmates. Showing up is a gamble. There’s always a risk that you’ll come out feeling worse about your achievements to date. On the flipside, you might discover you’re doing pretty well for yourself compared to your erstwhile film club fellows or former bandmates, and leave feeling rather smug. Finding out a former peer has encountered a few calamities along the way may even evoke that delicious sensation of schadenfreude — or the delight in the misfortune of others.

For those who peaked in high school, reliving the glory days might seem appealing. A return to old stomping grounds and the formative kingdoms (hallways, cafeterias, locker rooms, gymnasia) they once ruled. But, as the legend goes, many who enjoyed their prime in the rarefied environment of high school, once out in the big world, don’t quite ever reach that same pinnacle of power, influence and popularity again. ‘Peakers’ may feel equally inadequate against their classmates whose post-high school lives saw them blossom. For some, the rest of life will never quite live up to their high school glory days.

Why Even Go?

‘What’s the point of going if we’re not going to impress people?’ Romy laments to Michelle when contemplating going to their high school reunion in the eponymous 1997 film.

Why exactly a motley group of similarly-aged adults convenes in their old school gymnasium every five or ten years is debatable. Most obviously, it’s plain old curiosity that drives someone’s intention to show up at their high school reunion. The social comparator in all of us wants to see how everyone’s doing, whether they’re living up to their promised potential or failing spectacularly. Or, like most of us, just being pretty average.

High school, part social laboratory, part a food chain, was traumatic enough for most people not to warrant a rehashing every decade. Reunions artificially revive social connections that you lost for a good reason. In many respects, adolescence is a time of quiet and patent traumas alike; high school, the stage upon which they all unfolded. The tumult of these years — the risk-taking, rebellion, rejection, humiliation, exhilaration, awakening sexuality — are colored with catastrophe and triumph. As monumental as many of these formative experiences were, we’d all rather forget a few.

The Late, Late Capitalism Show

In 2020, in the midst of post-recession economics, pandemic fallout and partisan politics, millennials are already more than ten years out of high school. Can we realistically expect to have achieved what our parents did within the same timeframe? How many will be homeowners? Free of student debt? Have children? Financial security?

We are forced to reshape and redefine measures of success. Social comparison between people will never go away, but the metrics by which we evaluate ourselves and others have changed.

A ten-year high school reunion today (if anybody bothers to attend) might reveal new categories for comparison: for example, how much someone’s work aligns with their passion, the number of hours worked for a living wage (hint: the fewer the better), the quality of friendships and family relationships, body positivity, woke-ness, digital nomad status, number of places travelled to, social media following, influencer status, philanthropical pursuits.

Perhaps, after enduring months of isolation, boredom and shrunken social circles, that unanswered invitation to an upcoming high school reunion suddenly looks far more appealing. Perhaps a big ‘ol (masked) reunion is just the social pageantry we need to feel human again. Only, it‘d be rebranded ‘a comeback party’ after a universally bad year from which nobody escaped unscathed. Now how’s that for a social leveler?