Latest news with #highschoolreunion
Fox News
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
A Great Weekend, For the Wrong Reasons
Jimmy Failla reminisces about his high school reunion, explains how social media ruined them, and warns why you shouldn't use Ozempic and drink. Follow Kennedy on Twitter: @KennedyNation Kennedy Now Available on YouTube: Follow on TikTok: Join Kennedy for Happy Hour on Fridays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Cedar Falls Class of 1995 reunion showed me how Iowa helped us succeed
Every time my plane circles for a landing at an Iowa airport, my shoulders start to slump, and part of my mind reverts to my snotty, distant teenage self. The flat farmland views reminded me of insurmountable academic obstacles and tense and frustrated social interactions of the first 17 years of my life. So why was I attending my 30th high school reunion? As I ascended the steps to the event, I realized I didn't have a good answer to that question, and I mentally prepared myself for the typical negative reception and resurgent feelings of inadequacy. Not only were my expectations completely false, but every person in my class, regardless of where they currently resided, embodied the best values and attributes that are so unique to Iowa. The most noticeable Iowan personality trait was that everyone maintained a quiet, modest leadership presence in their professional and personal lives. From local business owners to health care providers to social workers to public school teachers to community organizers to stay at home parents, all my classmates sought leadership roles that benefitted their families and communities in Iowa and across the globe. Like many Iowans, my peers and I possessed an innate desire to serve a larger purpose beyond ourselves while being unaware of our generosity and selflessness. More: I'm about to become a doctor. Here's why I won't be staying in Iowa. | Opinion Another prominent characteristic of my classmates was evidence of a high-quality Iowa public education. While Iowa had and still has its fair share of systematic struggles, every reunion attendee humbly demonstrated the rich knowledge base that we gained throughout our public school experience, specifically science, math, economics, accounting, history and art. Although some of us, myself included, struggled more than others in school, I couldn't help noticing that each of us was very well-spoken, intellectually curious, and very engaged in current events. Many of the men at our reunion were very inquisitive and well-informed about the #MeToo movement, and they patiently listened and genuinely empathized with the experiences of female students during the 1990s. Although the current political landscape in Iowa is unpredictable and chaotic, I noticed that all my classmates had a strong sense of resilience going back to childhood. Our generation, Gen X, is known as the latchkey generation for a reason: we weathered traumatic events as kids and navigated adolescence without much support or intervention. Each of us had a story about a horrifying experience that we endured growing up without any mental health guidance, e.g. watching the Challenger explode live on television, witnessing an elementary school teacher have a mental breakdown in class, quietly suffering the brunt of generational trauma and a parent's mental health challenges, staying silent while enduring harsh criticism from adults for undiagnosed learning disabilities, and so on. Even the unpredictable Iowa weather made us resilient, confident drivers who can safely navigate strong winds, tornadoes, flooding, thunderstorms, white-out blizzards, freezing rain, and hail. More: Opinion: Getting an ADHD diagnosis as an adult helped my Iowa schooling make sense The specific combination of all these character traits fuels all Iowans' attributes. Ironically, the intellect, drive, and determination of my peers that intimidated me and made me withdraw in high school are the same qualities that make me proud to call them classmates today. Thanks to our upbringing in Iowa, every one of my classmates overcame significant obstacles to achieve a tremendous amount of success and individual accomplishments. Because of our backgrounds and experiences, our contributions will benefit our communities in Iowa and everywhere else we live. We did it because Iowa made us who we are today. Maria Reppas lives with her family on the East Coast. She lived in Iowa from 1978 to 1999. Visit her at This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Our Iowa experiences growing up set us up to succeed in life | Opinion
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Your high school reunion doesn't need to be stressful. Here are 8 dos and don'ts from therapists to help you enjoy the night.
Going to my 20-year high school reunion was a mixed bag. A therapist says it's valid to have mixed emotions about seeing people from your past. She recommends not comparing yourself to anyone else. I had the chance to relive being a teenager when I attended my 20-year high school reunion. It was like traveling back in time to when I felt most awkward and insecure. The guy I used to obsess over walked up to me twice and said hello to someone behind me, almost elbowing me in the head to shake their hand. Then, all the blood drained from my face when another classmate said they remembered me because my sister was the "popular one" with all the friends. It might seem like the night was a complete disaster. But that would be my anxiety talking and drowning out the many positive interactions I had with new and familiar faces, especially the ones who set down their drinks to embrace me with both arms. If you're anxious about seeing your former classmates, you're not alone. I received advice from therapists on approaching your high school reunion, including managing your expectations and avoiding assumptions about your old friends and rivals. Here are the dos and don'ts of attending your high school reunion. Reuniting with your classmates can bring up mixed emotions, from excitement and nostalgia to fear and dread. "It's completely normal and valid to have conflicting feelings about a reunion," Natalie Moore, a Los Angeles-based licensed marriage and family therapist, told Business Insider. You might associate high school with painful memories like being bullied or excluded from social gatherings. Taking time to notice your feelings can help build self-awareness, which in turn can lead to greater confidence and self-acceptance, she said. There's a lot of pressure to achieve milestones like getting married, having kids, owning a home, or having a fulfilling career. "As the reunion approaches, be mindful of the expectations and predictions that pop up in your mind," Moore said. Remember that everyone has their own path and timeline. "Even the person who appears to have it all together has their own quiet struggles that they're dealing with," she said. We tend to feel more confident when we plan ahead. Think about what makes you feel good so you can relax and be in the moment when you're at your reunion, Patrice Le Goy, a psychologist and licensed marriage and family therapist, told BI. "For some people, it will be important to have accomplishments to share, and for others, it will be having that perfect outfit picked out," she said. You don't want to sound rehearsed, but it might help to have a script or a few life updates in mind, especially if you tend to overshare or get nervous in social settings. When a conversation stalls, it can be tempting to engage in gossip. "You may regret it if you use this time to speak badly about people you haven't seen in a long time, especially if it gets back to them," Le Goy said. As visual creatures, we tend to notice people's appearance, especially if they look different from how we remember them. "However, making comments about someone's body, even if you believe you're giving a compliment, can trigger people and make them feel self-conscious," Moore said. A crowded reunion may not be the best venue for deep conversations, but that shouldn't stop you from getting reacquainted. "It's much more fun to allow yourself to be surprised by how much your classmates have grown and changed over the years," Moore said. Consider your own evolution since high school. Your classmates have likely experienced similar transformations, and when you don't ask questions, you're more likely to judge people. If you haven't spoken to your classmates in a while, it's easy to make assumptions and create unfounded narratives about their lives. Perhaps you're speculating about why your prom date moved to another country or you're picturing yourself standing up to your high school bully at the reunion. "Social media only gives us a fraction of the full story," Le Goy said. "Try not to assume someone's marriage is on the rocks because of one cryptic post or, alternately, that someone's life is perfect because they seem so happy online or from stories that you hear from other people." Moore emphasized the importance of practicing curiosity rather than jumping to conclusions or reacting to past experiences. Try practicing the thought: I wonder if this individual will be there and how their personality has changed over the years. Another way to boost your confidence is to think about your purpose in going to the reunion. "If you are measuring your level of enjoyment based on whether you are the most successful or the most attractive, you will probably be disappointed," Le Goy said. Her advice is to think about how you want to feel at the end of the night whether it's being happy that you reconnected with friends or feeling relieved that you've gotten over your high school crush. "These are more helpful expectations than just wanting to be better than everyone else," she said. If you're enjoying reconnecting with someone, consider asking for their contact information and how they prefer to stay in touch, Moore said. "Some people love in-person hangouts while others find it more convenient to text or FaceTime," she added. Similar to asking someone on a date, the saying "no risk, no reward" applies here. "People's lives are so busy and even though the intention may be there to stay connected, often the follow-through is more difficult," Le Goy said. She suggests staying away from big declarations, like planning a trip together. "Stick with more accessible options like connecting on social media or starting a text chain which can build up to in person meet ups," she said. Whatever happens at your reunion, remember how far you've come since high school. Because of the way our brains are wired, our former classmates may loom large in our memories, but they don't define who we are today. Nandini Maharaj is a freelance writer covering health, wellness, identity, and relationships. She holds a master's degree in counseling and a doctorate in public health. Read the original article on Business Insider
National Post
18-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- National Post
Makeover: A fresh look for a 50th high school reunion
Wendy Morris, 69, was attending her 50th high school grad reunion and wanted a little special treatment to celebrate herself. Article content Wendy has medium length and fine-to-medium textured hair. She wanted to refresh her colour so we applied neutral-beige highlights throughout to brighten her blond for the summer. After shampooing her hair with Oribe Beautiful Blonde Shampoo and Conditioner, we sprayed the mid-lengths and ends with Oribe Run-Through Detangling Primer for added hydration. We then trimmed up her hair and styled it smooth. Article content
Washington Post
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The Hunter S. Thompson musical is somehow both gonzo and square
I was milling around with some ambivalence at my 25th high school reunion, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when Hunter S. Thompson delivered a jump scare from beyond the grave. Days before I was scheduled to see a musical about him at Signature Theatre, a glossy paperback of the rebel newsman's pinnacle work 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' was discovered inside a time capsule packed by a handful of my classmates. The book sprang at me like a skeleton hand clutching a lit cigarette. I haven't figured out who put it there, but the typewriter-armed misfit clearly meant something to a restless teenager toiling in mid-'90s suburbia — and probably dreaming of drug-addled fame and abandon. The vitality of his legacy, 20 years after he died by suicide in 2005, is the animating question of 'The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical,' which is as unwieldy yet stubbornly straightforward as the title suggests. Do people even know who he is anymore? A Gen Z actor (Giovanny Diaz de Leon) planted in the audience sizes him up and wagers a decent guess: James Taylor? Having to convince the uninitiated why they should care means starting the show on the back foot, a position it never really recovers from. Thompson is framed as a folk hero with hedonistic tendencies, righteously damning the man and championing people he calls outsiders and freaks. Among the more vaguely rebellious vibes are pointed throughlines that smartly speak to the present, mainly in drawing parallels between Presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. But in wrangling counterculture into musical theater, the show reenacts the fate that befell its subject — morphing a hip renegade into a goofball cartoon. Making a case for his notoriety in his beloved first person is Hunter himself (Eric William Morris), clad in the signature green poker visor, red Hawaiian shirt and yellow-tinted shades. (The casually groovy costumes are by Toni-Leslie James.) In a familiar storytelling trope, our protagonist is aware of his limited time on Earth (measured in 'tick, tick, tick' refrains from the ensemble) and determined to prove that he burned fast and bright. For a narrator who invented the outlandish, freewheeling style known as gonzo journalism, it feels a bit square to start this memoir at birth. But composer Joe Iconis and book writer Gregory S. Moss attempt a cradle-to-grave account of Thompson's life and career in 2 hours and 40 minutes. For Thompson fans and those who've seen filmmaker Alex Gibney's very good documentary 'Gonzo' (2008), the plot will yield few surprises: his breakout embedding with the Hell's Angels, turn to covering presidential politics and eventual descent into caricature. True to Thompson's spirit, that road is riddled with sizable detours — such as his love of firearms and how he met his exceedingly patient wife (Tatiana Wechsler) — and traversed with madcap momentum. ('The way you tell a story is confounding,' a faux heckler tells him.) The highlights of director Christopher Ashley's production, which premiered in 2023 at La Jolla Playhouse, where he is artistic director, are in the visual flourishes that aim to capture the colorful gusto of Thompson's writing. Handheld horses clomp through his chronicle of the Kentucky Derby, and fuzzy bats with ruby eyes swoop overhead en route to Vegas. (Puppetry design is by Animal Cracker Conspiracy.) On the throw-everything-at-the-wall set (by Wilson Chin), wildly colorful and dynamic lighting (by Amanda Zieve) directs the eye with stunning precision. For all that, the production's ingenuity feels like elaborate costuming dressing up dogged convention. The book hews closely to an and-then-this-happened checklist of Thompson's career, rollicking tangents notwithstanding. Iconis's pastichy score, a 'Hair'-light mix of Broadway pop and melodic rock with touches of gospel, rap and emo, is propulsive and occasionally catchy, but no match for Thompson's originality. Nor Ralph Steadman's — a song about the British illustrator, whose macabre panache came to epitomize Thompson's style, rings anodyne next to the Steadman drawings plastered on the walls. As with his score for 'Be More Chill' (which reached Broadway in 2019), Iconis excels at vivid, one-off character songs. George Salazar, a standout of that show, gets a resounding anthem here as Mexican American activist Oscar Acosta, whom Thompson characterized as his Samoan attorney sidekick in 'Fear and Loathing,' a diminishment the musical attempts to correct. In a pair of breakthrough numbers, Ryan Vona proves exceptionally limber as George McGovern ('Oo, daddy, talk to me about poverty,' Thompson coos at his adored candidate) and tenderly affecting as the adult version of the writer's long-neglected son. Morris meets the challenge of gassing up Thompson as his career rides high and deflates, though registering emotion mostly falls to others while he's busy trying to change the world. Thompson is more apt to show feeling in an ardent ballad about the cause: We need a nation, he sings, of 'unemployment insurance/ and contraceptives/ literate children/ and empathetic leaders.' Fair enough. But a character needs more than gusto and a bleeding heart to feel human. Maybe it's no surprise that George Abud walks off with the show as a dry and mordant Nixon, Thompson's right-wing nemesis whose long tentacles still reach into the present. He prods and cajoles, jeers and intimidates, until he bellows the most bluntly inspired hook of the night: 'Richard Nixon gonna beat yo hippie a--.' Can you tell which party still struggles with messaging? Distilling an unbridled storyteller into one he didn't write himself is a daunting business: On opening night, Iconis said the show has been in development for some 20 years. But it speaks to the clarity of Thompson's convictions — and to how quickly and often history has repeated in recent decades — that the social struggles depicted here could be ripped from the headlines. This way, you can at least tap your feet and share a laugh. The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, through July 13 at Signature Theatre in Arlington. 2 hours and 40 minutes with an intermission.
