After a decade of not seeing old classmates, we’re always curious to see where they ended up.
Below are 22 testimonies of what people found out when they went to their high school reunions.
Skinny nerdy guy got busted for selling a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of Adobe software in college and spent 15 months in prison. He came out super buff.
-anonymous_potato
Boyfriend went to his reunion, saw an overly made-up, not very attractive woman. Turns out, it was one of his old football buddies. So, I’d say that was a very big transformation
-deleted
One of my neighbors growing up was that super motivated Type A do everything types. Co-valedictorian, captain of the hockey team, gifted musician. Always working.
Ten year reunion, went just how we all expected. Full ride to Yale, Harvard MBA, six figure Wall Street job, gorgeous fiance…and he seemed utterly miserable.
Ten years later, 20th reunion. He got sick of it all, quit his job, sold his house, got divorced, and got out of town. He now owns a pig farm in Upstate New York, spends his days working the farm, brewing beer, and hiking in the forest…and I’ve never met a happier, more satisfied person in my life.
-BuffHagen
Back in high school we had a kid who has Asperger’s and was a little weird. He was, however, amazing at the yo-yo, having picked one up during middle school when we had that yo-yo trick assembly. After everyone else had stopped walking the dog in 8th grade, this guy was doing more and more elaborate tricks every day during lunch. He was bullied and teased but he continued doing what he loved.
So, at our ten year reunion, people from every strata of high school popularity was there, including this guy. He was his same old self, but more confident. I asked him if he still yo-yos, and he busted out his custom made titanium yo-yo that he said he made on a CNC lathe. He then starts to do some tricks and a large crowd gathered around. It was quite the show, he had gotten very good. When he finished, people clapped and cheered, and even the jockiest dudes from back in the day fist bumped him and told him how badass he was.
So I guess the biggest transformation was everyone else. Nobody teased him for being who he was anymore, they now admired him for being so passionate about something.
-specialdialingwand
The kid who was stealing motorcycles and selling them for parts is now a police officer. He was never accused or convicted of course but I knew that for a fact. Let’s hope people sometimes do change.
-ptcptc
It’s only been give years since I graduated and one of the girls in my class is a freaking rocket engineer. Working for NASA.
Like what. She used to cry about that douchebag she was dating. We did yoga in PE and talked about stupid highschool girl things.
And to think if I’d actually seriously applied myself It would have been possible for me too. good on her.
-OneBlueberry
The guy who was pretty big in high school dropped it all and now looks like Rob Lowe.
-shinypretty
The kid who was stealing motorcycles and selling them for parts is now a police officer. He was never accused or convicted of course but I knew that for a fact. Let’s hope people sometimes do change.
-ptcptc
Nobody changed at all.
I left Ireland three days after my leaving cert, and happened to move back a month before the reunion party. I hadn’t seen a single person in the ten intervening years, and everyone was basically the exact same person as they had been in school. Better-dressed, more confident, less awkward – but essentially the exact same people.
I had been dreading it, because I was never a popular kid in school – but it actually felt wonderful to be among those people again. After high school, you never really get to know anyone that well again. Add that to me having spent ten years being an immigrant in various places, and that made reconnecting with these people extra sweet. All of the people with massive chips on their shoulders – they didn’t show up. So the only people who were there were the ones who were as excited as I was.
There was one kid who changed massively, but he didn’t come to the reunion. In school, he was the most dyslexic kid, worst at math, bottom of every class. His only love was making home-made bombs on his farm and blowing shit up with them. He went to a college in Cornwall or Wales or something, that specialised in mining – because he figured that way he could work with explosives.
So fast-forward almost ten years, and I am finally getting my bachelor’s degree. I took a bit longer than most people do, but I had just got the results from my last few exams and I had finally passed. I was basking in that elation when my phone rang and it’s this guy. He just got his PhD for building a fucking robot that goes into mines and fires fucking lasers everywhere to make a 3D scan of the mine without endangering any humans. He built a robot with lasers on it. And had a PhD.
Way to take the wind out of my sails, James.
-Porrick
Twin sisters. The good one straight-A student and a perfect angel is now 90 pounds soaking wet and just finished her fourth stint in rehab for drugs.
The one who was a trouble maker and constantly in trouble even arrested a few times for drugs and shop lifting while in high school, is a doctor with a family.
-Brianthelion83
One kid was fairly small, quiet and goofy. Nice kid, but nothing too special about him. We hung out a few times at speech/drama tournaments.
I had wondered what happened to him. Turns out he grew quite a lot and became quite popular. His acting career took him far. He’s been in several huge films, including X-Men.
We knew him as Jimmy. Today he goes by a more mature name of James – James Marsden.
I hope he’s still a cool, goofy guy deep down that I remember from the few times we hung out.
-TexasScooter
At the ten year, it’s all about who was successful.
At the 20 it’s about kids. That’s the one I just went to. We did it over two days with the first being a small dinner party at a bar; we rented out a room. The second day was a family day at a local amusement park where we pooled for tickets, rented a pavilion, and had lunch catered.
At 30 , I don’t know.
At 40 it’ll be about grandkids.
At 50 we’ll start asking who is left.
-tinwhiskerSC
My ten year was after e-mail was invented, but before social media.
So I got an e-mail out of the blue one day from a girl I’d gone to High School with. She was organizing the ten year reunion and wanted to know if I could come. I told her I wouldn’t be able to make it, so she wrote again asking for my address, because she wanted to put together a directory and hand it out at the reunion. As a joke, I e-mailed her back with the address of a cell block in a North Carolina prison.
I intended to e-mail her back the next day with an explanation and my actual address. I completely forgot to do this.
I had pretty much completely forgotten about this until years later on a weekend trip to my hometown, I noticed a few furtive glances, and someone finally said they were glad to see I’d gotten out of prison and that I didn’t seem to have been harmed by the experience. They wanted to know how long I’d been in. They were polite enough not to ask what I’d done to deserve being locked up. It took me 20 minutes and a prolonged question-and-answer period to figure out what the fuck they were talking about.
All of this was 15 years ago. To this day, someone will occasionally post a comment on my Facebook page about how my current success is just such an inspiration, because it shows how someone can serve time in prison and then turn their life around.
-Ken_Thomas
We didn’t have a ten year but we did have a 22 year. The year we all turned 40. It was so much fun. We rented the summer camp we all went to growing up for the whole weekend. People brought their kids. We got wasted and told stories all night. We were all older and fatter, but nobody had changed a bit.
-GoodGreeffer
This one girl made it from stripper to mayor’s wife. It was a small town, so to her that was a big deal.
–Omniscient_Narrative
This one guy used to be kind a of a bully, seemed not to give a f*ck about school, had bad grades, skipped class and did some drugs in school. I wasn’t bothered by him and didn’t interact with the guy that much as i wasn’t a target of his antics.
If you asked me how I thought he turned out, I would’ve guess and was now doing some kind of manual work and had no education.
Turns out he co-created one of the most recognizable clothing brand in my country and has multiple brick and mortar locations. His brand is worn by some big names. He’s a successful businessman and he’s probably worth millions.
I think it’s pretty cool he turned out that way!
-struqc
I don’t wanna toot my own horn, but I had a hell of a transformation. In school I was fat, nerdy, awkward weirdo that was too oblivious to pick up on social cues. Since school I lost a lot of weight, grew into myself more and gained a lot of confidence. At the 10 year reunion, nearly everyone else gained a lot of weight so I definitely stood out. It was interesting because my frame of reference of myself was yesterday while their’s was ten years ago, if that makes sense. It was surreal, honestly. It really made me reflect on every mile I ran, every weight I lifted and every cookie I put down.
I ended up getting stoned in the kitchen of the bar with former goth weirdo, former star basketball player and some former burnout/hippie. I didn’t really know any of them before. It was a really fun time.
-MrSkimMilk
Had my ten year last November. A lot of the guys looked a lot older, a lot of the girls looked the same. There were a few girls that no one remembered from high school that got really hot, and there were some cool guys in high school that didn’t look so good. A lot of balding heads on the guys and fake tits on the girls.
-Hungrymoose
Ten year reunions suck for home schoolers. I should call my sister.
-Deleted
One girl who sat next to me in English class in junior and senior year. Thick coke bottle glasses, a bird’s nest of thick curly hair. She was always very nice and very smart, but super quiet and introverted.
I was an extroverted, outgoing jackass so I used to ask her to read parts when we studied shakespeare, invited her into my group for group projects and made her take speaking roles, that kind of thing. She was never really comfortable talking about herself and we never hung out outside of class, so I left school not knowing much about her except that she was smart, quick to grin at a joke, and had strong feelings about “The Crucible”.
Ten years later, this gorgeous woman shows up to our reunion. Smoking hot redhead, sparkling blue eyes, built like a brick sh*thouse. That goofy teenage grin had turned into a confident, knowing smile. She knew how to dress and make herself up to emphasize her assets and minimize her flaws. She was jaw-droppingly stunning.
We talked for a good hour. She was just a late bloomer. I apologized for always volunteering her for public speaking and she said it was one of the things that made her start to confront her shyness. She ended up going to an ivy league school and became a journalist, of all things. We still chat from time to time.
-fragilestories
I honestly wouldn’t know, as I was not invited. Nor was most of the class. The organizers, who also were the yearbook clique back in the day, sent out a few invites on Facebook (which I don’t have) and relied on word of mouth, from what I heard. No one that I still talk to went, or even knew about it. Turns out, only 50 of about 300 people actually got together. Hooray class of 2005. A shame, it would’ve been interesting.
-AD*ckFullOfAsses
I know someone who hasn’t aged since high school. No extra fat, no wobbles, no grey hair, nothing. Even his voice is the same at thirty as it was at fourteen. I’m pretty sure he’s a vampire.
-fluffywhiteduck