Math Club or Marching Band? What was your embarrassing high school affiliation?

I was all over the place. Drumline, Show choir, concert choir, barbershop quartet, spring play…...too many to remember….

I was on Math Team and it rocked! It was just a flat out competition to be the smartest person in the room, that’s what I loved about it. I was on the chess, debate and quiz bowl teams too, basically anything that involved winning and losing.

One embarrassing story from math team though – there was an old guy who would get up and tell awful, corny jokes at the start of every meet. One poor kid looked up to this guy and wanted to try his hand at it. So the old guy introduces him at one meet and he gets up in front of everyone (keep in mind, this is not just people from your school, but from every school in the region) and starts off with:
“Why is the graveyard a popular place?... Because people are dying to get in”
after a few more bad jokes, by which point everyone is just waiting for it to be over, he says
“How come there was no one at the bowling alley?”
and some wise ass in the audience shouts out (in the most sarcastic tone possible) -
“Because they were all at the graveyard dying to get in!”
busting up the whole audience. Man, it was hilarious, but the poor kid was so flustered. So the moral is, even math nerds can single someone out for ridicule.

I was in it all as well. Drum line, symphonic band, jazz band, show chior (band), women’s chior (band)

Some of those weren’t the coolest, but traveling the us with 40 high school girls and 4 other guys in the band had its perks (women’s chior).

In any case I went on to play professionally on a major label touring the world, so I guess there’s a balance. And thinking about it. Pharrell from the Neptunes shaped his whole sound from his drum line days. Every million dollar track I hear of his takes me back to my days on the quad toms.

We had kind of a self-deprecating Math Team at my high school. We never placed in the top tier, but that was ok – I think for most of us, Math Team was a resume-builder to help us get into college. I still remember the cheer we made up: “Secant Tangent Cosine Sine 3 point 14159 Gooooo Math Team!!”

I also did Science Team. But probably the MOST embarrassing thing I did was in middle school, this automated computer test called “Knowledge Masters” that came out once a year (on a big black disc for Apple IIE!). The mascot was this automated Great Auk who would make bad auk-related puns when you got questions right or wrong (“Auk-cellent!”) and the whole thing lasted 3 hours and was very intense. Imagine a room full of nerdy intense middle schoolers answering really hard multiple choice questions for three hours…yeesh. I was the “Literature girl” and had to memorize things like what was an allusion and who was Babbitt. I loved it.

I am in high school now and am on the debate team. I would be on the math team except I don’t have time—because I take extra classes outside of school and volunteer—none of which is embarassing. In fact, I am often commended for it by my friends and peers.
These things shouldn’t be “embarassing affiliations,” rather proud statements of your true intellectual potential.

Oh, and I forgot I brought my school into first place in the city-wide Book Bowl championship freshman year. It was the first time we had ever come in first place; my picture and name was in the paper, I received 4 different medals and trophies and a gigantic trophy for my school. The principal took our team out to breakfast, and walking down the halls of the school people were congratulating me for at least a week.

Marching and concert bands. Those weren’t so bad, I guess. The worst was the Future Homemakers of America Parliamentary Procedure Team. We made it to state! I think the only reason I joined was because my friend said I’d get out of school, and the fact that 95% of the participants at the competitions were girls.

I was a drum majorette w. the marching band. White plastic go-go boots, a bellboy hat w. a chin strap and yellow plume and a little belted uniform. The games were always played during freezing weather, I broke my nails and dropped the baton more often than not.

I used to practice (forbidden, of course) in my bedroom, over the dining area, and infuriate my father at his meal, when I dropped the thing and made the plaster flake.

The extra-curric intellectual stuff was fun, and we “smart kids” were always admired.

I played high school soccer for junior and senior year, on a team that had finally broken a 55 game losing streak the year before I entered this school as a sophomore. We were 1–7, one win, seven losses both years. We almost maintained the long-standing tradition of losing every game.

This was in the mid-60’s when soccer was not popular and regarded as a foreigner’s sport by most of the game-watching public.

This team had a tradition, obviously not followed for about seven years, of wearing the green and gold striped jersey to class the day after a win. We were not deterred by the fact a)the damn Jerseys had mud and dirt and sweat on them and b) nobody had any clue why we were wearing soccer jerseys to class.

We got a lot of stares one day every fall in junior and senior year.

srm