Oh, the answer would be two-fold. There are things I learned academically, and there are things I picked up just being in high school.
From my classes, I learned a lot of things. I only managed to hold on to a very small percent of them, but I did well in tests and got good grades. Most of the stuff I learned and kept, I got from books. Not textbooks either, but novels and novellas.
Now, the other side of high school learning… My high school experience is divided into two parts: the first involving the first two years at the prestigious, exclusive school for girls I’d attended from preschool, and the second involving the small co-ed school I went to for my junior and senior years.
1st Half Learnings
Common interests brought people together. My high school best friend and I got together because we both loved New Kids on the Block. I really did make some lifelong friends crushing on Joey McIntyre.
The cool kids could trick you into thinking they looked better than you, but they really just knew how to style themselves. And their confidence was super attractive, so your natural, but insecure beauty could just duck into oblivion behind their bigger and louder than life cobra hair and neon outfits.
The library was a refuge for those friendless moments (whether you were fighting with your friends or they simply had a different lunch schedule). But first you had to eat lunch.
Eating lunch alone without feeling like a loser was a skill best learned early. There were no smartphones back in those days, so eating alone in a bustling, clique-dominated cafeteria was kind of mortifying. This skill definitely came in handy in college when everybody else was still just learning how to do it. In any case, lunching alone was a great way to revive your flagging energy (and spirit!) while enjoying a book.
You didn’t need to prove you were right every time. And there was really no need to show off your vocabulary. Nobody was impressed, and the other nerds felt threatened. Or challenged. I learned this intellectually, but didn’t really do well practicing it.
2nd Half Learnings
It was one lesson. Teenage boys were frequently predatory idiots you couldn’t trust. If you chanced upon a nice, sweet one, chances were he was gay or a rare gem that you weren’t mature enough to appreciate. Or, coming from a girls’ school, I simply didn’t know how to deal with boys, and this was what I learned out of self-preservation.
This Small Life 