The 6 Phases of High School "Punishment"

I guess everyone had it different in HS, some of us hated it. Some of us loved it. But what I learned most from High School.. wasn't in any of the books. It was more important and practical than anything the faculty had planned on the curriculum.
Life lessons- most important probably is how to interact with other people. You learn that there are always rules, and there are people who enforce those rules. You also learn that some of those people are sincerely trying to help, while others are just dysfunctional assholes taking out their frustrations in life by trying to hold you down.
But either way, you learned how to interact with these people... and if you were like me, you learned how to test them and push each of their limits to see how far you can get. But, anyway- one of the reasons I enjoyed HS so much was that, being a minor, they could only do so much to "punish" you...

The 6 Phases of High School "Punishment"

Ok this I never understood, but definitely took advantage of. For example, let's say you were in your friends classes clowning around more than you were actually in your own (like me). Eventually the teachers decided even though you had some entertainment value, they couldn't let your disregard for school policies go unchecked.. so what do they do?

Enter the stages of punishment in HS:

-Stage 1: Office Referral
AKA - get out of class free card. Sweet! I'd go and have some good conversations with my principals, I'd even skip class on my own and go there some days... not very effective.

-Stage 2: Detention
This one kind of sucked, depending if anyone else fun was in detention that day or not. Only because you had to stay after school, but really it was like 1 big class.. with all your friends.

-Stage 3: Wednesday or Saturday school

(..unless you're me, then you had both. I had so many of these suckers earned up one year they tried to make me come all through SUMMER.. hah! I was like ummm no I don't think I'll be attending sorry)

These were just basically really long detentions. Like 2 or 4 hours I can't remember.

-Stage 4: ISS (In School Suspension)
ahhhhh good ole' ISS. The coaches and substitutes took turns running this one, most of which I got along with. There were only 2 computers, coach liked me so he'd actually kick other kids off to let me get on and play Tribes... haha! Amazingly, they also let you out a little early (I think the point was so you wouldn't have any contact with the other kids, but you could just hang out and wait for school to be over if you wanted to... so really it was just an extra bonus!)
So, this one is like a free day, also with all your friends.

See, it only gets better! Now sometimes if you had a good group of friends in ISS, you'd have so much fun it was actually better than school. In which case we worked up a good plan.. see if you are LATE to ISS, they give you an extra day. Most kids seemed to think this was a horrible thing. We thought it was AWESOME. Why?

Because this means that we could sleep in, then come to ISS. Leave early, and do it all over again. As long as we wanted. But if you were in ISS for more than a week or 2 in a row, they'd up the anti... with OSS.

Stage 5: OSS (Out of School Suspension)
Ok. This never made sense to me either. If sleeping in, hanging with your friends, then getting off early wasn't enough for you.. they'd give you a few days off. If you had too much ISS they would put you in OSS, or alternatively you could skip straight to OSS by fighting or doing something pretty bad, but not bad enough to warrant alternative school.
OSS was basically a free pass to miss school and not have it count against you, for a few days usually.
Not comfortable enough for you? Well, have no fear- there is 1 last level of "punishment".

Stage 6: The final stage in the saga of HS "punishment"... Alternative School
I spent my last entire year of HS minus a few weeks in A.S. and actually graduated from there. You'd get this by doing something bad enough to get you thrown off of campus. In my case, the first time, that was showing up drunk to 1st period class still drinking vodka out of my water bottle and acting like a fool before finally being arrested and escorted out of class in handcuffs... after the cop got me off from standing on the table and taking a bow while the class cheered me on.
Now AS is your very own SCHOOL. Where you get to sleep in late about an hour, and also get out like 1.5 hours early. And usually your friends are there. This one could get old quickly though if you didn't have enough friends with you though, or if you weren't hopped up on Adderall like I was at the time.

Aghhh... if only the rest of life was like High School....