From the editor: Why our high school experiences matter

By Richard Pérez-Feria

Monday, April 25, 2011 | 3 a.m.

With very few exceptions, everyone I know has mixed or negative memories of their high school years. My incredibly successful friends tell me that their high school memories are littered with socially awkward situations because of their perceived physical or intellectual shortcomings or worse, they recount sad, terrifying stories of being bullied, threatened and psychologically tortured. As much as I feel for my scarred friends, I can’t relate. I loved high school—every second of it.

Of all the things I’m grateful for, the one I think about the most is my lifelong ability to be completely in the moment. Whenever I’m experiencing anything memorable—joyful, painful, comic, tragic—I’m hyper aware of what I’m feeling even as the moments unfold before me. I was thrilled to tap into this particular quirk of mine during high school, the best years of my life.

Not to imply that my life since high school hasn’t been an unbelievable journey filled with eye-popping personal and career highlights (and inevitable low points), but, taken as a collective period of time, my three years spent at Southwest Miami High School—a large public school in the suburbs populated at the time by 50 percent Cuban-American kids, 50 percent “Anglos,” what many in Miami still call non-Hispanic whites—were years worth remembering. Let me tell you why.

Walking into high school for the first time—that very first morning of school—is when I met Greg Calejo, who immediately became my best friend for life. As I greeted friends after a long summer vacation, Greg came right up to me and excitedly asked me to vote for him for Student Council president. I stared at him silently as if he was an exotic bird that escaped from the zoo. Who was this Greg Calejo? To this day, he swears this never happened. But it so did.

As Greg and I became inseparable—a constant irritant for our respective girlfriends, Lise and Carmen—we forged a brotherly bond built on similar backgrounds (both of us had Fidel Castro-fleeing Cuban parents), career ambitions that would take us far, far away from the stifling Miami suburbs and an identical sense of humor (both of us agreed I was hilarious). Over the span of decades, numerous romantic relationships and thousands upon thousands of miles separating us, one constant remained: We know each other better than anyone. In a very real sense, Greg’s my Gayle.

But beyond important friendships that began there, Southwest was where I started to become me, the me I recognize today: The hard-working editor (I led the troops at the award-winning newspaper, The Southwest Lancer); the politically obsessed debater (from strong Ronald Reagan devotee my sophomore and junior years to what-the-hell-was-I-thinking? complete turnaround my senior year); the let-me-help-you-solve-your-problem good friend; the organizer; the safe driver; the leader; the talker—me. I owe all of what I became—with healthy parental assists—to the people and experiences I had in high school.

I don’t recognize any of my gauzy high school experiences in this week’s chilling cover story by Dave Berns. As his must-read report unflinchingly points out, time is not only running out on the very future of education in America, we’ve reached Code Red emergency right here in Nevada. The big question: Is it too late to fix what ails Nevada’s education system? This is some scary stuff.

What a contrast to my joyful memories of high school. In my mind, if you combined the most fun, overtly theatrical moments of high school depiction from "Glee," "90210"(the new one) and "Gossip Girl," you can begin to understand how safe, how included and how whole I felt during those important years. With the advent of Facebook, now those long-ago memories are rekindled and get a little gauzier, a little sweeter.

On graduation day, standing with my closest friends in our caps and gowns—Greg, Jan, Myrna, Annette—I remember thinking right then how I’m never going to have these experiences again with these incredible people. I was acutely aware that this, the Southwest Miami High School Class of 1982, was special. I knew we were ending something irreplaceable, unique and, ultimately, unforgettable.

Today my hope is that all Las Vegas school kids can someday look back at their own high school years and proudly proclaim what I’m doing today: High school mattered to me. It made me, me.

Quality education isn’t a joke or hyperbole or even a political issue. Few things matter more. We have to fight for education in this country. I mean fight. And I’m in the mood to rumble.