[rue]

Americans have a fundamentally different relationship with their High School days from anyone else. Popular culture certainly is not helping shed the obsession, the sense that High School is the defining time in one's life[1].

Somehow it seems that all these stories tie into that theme: the expectations, the sense that one must live their High School role thenceforth, the contemporary judgments made based on factors from High School and so on.

[1] Adolescence is obviously formative just like anything else; I trust you can make the distinction.