I have a mix of good and bad memories from high school having lived in a small town in the midwest.
It’s hard being in a community where you can’t hide secrets from anyone.
If you hook up with someone, half of the school will know about it in a matter of days. This was frustrating when trying to date because you couldn’t trust anyone with secrets. Just voicing the intention of wanting to ask another student out on a date would get passed along as casual gossip. This was maddening when all I wanted was privacy being such an introvert like I am. I never had a girlfriend until many years later when I was in graduate school on the other side of the country. The one positive that my high school had was the heating systems inside. The school was extremely warm from autumn through early spring. But by May, the temperatures would climb into the 80s and the school would suddenly get extremely uncomfortable. The air conditioning at the time was minimal at best, making the whole building both hot and humid right after a few weeks of pleasant weather. I heard recently that our old high school ended up getting new air conditioners just a few years after I graduated. Students there nowadays have a much more comfortable school experience. There are steam boilers that provide on demand heat during the cold season and high SEER rated air conditioners for the warm weather in late spring and summer. The newer students have no idea what it was like in that school before the HVAC systems were upgraded.