High School Confidential, by Jeremy Iversen

I love the idea of this book: a recent college graduate is hesitant to go straight from the rigors of Princeton University to the work world. His explanation is that until you graduate from college, you are climbing up on the fun scale, gaining more and more freedom as you venture from elementary to middle school, middle to high school, and high school to college. But then, suddenly, you plummet downward again, because leaving college with all of its free time and freedom to enter a nine to five job seems...well, depressing. So Jeremy decided to leap backwards, and he entered his senior year in high school all over again, this time undercover. 

(I should note here that I love this idea only because I find anything undercover fascinating. The part of me that loves students and feels protective of them doesn't so much like the idea of deceiving them and writing a book about everything they do and say, even if the names and places are disguised.) 

It's an interesting read, revealing the student life of a particular California school. What I didn't like was the negative slant that pervaded the entire book. You hear the vulgar conversations, discover who is using drugs and drinking alcohol (according to this book, nearly everybody), and peek into classrooms where teachers are spending all their time befriending students or showing pre-1950s slide shows all period every day - and while I realistically know this is partially accurate, I like to think for every student that has taken the wrong path and every teacher that has chosen the wrong occupation there are dozens more students and teachers that are giving it their all and making their high school proud. And, after half a dozen years of teaching, I don't think I'm being naive in thinking this. 

So, for the bitter taste this book left me with, I wouldn't recommend it.