Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

for a bit of a different perspective…
i was in 03. i got the tj diploma and now i’m an english major…
i know the school has changed a bit since i was there, but there are some incredible teachers, and it is absolutely guaranteed that there will be some pretty interesting kids there too (think of however many definitions of that word you can. they all apply)
take russian. where else will you get to do that in high school?
if you love science, you’ll find plenty of people to talk to about it at tj.
BUT
if you don’t love math, tech, science, or whatever else you’ve heard about tj. i’d say go if you have the opportunity. or apply even if you’re not sure you’re into the science stuff. i definitely wasn’t, even back in 8^th grade. but it was absolutely the best choice i could have made.
oh, and andrew is right. our football team has never, and probably will never, get any respect. the other sports teams are actually really really good. but football… not so much. the games were still fun to go to though.

for my 300^th Unilocal i’m taking it back to the beginning.
for what its worth, tj is the source of a lot of what makes me, me. it may not be a john hughes movie, but i’ve got plenty of memories invested in this place. i credit jefferson with being the source of both my social ineptitude and my intellectual braggadocio. and the friends that i’ve kept since leaving tj are heads that get introduced as ‘my homie.‘
there was no limit to the amount of disrespect i got on the football team. we played countless away homecoming games. few victories were as sweet as going to some other school’s homecoming aka ‘beat the geek week’ and sticking it to them (i’m looking at you, mclean and the rest). and people conveniently forget that we beat fairfax high the year they were ranked #1 by the washington post.
it goes without saying that the chess team, physics team, math team, computer team, debate team, model un, presidential scholars, nat’l merit semifinalists, science fair, engineering fair, and orchestra (am i leaving anybody out??) got UBER PWNAGE like clocks got tic toc.
class of ’95