It's Spring Semester in Southern California, and twenty-four-year-old Stanford grad Jeremy Iversen is forsaking a dreary future of New York investment banking to go on the adventure of a lifetime. With a new wardrobe and the blessing of the school principal, he transfers into Mirador High, going undercover as a seventeen-year-old surfer. In this fast-paced expose, Iversen quickly finds himself climbing the social ladder to the popular crowd, winning over everyone from steroid-raging athletes to shoplifting scene kids, promiscuous prom queens to evangelical Christians. Along the way, he uncovers a secret world of bomb threats and sex videotapes, wildfires and wilder parties, childish teachers and youth growing up way too fast. But when he finds himself caught between his teenage friends and a jaded administration that will stop at nothing to make their failing school look good, he realizes he faces the hardest choice of his life. High School Confidential is the explosive true story of a rising generation that proves you can go back again. Book jacket.

With a little bit of confused wandering, I found my American government class. Our teacher, Ms. Schroeder, held up a videotape after the bell rang. "This movie is about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment," she told everyone. "Watch it." She cut the lights and popped the tape into her VCR. The movie wasDave. The bell for lunch beeped just as presidential-imitator Dave danced with a giant pair of robotic arms and sang "Louie, Louie." I went to put my new stack of books in my locker. As unreal as everything else had been, the locker was positively ethereal. It glinted in the sun, vivid neon Mirador green, number 6340. I approached it cautiously, hardly daring to think. By the laws of fate and time, I wasn't supposed to have a locker at a Southern California high school. I was supposed to hang my wet tan overcoat by the umbrella stand in a gray stone tower on Wall Street. I knew I had just dozed off at my desk, and this world would roll up and disappear. I reached out cautiously, brushed the warm aluminum with my fingertips. Then I pressed my whole palm against the locker. I tossed in my books and beat a hasty retreat, should the universe still decide to evaporate. I now felt like an official high schooler. -- FromHigh School Confidential