What was your high school like?, In terms of cliques and such Options

[mipadi]

Growing up, I always saw TV shows portraying high school in an atmosphere in which the jocks and cheerleaders were "cool" and the smart, geeky, or creative kids were basically losers. But looking back, my high school experience was completely different. The athletes and cheerleaders were mediocre, I guess you could say; they weren't losers, but they weren't anything special. The smartest kids in the school, the ones at the top of their class, were the most well-liked (I guess you could say "popular") students. My school had a sort of hierarchy of popularity: if you were a good artist, you were pretty much automatically cool. If you were a musician, you were pretty popular, too. If you were a writer, you were pretty well-liked. If you were at least into indie films or indie rock or art or something like that, you were pretty well-liked, too.

I went to college thinking this was perfectly normal, that the TV depiction of "coolness" was a relic of previous generations -- basically, that the writers of those shows were basing their writing off of their experiences, which didn't reflect contemporary culture well. But then I talked to people in college, and found that my high school seemed to be pretty unique. Most of my college friends had more stereotypical experiences in high school. And when I thought about it, this coincided with my own second-hand experiences. My friend Chris was an intelligent, intellectual, if somewhat eccentric, kid who was pretty popular in my high school. In 10th grade, he moved out to Pittsburgh with his dad (his mom didn't move right away because she was a doctor and had work commitments for a few more months). At his new school, he was routinely made fun of by the athletes (the "cool kids" of that school), and even beat up on a few occasions. Now, again, he was a bit "weird", but his creativity was appreciated at our school, and not only was he never assaulted, but he was well-liked. He hated his new schools so much that after a month or so he moved back with his mom.

What's your school like? Was/is it like mine, or was/is it like the more stereotypical, pop-culture view of high school ("as seen on TV!"), or is it something else entirely?

[Gigi]

Cool Asians
Smart Asians
Nerdy Asians
FOB Koreans
Gangster Koreans
Gangster psuedo Nammers
Hongers (I could call them FOB Hongers but that's redundant)
Somewhat gangster Hongers
Cool White People
Weird White People
Bad Kids (White or Asian)

That's not a ranking or anything, just an example of the "cliques" we had. I guess out of all of them, Cool Asians was at the top (not cus Asians are cooler necessarily, but we just had WAY MORE Asians at school). Notice how there's a difference between a Smart Asian and a Nerdy Asian. Smart Asians were just intelligent and did well in school (sometimes overlap with Cool Asians as well). Nerdy Asians were really smart, spent hours studying and didn't talk to anybody.

Bottom of the hierarchy would probably be the weird white people. They were the ones that had bad wardrobes, unkempt facial hair and acne, and were just...weird. I would've said the Bad Kids but they're sort of so out of the social loop, I don't even consider them in this hierarchy.

The thing about our school is, despite us having the gangster kids and the "cool" people who aren't necessarily smart, it was pretty competitive in terms of academic achievement and so pretty much everybody strived for some type of academic success. The people who really didn't give a shit were probably one of the Bad Kids or so extremely cool that it offset their failures in school.

Quite different from TV...