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?

[Tramatize]

Mine is filled with rap loving bigots, as impossible as that may sound its true. If MTV and/or JCPenny/A&Fitch/Hollister etc. is about it, my school is about it. They all listen to rap but when they meet or talk about black people there racist. 85% of them own horses/cows/chickens etc. and they are all really sickening. And there dumb...REALLY dumb.
But my school is mostly about sports, if your not rich or athletic you are no one, and most of the teachers are coaches.

[queen]

i went to the fame school and had an experience not so different from yours.

[AileenWitIt]

I went to a "magnet" school, so everyone fit the nerd profile. We eventually split to cool asians, ugly people, mexicans, cool mexicans, and all the rest were black. Srsly.

[*Janette*]

My high school experience was completely different than the typical high school from TV. High school wasn't co-ed, so almost every high school portrayed on TV didn't relate to my experience. Now that I think back on it, there wasn't really a "heirarchy". I mean sure, you had the geeks who stayed in the library and ate lunch there when you weren't supposed to, but no one was really popular. Everyone was just really different I guess and stuck with their own friends.

[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...

[libertie]

Mine was not anything near like what you see on the Disney channel or whatever else portrays high school.. MTV? Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Disney with my brother lately.

I can't really say there were any huge cliques. I graduated with 82 people and I can still remember names and faces for most of them. I can't think of anyone that I couldn't have spent time with, and I probably did hang out with just about everyone in various groups at one point. We were all friends, it was a small town.

I guess you could say in terms of groups the band people tend to stick together. That's where most of my friends were, and that's usually who I ate lunch with. It's not necessarily who I spent my time with outside of school, though. There were a lot of cheerleaders and football players who were also in band, so that kinda took the divide away, too.

But yeah, there's not really any way that a small school like that can be like what you see on television. I just can't imagine ANY school being as dramatic as some of what I've been watching, lol.. I saw this one girl who claimed to "own" her school and everyone ran around doing whatever she wanted because she was popular. Come on, I really don't think that's realistic at all. xD

[emberfly]

I'm my own clique.

pshyeah.

[transcendentalis...]

My class had 1,361 people.

Academically competitive as hellllll. Over-the-top school spirit, with days that had the entire campus flooded with maroon.

There were the athletes - sports of all kinds, including cheerleading and drill team. Former athletes were there often too. That group always hung out under the "bridge" between the library and the second story of the two academic buildings, but closer to the west of the enormous bridge there were two small gardens, one dedicated to the memories of students who had passed away and the other full of rock art and small trees. A mural separated the two from the class of 2007. ROTC kids stuck pretty much only with their own crew - they weren't ranked particularly highly on the social ladder.

The richer black kids and hispanic kids always hung out around the gardens. They were always relatively friendly and nice to talk to... most people under the bridge were. The others hung out behind the cafeteria near the teacher's parking lot and the ramp that connected the two vertical levels of the school. It wasn't often that people branched out to them, though they weren't particularly mean either. Those were the kids that got into fights the most often, but we didn't have many at this school.

In the cafeteria there were just the "miscellaneous" kids... kids who didn't really have large groups. Just your average, noncompetitive students. There weren't many, usually. Occasionally people who didn't want to go off campus for a close talk with someone else would go in there.

Library was always full of kids, usually socializing more than studying. There was quiet zone that would always have one or two kids working, but mostly everyone crowded around tables in the middle just talking or working on things together. This was the academic crowd, which often bled into the infamous D building/fine arts family.

People didn't pick on each other. They really didn't... Our class president was a Korean football player who stayed mainly in the crowd under the bridge, and then the school celebrities were either under the bridge or in D building. We got along, despite the differences. Popular kids were people with talent and charisma, not just athletes. Yeah, there were always the 'strange' kids that most were a bit wary to approach, but there were so many places to fit in within such a large school that it was difficult to really be completely alone.



it was really weird writing this

[Simba]

damn this is a long ass topic but i think i approve

[transcendentalis...]

I lived at school senior year, haha. Literally... and not just because of clubs&organizations. Stayed there until 9pm, often, working my ass off practicing cello. Hence the inattentiveness during class. and finger/wrist/hand injuries... which ended up screwing me over for auditions possibly a littlee, as there were some days I could hardly write or hold a bow.

<-- the ultimate fine arts junkie.

I think I'm the only person who feels nostalgic writing this... :(

[-DressYourEyelid...]

we had at my old high school:

rich, popular children of farmers

poor, ridiculed children of farmers.

the rejected, antisocial kids who played yu-gi-oh instead of eating a lunch.

the stoners who beat up the kids who played yu-gi-oh whenever they happened to venture from their game of cards.

popular girls who showed tittie and came to school with either a horrible hangover or still drunk from the night before.

jocks who were really nice but stupid.

jocks who were really mean and still stupid.

the kids who joined all the lunch hour clubs and activist groups. you never saw them... they were always hidden behind doors.

kids who didn't really fit into a group and were bitter about it.

i need to think about this more xD

[fagget]

Jocks (basketball/football)
soccer boys
soccer girls
art kids
the advanced kids
geeky band kids
cool band kids
rotc guys
cheerleaders/prep guys
the mexicans that didn't do anything
filipinos (cool asians/youth kids)
anime asians
tennis asians
skaters

I never belonged to a clique, mostly because i was never 'involved' in anything. i kind of just jump around the art kids, advanced kids, cool band kids, the filipinos, and the skaters.

the filipinos were a new addition though, because they used to cast me out, but now they like me and i can be one of them /admire

edit:
actually, now that i think about it, i guess i always sit with the "stoners." i didn't realize it was a clique cuz i didn't think about how that was actually the only thing we all had in common. so yeah, i guess i hang out with the stoners.

[mipadi]

I should probably add that I didn't go to any sort of "special" high school. I attended a pretty run-of-the-mill public high school in a podunk town in central Pennsylvania. I graduated as part of a class of 130, so it wasn't a big school either. The town itself was pretty run-of-the-mill, too, aside from the fact that it is host to a reputable liberal arts university.