High school cliques

[Mary Ann]

There were the brains, the athletes, the basket cases, the princesses, and the criminals.

I see what you did there. Is it wrong for me to still enjoy that movie?

'87 graduate here. The smaller high school I attended had preppies and jocks, with a bit of crossover. It was quite an academic school so smarter kids were never picked on, but I still hated that school as it was so cliquish and full of rich, spoiled wankers (I lived in the same neighbourhood but wasn't as spoiled or as much of a wanker...I hope). I transferred to a Catholic high school which didn't really have any cliques and I enjoyed myself there. They only stereotypes there were the Ginos and Ginas, who were the "stereotypical" Italian kids. I well remember the school parking lot being full of Camaros!

 

[scotpens]

I have no idea what sort of social groups the kids belonged to when I was in high school. I wasn't socially aware at all then. Mostly I kept to myself, built model spaceships, and jerked off a lot.

I haven't changed in 40 years.

 

[ares93]

I never drank in high school, but you definitely miss out on important socialization skills. How does a homeschooler make friends?

seriously? its like an everyday occurrence in my school. drugs too unfortunately. that, i stay clear of.

funny story actually. there was one time the swedish DEA wanted to raid someone in my school. they were, quite clearly, gathering their numbers just outside. a friend of mine spotted a gun and so, like the good citizens we indeed are, we called the cops. ten minutes later we had nearly a dozen undercover cops arrested by SWAT. lets just say, that it wasn't appreciated. apparently we busted up three weeks of work for them.

(btw, i'm still afraid to go outside at night after that "talk" they had with us...)

 

[Mr Silver]

Not really much of that going on in the UK...but

I went to boarding school, so there wasn't any of that going on, but when I went to college I noticed little social cliques

*The Tyrolean international students all stuck together, spoke German and Italian more often than not, however there was a couple who were eager to mix and they were actually decent folks

*The "Asian Dub Foundation" (as me and my mates called them) bunch of guys who were English but of Pakistani, Middle Eastern or Indian decent they all hung around together and only really bothered with white people if they were girls, kinda strange considering they were English, but each to their own

*The Oriental students were pretty decent, they liked to mix with everyone

*Not really any nerds as such

I found it pretty easy to fit in, I had quite a few friends of all races, I myself being mixed-asian/british

 

[Spot's Meow]

Well they always exaggerate it a lot more on TV and in movies. As someone else mentioned already, certain types of people gravitated towards each other simply because they had similar backgrounds or hobbies. Of course the jocks are likely to hang around one another just because they play together and have a bond over that similar activity. It's the same for cheerleaders, people who liked to listen to the same music, who were in band together, who liked to work on their math homework together...it was really just groups of friends. Sometimes there can be hostility between groups, but more often than not I think it was fear that kept people separate. For example there was a grassy hill in the middle of my school quad where many cheerleaders and jocks would eat lunch. No one else really ventured to sit over there because they felt intimidated, but it's likely nobody would have cared if they had. Luckily there wasn't a lot of outright bullying at my school.

I wouldn't know the name of the group I belonged to, for part of high school I was more of a loner, but for a couple of years I hung out with a group of friends that were almost all gay/bisexual. I don't know why it worked out that way (I am straight myself). Together we started the Gay Straight Alliance on my campus. We would have welcomed anyone to come hang out in our meetings, but no one outside our group really showed up (at least while I was a student there). So like I said before, there wasn't outright hostility towards us, but people seemed to just prefer to stay separate.

 

[scotpens]

. . . for a couple of years I hung out with a group of friends that were almost all gay/bisexual. I don't know why it worked out that way (I am straight myself).

Maybe because you were an ABBA fan?

 

[Mr Silver]

@ Spot's Meow

That ain't actually that uncommon, myself for example I have a few gay female friends, I guess because theres no threat of relationship or awkwardness that we can be friends fast and get close without getting "that close"

I take an interest in their cultural stuff too, I think many elements of gay culture are actually unfairly labelled as "Camp", many performers in Gay Clubs are actually very talented people and its no more "Camp" than any theatrical performer

 

[Kestra]

There were the brains, the athletes, the basket cases, the princesses, and the criminals.

Funnily enough, I can see you belonging to each and every one.

That's the point of the movie!

There were the brains, the athletes, the basket cases, the princesses, and the criminals.

I see what you did there. Is it wrong for me to still enjoy that movie?

I still like it too, don't worry! I was just being silly.

In regards to my own experiences, I came from a ~3000 school and there were probably cliques. Maybe more of groups in general than really close-knit cliques, but I'm sure there were some of those. I think the main thing is that there was crossover. You might be popular but there was more than one group of popular kids, and being smart didn't mean you were excluded from those groups. Being a jock didn't mean you were popular, etc. It's natural for people to group with people that have similar intellectual levels and/or interests.

I had a group of close friends but I don't think I felt the effect of cliques that much. Part of this is because some of the so-called popular students were people I had known since I was five and I wasn't really intimidated by them. You can't be in awe of a guy that you made cry in second grade.

 

[iguana_tonante]

There were the brains, the athletes, the basket cases, the princesses, and the criminals.

Funnily enough, I can see you belonging to each and every one.

That's the point of the movie!

A movie I was embarassingly unaware of until this very thread.

 

[Kestra]

A movie I was embarassingly unaware of until this very thread.

I had a feeling. Go watch it!

 

[kes7]

Funnily enough, I can see you belonging to each and every one.

That's the point of the movie!

A movie I was embarassingly unaware of until this very thread.

No way!

Terrific little movie. Watch it!

 

[ares93]

what movie?

 

[kes7]

what movie?

Blasphemy, child.

The Breakfast Club.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Well, in my partial defence, it's not that famous in Italy.

 

[thestrangequark]

I went to the most racially diverse high school in the nation, and it was indeed cliquish, though not in the '80's teen movie way. For better or for worse the kids of different racial/cultural/national backgrounds generally stuck together: Pacific Islanders with Pacific Islanders, Vietnamese with Vietnamese, Blacks with Blacks, Whites with Whites. We were also a big sports school for men's and women's basketball and a fair performing arts school as well, so there were sports, band, orchestra, and drama cliques. However, because there were so many different groups there were no singularly defined popular or unpopular kids. There was just too much social overlap and the edges of the cliques too blurry for that. For example, I fit easily into the honors clique and orchestra, but also the artist's clique, which was made up of kids from at least a dozen racial backgrounds, painters, taggers, cartoonists, etc. It was a very diverse group.

I really enjoyed that aspect of my high school experience.

 

[Jetfire]

I guess I was just an outsider...I knew people from all cliques and didn't fit into any of them.

 

[RoJoHen]

I never drank in high school, but you definitely miss out on important socialization skills. How does a homeschooler make friends?

seriously? its like an everyday occurrence in my school. drugs too unfortunately. that, i stay clear of.

Well, I'm not saying people didn't drink in high school. I just chose not to take part in it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If my high school had cliques, I wasn't aware of them. I was never that social.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

I'm actually in high school myself, and I've never noticed anything on the level of what the news describes. Individual people dislike eachother, true, but the nose ring group doesn't spend the entire class period dissing on the football player group.

 

[Davros]

My high school was a Jockocracy, now infamous for the "Trench Coat Mafia". But I graduated years before those events.