I chatted with one of Jonah's classmates at a neighborhood party a few weeks ago. She reported in teenage up-speak, "Jonah is semi-popular!" She and Jonah and all of their peers are infinitely aware of the pecking order at school. I cringed and had a flashback to my own high school. I had a foot in the brainy clique and the artsy clique and the sporty clique, so I wasn't a unhappy loner, but that whole experience of ranking still makes me shudder.
At lunch with some friends the other day, I spoke with one woman who confessed that she wasn't a great student in school and went to a local community college when she graduated. She looked down, like the shame was still fresh.
Studies are now showing that the frames that we find ourselves in high school have long term implications. The popular kids end up making more money. The princesses are passive. We have to relive high school through Facebook.
New York Magazine has a great article, which sums up a bunch of the latest research.
What was your label in high school? Has the label stuck?
Apt. 11d 
“the arsty clique.”
That’s a typo for the ages.
I had lunch at the drama kids’ table in high school, despite not being a drama kid.
The social atmosphere improved a lot after junior high, which I was fortunate only to have one year of. I don’t regret missing 8th grade at all.
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My high school class was so very small that the jock clique was two guys and the brainy clique was two guys and one guy was in both of those. I was the brainy one with no athletic ability, just like today. Guys from classes above me would pick on me for being nerdy, but it didn’t really bother me because no one in my own class did.
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High school was not so tough in Europe 20 years ago. So I did good and most of my friends too. There were far less labels than now (the fat, the glass wearing, the naughty/cool, the pretty… and that is all). Fashions cross the Atlantic pretty fast due to TV and cinema. Our schools are now much harder in this sense.
Labels stick long but not in they way you say… Pretty girls tend to married/get pregnant young and do not have a good career. Naughty/cool boys end up without University degree and being mileutista. Glass wearing nerds get laser surgery and fat people get fit.
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If you want to try reliving your high school trauma, come teach with us! We get to see that the pretty girls are often hiding a lot behind their smiles, the athletic kids are sometimes dyslexic and cry in the showers about their grades, and just how many kids re wrestling with the same issues, even if their clothes are different levels of “cool.”
Anyway, my own middle school experience was much more traumatic than high school, and it’s making me anxious about having two girls of my own in middle school this fall….
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I hated high school, but have long since kind of realized that I hated it mostly for reasons that were entirely self-generated, and that all in all I had a decent experience: I just wasn’t able to notice it at the time. (More here.)
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I was the nerdy brainiac creative kid who also was in band. I had my own “tribe” and never felt left out but was aware of not being one of the “cool” kids.
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When I reflect back on my high school years, the only thing that makes me afraid for my son is drunk driving. I’m hoping that living in a city where walking and transit are real options will avoid some of the worst of that. I’m not nearly as worried about smoking because now that hardly anybody in my world smokes, a kid can’t really sneak cigs without the odor being a give-away.
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I had a couple miserable years as the weird, pimply, isolated, smart girl before, thank God, I found the newspaper and got into AP classes. Then there was a tribe, and they’re still an important part of my life even though we all live in other places. (My skin cleared up eventually, too.) My scars are of the not-being-pretty and not-dating kind, and that shame is pretty fresh sometimes too.
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I recently read Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, which has to be up there with Cat’s Eye in terms of novels that will take you back to the almost suicide-inducing horrible-ness that can be cliques in middle school/high school. Trying to avoid this kind of crap for our two girls is one of the primary reasons we won’t move to the suburbs. Oddly, in Chicago at least, the city exam/gifted schools are not nearly so socially harsh.
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In high school I fit in with everybody-I had friends in every group but wasn’t really part of any one group. I was a brain, a little fast (had a lot of boyfriends), a little nerdy, and generally independent. I’m pretty much still that person. I loved high school, and I have mostly liked my adult life: high school was full of opportunities to learn and so is adult life; I had lots of casual friends and one or two intimate friends in high school and I have that in adult life; I felt free to exercise my agency and autonomy for the first time in high school and I enjoy that in adult life; and I was somewhat contrary and different from most of my social group in high school and I have that in adult life.
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“I’m hoping that living in a city where walking and transit are real options will avoid some of the worst of that.”
Living in an urban area, I’m seeing a real difference in the attention paid to driving (compared to my somewhat less urban area). Lots of kids are waiting to drive (transit, parking, driving requiring more skill when there’s more traffic, changes in the laws requiring classes, more practice hours). I haven’t checked the laws, but I do feel like drunk driving is going to be less likely than it was when we were kids (especially when compared to rural areas, where things might not have changed as much).
I agree with you that drunk driving (and driving) are the kinds of things I worry the most about, because they can cause irreversible tragedy.
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I went to a urban magnet school for high achieving students that was majority black. (I had a very interesting comment for your “brain drain” post, but it got eaten, and I didn’t feel like re-typing it.)
Cliques have different meanings when you are so easily identified as “one of the few white kids.” They also have different meanings when you needed a B-average as a minimum standard to get into the school in the first place. There were no remedials classes. There were no people with a history of getting C’s. Everyone was there because it was their own chance to escape from their crappy inner city public “zoned” school.
Within those very narrow constraints and huge differences, I was totally Lindsay from “Freaks and Geeks” — on the math team and hanging out with the burnouts.
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I went to a suburban Heathers-style high school and it was horrible. It wasn’t until I was well into my 20’s that I realized most people did not attend schools as terrible as mine.
I was just sort of there in my high school. I had friends but no one I was particularly close to because so few people in my school shared my interests. All of my close friends were kids from other high schools that I met through shared hobbies.
High school has stuck with me in how I judge my physical appearance. I received no attention from guys in high school. None. So I just assumed I was not-at all attractive. Then I went to college and got a ton of attention. I think I attributed the change to finally meeting guys that could appreciate my sparkling personality. I mean, it wasn’t as if my looks had changed. But really, no, I had been attractive (to some people at least) in high school but I wasn’t worthwhile to date because I had no value in increasing someone’s standing in the pecking order.
I still don’t feel like I have a good sense of how people perceive my physical appearance. I find I often default to my high school perception of myself when I’m in a situation where I have few other clues as to what people think of me.
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“I agree with you that drunk driving (and driving) are the kinds of things I worry the most about, because they can cause irreversible tragedy.”
We live near a college campus, and I think I’ve seen every permutation of texting or phone use combined with vehicular motion, including (if I’m remembering correctly) texting while skateboarding in traffic. The college students are often terrible at 4-way stops. It’s actually surprising we don’t get more fatalities than we do. Just a week or so ago, I was driving behind a student on a bike who wiped out in the middle of an intersection. I was so pleased with myself that I didn’t run him over.
And this is how it is when everybody is stone cold sober at 9:30 AM.
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I really do think texting needs to be deactivated while a phone is in motion. Not absolutely sure what to do about the passenger, but I’d go so far as to require some kind of technological fix that verifies that the passenger isn’t driving (maybe some kind of signal connection between the passenger seat and the touching of the phone — it’s possible because there’s a circuit there of some sort and the screens are capacitance detectors).
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And this is how it is when everybody is stone cold sober at 9:30 AM.
Assuming things can cause trouble.
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I ran with the theater/hippie/rocker crowd in my high school… which is more or less where I’d land today (though theater has fallen by the wayside). I posted that NY mag story on FB and am loving the conversation it’s generating. Interestingly, most of my friends have said that it was late elementary school or junior high that was the most difficult – that kids were more “live and let live” by high school. And that was definitely true in my experience.
One thing I’m struck by, which wasn’t really reflected in the NY mag piece, is the strength of the bonds we form in high school. My HS friends are *tight* to this day. It wasn’t always this way – we went through plenty of periods of distance, arguments, etc. But it amazes me what an important role they play in my life at age 40.
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I was the smart kid in HS, but my best friend was an athlete. I had my classes with my group of school friends (some of whom are still good friends) and after school I hung out with my best friend (whom I never talk to any more–we just grew apart), usually at games and practices. I was manager or scorekeeper for whatever team she was on, usually softball or basketball.
In general I occupied a space where everyone kind of liked me, but I didn’t have any status. I was just there, and no one tried to pick on me. I don’t have bad memories of HS, but I also don’t think it was the highlight of my life. It was … there.
Really, the only period of life I think of with horror is the three-year period I lived in Maine as an adult.
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Really, the only period of life I think of with horror is the three-year period I lived in Maine as an adult.
Pet Sematary was real?
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No, but that would have been better.
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High school in a university town: we were almost ALL brainy types. Those who weren’t happy identifying in that way had the most trouble fitting in at our school. I was brainy enough to pass and artsy enough to have a semi-social niche.
I’d already figured that worrying about high school was a fool’s game. I could get all the credits that I needed in three years, so I did. Nose to grindstone, except for the arts magazine and non-school sports, I set my sights on university and had mentally checked out long before I graduated.
I understand that high school was a traumatic time for many and a wonderful time for others. For me, it was marking time and I have a hard time recalling much of my years there!
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High school was pretty awful, and I hate having to relive it through Facebook. Many of my friends have posted old pictures. The ones where I’m not present–most of them–make me feel that horrible feeling of being left out. I didn’t fit anywhere really. I was smart-straight As–but found boys and alcohol at the same time. And that was bad. I was ahead of my girlfriends in that respect so they hated me. Literally, they told me they didn’t want to be friends anymore. I was scarred by that and it took me until grad school before I could trust women again.
Geeky Boy is just about done with high school, and I’d say he’s not had the best experiences. We worried about drunk driving for a while too, but he doesn’t drive, and the friends he hangs out with don’t drink much. They do drink, though, which GB almost always tells us about if we ask. He’s has different friends throughout the years, except for one that he’s kept since fourth grade. That says to me that he isn’t in a specific crowd. I know he’s uncomfortable with the brainy kids because they follow the rules too much. He has some authority issues and general issues with doing “busy work”. It will be interesting to see how he looks back on it. Maybe I’m all wrong.
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Exeter was kind of different from a typical high school, since everyone was pretty smart, i.e., smart enough, and interested enough in the life of the mind, to be in the “brainiac” clique in a local high school. I was in the “nego” (means cynical), ultra-brainy (which meant a lot at such a place), cool (means took drugs) clique. But not the clique that was good with girls. Whatever.
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I loved high school. However, there were periods of angst; hated my parents sometimes, moved far away from my boyfriend, had a major 6 month fight with one of my best friends. In general, I’m an optimist and manage to be fairly happy in life. High school was no different.
I was in drama, was a cheerleader and involved in student government. I wasn’t one of the ultra-popular, but was popular enough to usually have a few people to hang out with on a Friday night.
As far as academics, it was totally different then. No one gave a damn as long as you were getting mostly B’s. I did fine but never challenged myself. I was having fun and to me that was what was important.
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I was smart-straight As–but found boys and alcohol at the same time. And that was bad.
I don’t understand the problem.
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MH, it wasn’t that bad, but much like the Amish do, I was shunned.
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Ironic, given that the teenage years are the only time the Amish can use alcohol and date without being shunned.
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I am actually so traumatized by high school that I am finding it really hard to be there for my kids now that they are in high school. The reliving it by proxy is so horrifying to me that I have to force myself to do it. We live down south in a pretty conservative town and I have a daughter who is a cheerleader and honestly the cheer moms are worse than the daughters. (Recently, one girl told my daughter that her MOM told her to tell ME that I really shouldn’t wear yoga pants because I don’t have the butt for it. As if I have time for this . . . )
However, I think the NY magazine article is wrong when it says that the kids are sorting themselves out and they have no context or pattern for that. Um, no . .. When your kids are ORDERED to go a pep rally to cheer for the football players and no one is EVER ordered to go to a band concert to cheer for the band kids (who are probably still called ‘band fags’ without anyone getting called out for hate speech . . at least where I live), the kids understand that the administration prizes some kid’s participation in high school more than others. On Monday morning, when the PA system offers a heart congratulations to Jason (It’s always a Jason) for making that touchdown and doesn’t congratulate your kid for making all-state orchestra, that sends another pretty clear message to the students. And the fact that it’s pretty rare to ever meet a high school teacher who was a band geek, though pretty common to meet one who was a cheerleader helps to explain why the hierarchy is self-reinforcing, year after year after year.
For your information, I was an Aspie nerd who played the piano for four hours a day. I probably would have found a clique if my school had had more Asians. . .
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So, Louisa — the world really is different in my neck of the woods. Athletics does still play a big role in big high schools, but, as I’ve said before, our big local high school also has nationally ranked jazz bands, that get a fair amount of press. Now, the commonality of both of those is that they are performance activities. I think schools have a tough time supporting publicly the activities that can be watched (i.e. math competitions) and, so even in crunchy granola places, some activities get prioritized by the school over others, and sorting is reinforced by the school’s choices.
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I hung with the stoners and skipped so much that I was in danger of not graduating. Since I now have a PhD, it didn’t stick
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