What crowd did you hang out with at school ?

The popular crowd was all sporty, as I remember. I still can't throw a ball with any success...

masonic is all you do watch this forum?

at least i tried, and failed to go to a performance art thang this evening. Trekked all the way to the delle alpi and it was sold out. Crazy. the place was like the size of Olympia and it was performance art from barcellona.

I was never on the homecoming court or anything. That was my oldest brother's thing (in 1981, no less!).

There was the "artsy" crowd who all worked on the school newspaper, acted in the school dramas, listened to indie music and hung out in the art studio. I desperately wanted to be part of this clique, but they branded me "too weird" and wanted nothing to do with me. (Much later, I found out that they were jealous of my English accent, my trans-European childhood, and the fact that my standardised test scores were all hundreds of points above theirs. Everything the "psuedo-intellectuals" were pretending to be, I'd actually done, and that threatened them. The knowledge of this, at the age of 30, doesn't help your inner 13 year old.)

Then there was the stoner, smoking lounge, bad kids crowd. At some point, I don't remember exactly how- I think I helped one of the girls pass a Spanish test or something- they discovered that I was the perfect "trip toy" because I had an endless useless repository of "wow..." type knowledge, I knew the collected lyrics of every comedy song ever, and subsequently adopted me, almost as their mascott, despite the fact that I was totally straight edge and didn't even at that point. My grades went to hell in a handbag, but I was having fun and feeling accepted for the first time in my life.

Chicks thought I was sweet.

Was my school the only school where the theatre/arts crowd WAS The In Crowd?? I'm curious, I mean even jocks had things to do with the theatre program at my school. That was where it was at. Did I go to a weird school? Granted, I only went to junior high so maybe if I went to high school it would've been different.

My mom didn't think yes though and signed me up for college. Sign #2 (besides that whole milk debacle) that the AZ education system is crap: I WAS ALLOWED TO SIGN UP. I never took a GED (indeed I didn't until a few years later). I didn't have anything to say I graduated high school, and I didn't lie and said I did. I didn't lie about my age either, 15. They just didn't care! It was fantastic.

Not that I finished college either. It was even more bullshit than high school, just expensive instead of free. I didn't need it in the end anyhow.

My story probably mirrors MelissaW's the closest (but without the traumatizing / interesting bits). There was a bit of social miscegenation between cliques (the theatre / jock / smart crowd; the jock / shop / smoker crowd). I didn't really belong to any of them, though. Once upon a time, I was exceedingly smart to the point that I'd go to higher grade-level classes in elementary school to take math courses - out of place in both my age peer group and my intellectual peer group. Set a bad precedent. Being pudgy and introverted helped tons, too. And you can throw a broken-home-all- alone cherry on top of that, too. (Broken-home in the upper middle class sense, mind you.)

The odd thing is that I'm friends with the same 4 or 5 people that I was in school with for about 14 years - Grades 1 through 12, and even a couple of years of college (before apathy and mild depression kicked in & I got myself booted from campus). We all live about 15 minutes from each other (just by happenstance). It's nice, but I am hoping to get out of this state in the next couple of years. (Hey! There's a Life Goal for me!)

But, yeah - hung mostly with the brainy crowd (though I brought up the rear in terms of actual brainy results), then tried oh-so- desperately (in a lazy way) to get in with the "cooler" kids. Oh, lord. Never really a comfortable member of any clique (though I desperately wanted to belong). Then, lost interest in EVERYTHING (excepting comic books & sleeping & feeling sorry for myself) to the point that I'd be half-way down my street, see the bus stop at the end, and turn around & walk back home. Came very close to not graduating high school because of my attendance record.

My 10 year reunion is in 2003. The 5 year was interesting, in that the cliques that were represented at the reunion slid into place as people arrived. And, when the "cool kids" got drunk, they started chatting up the "nerds" (my posse), reminiscing about this & that, apologizing for this & that, getting all buddy-buddy. It would've been funny if it weren't so pathetic.

I'm also curious to see how many of you had these horrendous experiences at state schools, religious schools or private schools? Going to private school was supposed to spare me all the horror of being accademically advanced (I started school a year early because school in the UK starts earlier, then proceeded to skip a grade once I got to the US) but it only introduced me to a brave new world of snobbery.

Anyway -- Jesus fucking Christ, did all you people go to school in specially delineated _Lord of the Flies_-meets-_1984_ zones or something? I'm not trying to be insulting, I'm mostly just horrified! I experienced nothing like the personal levels of hell a fair amount of you seemed to go through. Frightening. I agree with Ally that school was tres boring -- final year, I was doing nothing but reading novels all the time in all my classes, pretty much -- but there were enough good experiences to offset that, including stints with the drama crew (acting roles in _The Skin Of Our Teeth_ and _The Music Man_ -- and I have the latter on tape! ack!), Academic Decathlon fun (*very* geeky, but very fun -- we won the San Diego city championship, yow!) and some very sly, smart teachers, especially in English lit.

I guess for me everything schoolwise just sort of came naturally, to do good work and all, due to family upbringing and all that. I really am a perfect fusion of my parents in ways -- both dedicated to education and bringing critical thinking to bear, though my dad's a more straight arrow guy (a career Navy officer, a deeply but not oppressively religious man) and my mom's a brilliantly witty cynic, an open atheist who thinks American society is essentially comprised of bigoted fools. This explains why I'm an Eagle Scout but loathe the Scouting Association, for fairly obvious reasons these days, I should hope.

(This has obviously happened to Nick Dastoor. He was popular at school.)

Melissa, Emerson has probably the best communications/journalism/theater departments in Boston. If you've got a passing interest in any of those fields, you're SO in the right place. Plus, they own a castle in the Netherlands where the send kids to study abroad. Don't knock it 'til you get there!

I'd actually have a hard time describing the popular crowd - there was definitely an emphasis on preppy clothing (mid-80s) and money- worshipping attitudes and certain hip sports (skiing, windsurfing, tennis), but I'd probably be tossing together people who saw each other as being in very different camps - the preppy types, the tougher kids in the smoking section... they were all *THEM* to me at the time.

I moved away after my GCSE's, but on the few times I visited afterwards all the people who'd been hyper-cool and therefore hyper- unpleasant were alarmingly nice to me, especially after I'd gone up to Cambridge.

I spent more than half of my school days at college for the last two years of high school. I didn't hang out with most of the high school students anyway before that, and I didn't hang out with the college students (I was kind of nervous about sticking out, so I just kept my mouth shut mostly - I didn't look that young) either. I was still involved in some stuff like computers, band, and art, so I was friendly with a bunch of people, but we didn't do much outside of school, except for one guy and I who ended up being roommates in college, and the girl I started dating my junior year, who I spent all the rest of my time with.

I was already a little awkward around people when I started leaving to go to college, but doing so didn't make me any worse. By the time I was settled in it didn't seem like I'd lost anything due to the time not spent doing teenager stuff. Oh. Except not being in the National Honor Society, which I was pretty pissed off about before I went to college. I didn't actually want to, like, participate in it, just have it on my records (not that they knew this since I never got in), but I was passed over every year in favor of the clean-cut students with good grades, lots of activities (sports, too, notably), and, er, good attitudes. I guess my teachers thought I was a little petulant and aloof (I don't think I was all that bad!). It baffled all the students I knew who got in, too - they would get their announcements, and then - "what? why didn't you get one, Josh? That's not right." etc. My senior year, I found out from some friendly teachers that I'd been nominated by the board of teachers, but the vote went against me (from teachers I hadn't even had in years, hmm) - in the process finding out that our chapter hadn't done the selection the right way and that because of that they couldn't even be a chapter according to their dumbass bylaws. So I complained, even with the NHS person going to bat for me, but the administration decided it would be too much trouble to vote again. Instead of doing the right thing they decided to just placate me at graduation. So I had to stand up with the valedictorian (I couldn't be that because they wouldn't weight my grades either, you know, so my ASTROPHYSICS and shit could compete with the people who had to drop egg contraptions off the bleachers in the gym for their physics class, etc., but I swear I wasn't aloof), and they pointed out how even though they had given out a bunch of their other awards already, I was the first National Merit Scholar our school had produced, and then we sat down and it was all very nice.

Hmmm, I'm starting to remember some of why I didn't like high school.

There were these obscenely rich kids who were called "socialites" but no one paid attention to them except to humor them by putting them on Homecoming Court, I don't know if you could call them "popular", they were just rich and glamorous and the frequent subject of tawdry gossip. One thing was that my h.s. had the cliche where the cute blond football star and the cute blond cheerleader started dating freshman year, then they became homecoming king and queen, and they're *still* married, almost twenty years later. Puke.

But this was boarding school, where this sort of clique stuff works weirdly anyway - you simply can't avoid other people in the same way. The place I was at has six big communal living spaces, and a boy in the top year runs each of them, picking who out of the rest of the boys lives there. So you actually got, if you were one of these six, to carve out your own all-ages clique.

I operated mine as a kind of geek pride fiefdom, trying in semi- utopian fashion (tempered by my being a neurotic adolescent and an occasional bastard but oh well) to give the less popular kids some space and self-respect. So for instance I'd spend every Tuesday night sitting up doing a gossippy-satirical newsletter lionising these people's absurd exploits, with enough juicier stuff in it that most of the other kids would come in and read it, and in this way our little space acquired a kind of weird inverse cool. (And let's be honest I've been chasing that vibe ever since, hence FT and all its works).

Plus that old standby: - He acts much harder online than in real life.

As for academically, the work is mostly quite dull but there are ways around it. I've quit taking English and history as electives because they're always dull and silly and those are the subjects I want the most out of; I'll get more reading and writing on my own. I'm sticking to music (v. good in my school), the sciences and, disgustingly, maths, because they're going to have much more trouble screwing those up.

also I'm a leery cynical old trollop

High school was a very positive experience for me. Mainly b/c I threw myself into it with complete abandon because I had a very horrible abusive home life. I loved school and my teachers and never wanted to leave.

I mean that's so sad and macho, respecting success. I hung around with the stoners I guess but my best friends were always similar enough to me. Stephen, who I mentioned before, sat beside me for 5 years so we get on. He's doing Computers in the same College as me. I hung around alot with my friends from where I live aswell, I still do. It's interesting because theres like a different Ronan for all of them, not in a bad way as such. I mean my school friends knew me as a kind of a lazy cynic type character. My home friends are scared to introduce me to their girlfriends in case I insult them, which says it all. In fact one of them said this morning that he "wanted to meet the girl who showed I have a soul". Fucking thanks for the vote of confidence there. Then theres my college friends who see me as your average drunken student, and the class slut apparently. Class slut? I mean how much can images change between friends? My college friends are certainly the cool people from my class. We sit around and take the piss out of the rest of the class when they try to dance to the shit music in The Palace nightclub. Or at least we used to. Sigh.

Er anyway, theres a nice essay for you all.

hey this who i really hung out with @ Timaru Boys High in the late '70s - Phil Howe, he's now the director of the museum there & about 2x a year he gets his picture in the loXal pape doing that gag that museum guys always do when they get their piXture in the pape, you know w/ the magnifying glass held in front of 1 eye; & Kev Smith, you know who that is? (typical Smithy fansite for if you dunno of whom i speak, I predict that if you click on this link you will see my man withoout his shirt on & with all baby oil or whatever that stuff is all over his rippling biceps within 2 or 3 clicks. Hot stuff, no doubt!)

I definitely had a role in school and it was School Newspaper Columnist mixed with art, music and fashion arbiter (people who were more conformist in that rich way would laugh at my clothes for being weird but I would give capsule lessons in Pucci/Gucci/Fiorucci if they said stuff to my face). I was not sporty but could run FAST. So no real change there. I had a clique of oddball ex-geeks and gifted/talented kids to hang out with, we did theatre, went to Rocky Horror, played civil disobedience games in commercial space and two or three of us would bring our copies of Blitz, the Face and the British music press or plot which new-wave soundcheck we were going to go to (we were not old enough to go to First Avenue so would hang out, meet the group, get them to let us in to their soundcheck to watch a few songs and then go home with signed records and big smiles). I didn't drink or smoke so we were essentially 'good kids' but were deemed incorrigible by the more martinet members of staff (our allies in the faculty just laughed and told us we were 15 going on 35) and could bullshit our way out of ANY situation.

Despite the rocky start, I had a great time.

^ me in high school

I refused to go to my reunion. But I did read the little packet that came beforehand and listed what everyone's occupation is. So many of them said "owner of blah blah" or "CEO of blah blah company," and my friend who did go to the reunion said all of them are full of shit. They run their own mostly failing businesses out of their home. Nobody tells the truth anymore. So when I got a letter asking for a personal update for the alumni newsletter, I wrote:"married and divorced 4 times, mother of 16, living in a trailer with two rooms but 5 tvs. Haven't worked in 6 years as I prefer living off welfare or the money I make giving head to CEO's of failing home businesses." They never printed it.

-- michele, Friday, 29 June 2001 00:00 (6 years ago) Link

awesome

I was filled with a sense of dread about going to high school for most of my first year, due to mean mallrat girls. No, not the popular/sporty girls or the Jewish American Princesses, rather the ones who'd hang around in the toilets or by the railroad tracks smoking. I was top of the school in English and really didn't care about much else, and wrote plays and novels in notebooks which the nasty girls would steal. I was mortified but always had a stylish way with a put-down eg. 'why bother stealing books if you can't read?' I've said before, the Queen Of Minneapolis Punk thought I walked it like I talked it and befriended me one night at a theatre-kids' party and my bullying stopped. Maybe this had to do with a few of my tormentors becoming Teen Pregnancy Statistics and my elementary-school best friend being the biggest of the leftover stoners.
I definitely had a role in school and it was School Newspaper Columnist mixed with art, music and fashion arbiter (people who were more conformist in that rich way would laugh at my clothes for being weird but I would give capsule lessons in Pucci/Gucci/Fiorucci if they said stuff to my face). I was not sporty but could run FAST. So no real change there. I had a clique of oddball ex-geeks and gifted/talented kids to hang out with, we did theatre, went to Rocky Horror, played civil disobedience games in commercial space and two or three of us would bring our copies of Blitz, the Face and the British music press or plot which new-wave soundcheck we were going to go to (we were not old enough to go to First Avenue so would hang out, meet the group, get them to let us in to their soundcheck to watch a few songs and then go home with signed records and big smiles). I didn't drink or smoke so we were essentially 'good kids' but were deemed incorrigible by the more martinet members of staff (our allies in the faculty just laughed and told us we were 15 going on 35) and could bullshit our way out of ANY situation.

Despite the rocky start, I had a great time.

-- suzy

christ i'm glad she didn't go to my school

i have to go to my reunion. i'm scared. i loved those people but i was terrified of them as well.

should be intersting!

i hung out with some preps, some stoners, some dweebs. i hung out with teachers even.

Oh, it will be fun. No one cares. Most people, I would imagine, will be bent upon getting drunk and just having a "good time"...so just enjoy!

omgosh i'll b so fucking excitd actually. wow.

I thought mine would be full of public-school knobs trying to outdo each other. Fortunately only 5% of the reunion formed a oneupmanship corner and spent the night snobbing off the other 95%, who were content to be pleasant to each other and just have a really good night.

i don't think i'd even recognise anyone i went to school with.

i hung out with nerds. if only i'd taken up the guitar five years earlier things could have been very different

nerds r alwayz good

I went to a tiny private high school (50 people total) and didn't get along with most of those 50. I got along best with people in the grade ahead of me, and I ended up skipping my junior year and graduating with them. Popularity in that school was determined by how much the principal liked you, and she didn't like me much- constantly calling my parents in because the "popular" kids liked to tell her that I was on drugs (I wasn't.) She wouldn't let me be valedictorian of the class I skipped into, even though I had the highest grades, because one of her pets was apparently slated to be valedictorian. It was a seriously screwed up place and only got more screwed up after I left. Thank goodness I got out when I did. Last year was supposed to be my 10 year reunion, but we didn't have one.

intense!

weird.

I got called down to "the office" on more than one occasion on the suspicion that I was "on drugs", which I never was at the time.

i got called down to the office for that reason as well.

the dean, she grew to like me quite a bit!

band fags and D&D/board game nerds. these were generally the same people most of the time, slight overlap with some girls who were also in band, and theater dorks from time to time during my last two years. In a school pop of 2000+ it wasn't too difficult to find a sizable clique and stick to it without catching abuse from anyone else

I remember at one point, we were talking about the transcendentalists in philosophy class, and the principal was sitting in on the class. She added to the discussion that sometimes they did drugs, and "I'd know about that, right?" I wish my high school life were as interesting as the kids in my school told her it was. I was apparently out late at night, smoking, drinking, doing drugs, and stealing stuff. In reality, I was at home on IRC.

When I was at school we had to rely on bulletin boards whilst waiting for the web to come out.

what a fucking bitch. if someone told me that in class i'd bitch her out and get my parents involved. damn.

xp

wau, these stories are funny.

In my senior year of high school I largely isolated myself from others, with the comfort of mind that most of my friends attended other schools in the area. I ended up hanging out with people who were of some loose ex-skateboarder/punkrock general smart-ass contingent. To this day I maintain that those guys were funny as hell...but I'm not in touch with any of them anymore.

One of the weirdest compliments(?) that I hold close to me in some werid way is when a friend from that odd assortment of kids remarked to me how he admired that through the years I was the sole exception to any of those dudes in terms of having some "punk rock" or "skater" haircut or whatever passed for such at the time, or even dressing along such lines. Obv., on the occasion of my twenty-year reunion I will show up with sides shaved and bangs running down to my chin, and approximating whatever is the reigning alt. sartorial choice of the moment.

omartm

My school was the largest in our area, but it was still out in the boondocks, so we were all kind of in it together. I played football and track but was somehow still down with drama people and farm kids and academic nerds and Mormon preps and band peoples. (HAI TOM I PLAYED TROMBONZ TOO.) There were a few tough guys who hated my guts because they thought I was an asshole, but they had mostly graduated/dropped out by junior year, so I didn't even have to avoid Lower B hall anymore. (Still can't believe I only had one fight in high school. Didn't do very well.) My best friends were mostly the most sarcastic braniacs from whatever cliques they were forced into.

xpost

i never even took any elective art classes, though. these were just the guys that i ate lunch with. cue much snorting out of chocolate milk or whatever b/c the company and the disruptions caused by them were infinitely more entertaining then the food

am i the only one who like didn't really hang out with typical jock/nerd/stoner groups? not like "we were different that you can't put a label on us lol" but like we listened to the strokes and sometimes played basketball and sometimes smoked weed on the weekends

idk

weren't really all that cool but weren't "loosers"

i had a pretty great time in hs, i feel genuinely bad for ppl who didn't since i actually enjoyed hs more than i do college

er losers

In a school pop of 2000+ it wasn't too difficult to find a sizable clique and stick to it without catching abuse from anyone else

-- El Tomboto, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 3:10 AM

same here. hung out with the public speaking/debate group & the newspaper staff. they were good times, though i probably won't go to any reunions only because i'm still in touch with everyone i want to keep contact with, and no one i knew is gonna go anyway.

In a school pop of 2000+ it wasn't too difficult to find a sizable clique and stick to it without catching abuse from anyone else

-- El Tomboto, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 3:10 AM

^^i missed this but applies to me too, except in a school w/ a pop of 3500 it was even an easier

am i the only one who like didn't really hang out with typical jock/nerd/stoner groups? not like "we were different that you can't put a label on us lol" but like we listened to the strokes and sometimes played basketball and sometimes smoked weed on the weekends

idk

-- J0rdan S., Wednesday, 30 January 2008 14:44 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

weren't really all that cool but weren't "loosers"

i had a pretty great time in hs, i feel genuinely bad for ppl who didn't since i actually enjoyed hs more than i do college

-- J0rdan S., Wednesday, 30 January 2008 14:44 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I kind of know what you mean, except we didn't play basketball (played rugby tho, but everyone did at my school) and there was no Strokes. And we didn't abbreviate words as much.

And we didn't abbreviate words as much.

-- W4LTER, Tuesday, January 29, 2008 9:52 PM (1 second ago) Bookmark Link

must not have communicated much through instant messenger than either

eh, the people I'm talking about, like, we would play basketball a lot of days after school, and ppl would get stoned and stuff. they were some unclassifiable bunch, ultimately. at least one guy was on the football team at some point, while some of us were heavily invested in punk rock goings-on, while still others skateboarded on a casual level but really seemed ultimately invested in recalling lines from random a-team episodes or something. so maybe there was a common stoner/drug bond, or something, but mostly i think it was a fairly motley crew. but seriously, it was just a bunch of random weirdoes. the most common bond was probably based on some attitude of making fun of everything, w/o exception, which, granted, sounds much like yr typical lol hs experience...but, these guys stood out somehow, i dunno...

also, these guys were omnipresent at whatever big parties were going down on the wknds, so i guess that would disqualify them from "nerd" status...

ha! no

xp

lol 2 of the three guys I mentioned upthread now post to ILX

I hung out with Dan and the three friends he mentions; also pretty much anyone else in the theater department. My closest friends were not in my graduating class.

The "popular clique" at school was civil to me because my little sister was part of it (uh, with the exception of one particular girl). I suspect that I was viewed as hopelessly nerdy and fixated on books.

high school was, and i felt this at the time but wldn't have articulated it in this way, like going to a job i didn't really like but needed and hey it was good experience for the future right? uh. and wld be over soon enough though it was sometimes stressful but not the centre of my life. in that way everyone was just one big crowd and in it were some friends and a lot of aquaintances and a bunch of people i just never had a chance to talk to for whatever reason. i don't even think we had a 'popular crowd.' i don't even know if we had crowds/cliques. it was a big school though, so i guess we did. i mostly just did my job.

god i don't know, by the time i was 16, i think i just read a lot of books, watched a lot of tv, did family stuff like swimming or shopping or whatever, did some school/community theatre and volunteer things, did a lot of late-night last-minute studying, poetry writing, and had sex with my boyfriend and listened to college radio. sometimes hung out with a few other people and smoked weed and/or went to movies or shows or walked around downtown/parks. i mean, wtf do you really do in highschool?

oh and sports stuff
how i watched SO MUCH TV SO MUCH i have no idea

wtf do you really do in highschool

My strategy was sign up for whatever activities would keep me out of the house and away from my parents. "Sure I'll stage manage/build a set for/prompt the actors in/whatever else you want me to do for your play, as long as I can be at school until 10 p.m. every night..."

(Not that my parents are soooooo bad, I just didn't exactly fit in with my family and felt that very acutely.)

my 10 year reunion is this year, shit. also my high school best friend is making me go. i also watched so much tv (exp jerry springer) and ate lots of nachos and dunkin donuts.

i ate so many nachos!

(there was a costco near our house in gr 11 & 12 - hueg cheese, huge bags of chips)

i didn't go to my 10-yr reunion b/c it was way out there and i was way out here and yknow maybe i'm mean but lame parties are lame

yes
NACHOS + TV
those were the days

haha oh how times they have changed lol

batcavers

for my english class i got to perform tom's "light fantastic" speech from "the glass menagerie," that shit was fun.

hey robyn, oven-baked fancyass chips and old chedder still = nachos!
tv on internet still = tv!
xpost to self

i think i need to make some drastic life changes

lol @ BIG HOOS reminiscing about LIL HOOS

that was like 3 years ago for you right?

my life was basically music - i played trumpet like 3 hrs a day - swim team and studying :-/
my family had like no money and i was all worried about not being able to pay for college w/out grades and shit. shouldnt have worried so much

i wasnt really in a clique or whatever, ended up w/ friends from lots of different groups of people

my school was also weird cuz its only like 40% white so the normal 'jocks rule the school' thing was thrown off by racial/economic polarity + disparity. lots of the kids who were jocks were also pretty academically ambitious

I lived in a co-ed boarding house and went to a girls' high school.

Boarding house: fun for dances and barbecues, staying out past curfew, sleeping on the beach, no parents, living with great friends, some of whom were in college and let us younger ones hang out with them sometimes. My boarding-housemates were the people I was closest to and hung out with at the time, not so much my actual high school friends.

High school: Mostly boring and/or bitchy. I was on the dance team, and had lots of friends but wasn't particularly close to any one group. I guess some people saw me as a nerd cause I was on scholarship but it wasn't a big deal. Other than that, it was kind of a blur.