I was popular in high school–but not with the popular kids.
I just graduated this year. My school was about 550 or so; 112 in my graduating class. The popular people made up about 20 percent of the school.
I was friends with the remaining 80 percent.
The popular people didn’t like me, I think, because I was a threat to them. I didn’t have to go out and get drunk and screw every football player to make people like me.
I was president of the drama club, secretary of the band, secretary-treasurer of the National Honor Society, captain of the scholar’s bowl team, vice-president of Student Council…I served in prom committees…I was the runner-up for Prom Queen.
I didn’t like high school, don’t get me wrong–I hated it. But I also didn’t whine and moan and wallow in my misery–I found cool people to be with, fun things to do–I enjoyed myself. I found what I wanted to do with my life–and now I’m putting it into action.
I don’t want to go back–I have some lovely memories–but I’m moving on. High school did not comprise my glory days–those are yet to come.
I attended two high schools that couldn’t have been more different. The first was a private day school in Seattle, 500 students k-12, 200 of them in the “Upper School” or grades 9-12. Mostly a disaster for me - many of the students had been there since elementary school, so by high school had formed what in essence was a single clique. I didn’t stand a chance, especially since my family was “well off” instead of rich. (We lived in a rather dowdy neighborhood, drove cheap cars, etc. - but I lacked for nothing, really.) It might have got better had I stayed there, but after tenth grade we moved to Maryland.
In Maryland the public schools were better, so I went to the local 2100+ high school. It was incredibly diverse, which kept it from turning in to Heathers or Pretty in Pink. The kids ranged from housing projects to lakeview estates, with all races well represented. The result was that although a “popular” clique existed, they weren’t terribly snotty; I functioned not only as a “nerdy” kid but as an out, gay kid with few problems (this was ca. 1985). Of course, one thing that helped was that a couple of my friends - both nerdy types - got national recognition (one one a writing contest, the other had an experiment launched on the space shuttle), so that glamour rubbed off on the rest of us.
I was tremendously lucky - surrounding schools were much whiter and consequently more heirarchical. Sadly, my old school’s been redistricted; new high schools siphoned away most of the white kids. (Indeed, nowadays I’d be attending one of the new schools, and probably wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable.)