Mmm…I’d have to say popular geek. I know about 3/4 of the school, am good friends with maybe 1/4.
I hang out with the entire spectrum: jocks, geeks (drama, PoliSci, art), nerds (gamers, anime, video gamers), stoners, losers, preps, goths, punks, gangstas; you name it, I’m probably friends with at the very least one of them.
I was like Sublight. Nebulous. I was in Drama (as a techie) so the popular kids liked me (all the popular kids were in drama club.
I STARTED the A/V club. Does that tell you anything?
I also edited the newspaper and the literary magazine and had my own op ed column. So the literati liked me.
The only group I didn’t get in with was the “inbreds” who seemed to congregate around the trashcans (we had an open campus with six buildings, so we spent a lot of time outside.), the girls were always fighting (and always seemed to have red hair pulled back in a pony tail so tight they couldn’t close their eyes completely and so greasy it looked like they hadn’t showered since last summer). They all knew my name, though.
I’m struck by this also.
By any objective standard, I actually had a tolerable time. I hung out with the theater crowd, so I had lots of fun friends. I never really connected with the “popular” kids; unlike the situation some other people have described, the theater group at our high school was not where the popular kids congregated. No, they went to the yearbook staff, where I also was, and the school newspaper, where I had a high profile and briefly controversial role. I was asked to play one of three characters on the homecoming float, and I was voted “most likely to win the Pulitzer” in the yearbook my senior year.
Sure, I was picked on, and had difficult times with difficult people. I didn’t care much for gym; I sucked at basketball and didn’t like showering with everybody. However, I wasn’t a total klutz, and I could be athletic when I wanted. I was regularly chosen in the top half of the team for soccer, kickball, softball, and whatnot when those were the class activities. Maybe it’s because people noticed how well I did during the yearly Presidential Physical Fitness trials; I always placed highly in almost all the categories.
So consider me another popular dork. I was called a brain and a nerd most of the time, but thankfully I didn’t get a lot of flak for it, and most of the people who “mattered” actually seemed to like me, more or less. I escaped a lot of the really horrible torments suffered by so many smart and geeky kids. Perhaps it’s because there were people even geekier than I was, further down the totem pole.
In fact — and I must say, I will be eternally shameful for this — I participated in some of the teasing of the kids further down. There was one guy in particular to whom we were merciless, and who wound up shooting himself as a result. For about three seconds, we were shocked, but when it turned out he’d made what we thought at the time was a muddle of it (he shot himself in the stomach, and then went for help), we made fun of him for that. “The stupidhead can’t even kill himself right!” I feel like a complete shitheel for what we put him through, and I hope he turned out okay. There aren’t enough apologies in the world to make up for what an asshole I was to that guy.
I have no idea what happened to him, because I don’t keep in regular touch with a single person with whom I went to high school. There are a few of them around, and we’re cordial when we occasionally run into each other (and there are a couple I should probably make a point of contacting again, so I don’t lose them), but my circle of friends in those years has nothing to do with my circle of friends now. College folks made a much bigger impression on my life.
I’m not really getting that from the replies; some, yes, but hardly everone. I certainly didn’t mean to impart that, and several other posters have indicated otherwise as well.
High School? 1974 - 1977.
My brother and I were Misfits. There were only about 5 or six of us. We were weird. Very weird.
One girl in our group thought she was a witch. Really. She eventually came out of the closet, moved to Texas and got a girlfriend. Another guy was the stereotypical nerd - a white Urkel, if you will. Complete with hi-water pants! The rest of us were just weirdos - not smart enough to be nerds, not athletic enough to be jocks, not cool enough to be Beautiful People. Although we were Professors’ kids, we didn’t fit in with them either (they were ususally the Nerds). The only people to talk to us were the lowest on the economic scale … poor rednecks or black folk.
High School was not as bad as junior high, but we were harrassed and teased just the same. I don’t know why the teachers didn’t try to do anything about it; maybe they, too, were intimidated by the ‘ruling class’ made up of the children of the local merchants.
I never looked back. If I happen to see some of my former tormentors in Wal Mart back home, I stare right through them. I got invitations to a few reunions, but I threw them in the trash.
I wouldn’t pi$$ on those jerks if they were on fire.
My highschool was a little strange. Grade 9, I was picked on every now and then by this one girl and this one guy. *cuz I was chubby) In grade 10, both of them either dropped out or changed schools, so I was relieved to ol hell. From then on I had a much easier time. Grade 10-11 I still walked on egg-shells around certain groups just cuz I wanted to avoid any embarrassment of any kind. Gr’s 12-13 (i live in ontario where they just now got ride of gr13), were pretty great. I live in a small town and my highschool was pretty small. The cool kids were made up of many kids I went to elementary school with, so we’d actually talk cuz they knew I was nice. I was nice to everyone so often times lots of the “cool” kids would want favours from me. (mostly because I was labeled as smart). Highschool was tough sometimes because my best friend went from boyfriend to boyfriend and I was sort of left to the side. My group of friends was consisted of about 11 or 12 people, very few boys mostly girls. We weren’t the losers (the losers were the people in band), we were sort of in the middle I guess. It was sort of funny cuz my cousin was in the stoner group and my other cousin was in the jock/popular group. Us 3 being in different groups got a lot of , “wait wait… you’re related!!!” hah.
I was a fairly popular among many different groups, but never a “cool kid” kid.
All in all High School was an enjoyable and memorable time for me.
Ukelele Ike, likewise we had no stoner subset (1972-76) but we did have a jock/freak sort of thing going.
I was on the newspaper, in AP lit, on the debate team and engaged in advanced smoking lounge so I fell into the freak subset. If I ever went to a reunion (I think 30 must be coming up), I doubt half a dozen people would remember me and I know I wouldn’t recognize even those thoughtful souls.
Like Whistle pig, I passed everything but the AP English (A) and newspaper (A) with a D.
All I wanted for the entire experience was for it to be mercifully over, but looking back on it, it wasn’t all that bad (wouldn’t care to do it over though).
Graduated MCL from college (sixth out of 485).
Small business owner now.
I’ve blanked most of it out, suffice to say I’m tall, I wear glasses, I have stick out ears, “fat” lips [I hear women are paying a fortuen to get stuff injected into theirs these days], and lived in the “posh” part of town.
I was an outcast
Geeky, slightly chubby, loner-by-choice, drama nerd, fundie softball jock. Does that even remotely make sense? Oh, and I hardly ever attended unless I absolutely had to. I’m pretty sure from Junior High on, that I practically missed every Monday and Friday weekly. But I did keep a high B average and sometimes even hit an A or two. Go figure.
Ah, I don’t miss it at all.
I actually found out that I was in college 
A mutual friend of one of my college friends and I was intrigued to learn that while we’d gone to high school together, we didn’t become friends until after that. To me the reason was clearly that this friend’s best friend thought I was sleeping with her boyfriend (ha!) and conveyed a message through one of her minions, so I avoided all her friends, period. Eventually she realized her best friend is a moron and dropped her. Before I could explain something to that effect my friend said the reason we weren’t friends in high school was that she wasn’t popular enough to hang out with me and my friends. Go figure.
I hung out with the “smart kids,” you know the national honor society/ top 10% of their class types. I didn’t plan it that way, it just ended up that more than 80% of the people I liked were honor students too. Since some of the most popular kids were also very bright (that’s not supposed to happen, is it?) a lot of the cool kids liked me (because I wasn’t afraid to be independent, they claimed) , which apparently made me cooler by extension. I think the fact that a lot more people knew who I was than I knew who they were sums it up.
Up until grade 8 (1985) or so: nerd.
Then my sister gave me the mid-eighties preppy makeover. It kind of worked, but I was still considered a bit of a nerd until midway through the tenth grade (1988).
Then I became the musical-producing drama department fag of Gloucester High School. Stayed that way until I graduated in 1990.
I went to my ten-year reunion a couple of years ago, and I totally queened it up. (Karaokeing to “Dancing Queen” wearing a tiara - I think that sums it up, don’t you?) The most startling thing was how well it went over, and how everyone seemed to want to talk to me and reminisce, and just generally chat.
Most of the girls looked good - even having had kids - and quite a few of the guys still looked pretty good, some even better - but a good portion of the guys were fat and balding. Already. And I loved that, because I. Looked. Fabulous.
God, I love being gay.
I don’t think that a lot of the people I went to school with considered themselves outsiders–after all I went to pre-school and graduated with the some of the same folks, so there were some tight friendships. My guess would be that this group would skew towards the outsiders/nerds/geeks/drifters, because of the nature of the board and the nature of he net i.e. people who are drawn to the net and message boards, and can feel safe here because the interactions that they have with others can be easily controlled (if someone annoys them, you can ignore them or report them or move on). So, there is going to be a statistical anomaly based on the population sample.
My experience was a combination of Sublight’s and Blonde’s, with a dash of dantheman thrown in for good measure.
Started out as a geek, complete with playing in the marching band. :eek: After freshman year I found drugs, and much popularity ensued. I became friends with the stoners, hippies, drama people (cast parties ruled), “regular people”, school-spirit types, arty types, motorheads, geeks; I had friends in just about every group, even including a couple jocks and cheerleaders.
My parents would take a 2 week vacation every year, and often a long weekend a couple times per year, and by my junior year I was rivaling the great party houses of my highschool. (We’re talking seriously fun, big parties…multiple kegs, 5 foot bong, neighbors complaining, cops coming, you get the picture.)
Alas, I ended up not going to classes anymore. Unlike Blonde, who apparently managed every other class, I would go to maybe 4 classes per week, spending huge tracts of time outside in the smoker’s lounge hacking. (I’m frighteningly good at keeping that stupid sack of pellets in the air…so sad.) More often than not I’d bail shortly after arriving and go to the park/beach/wherever.
It’s a good thing I was popular in HS, as any college aspirations were literally up in smoke. I squeaked out with a diploma doing a work-study internship for my entire senior year, and graduated 10 credits shy of the required 23.
Same with me, the teachers did f*ck all. I only found this out later, but when I was in primary school my parents were in the headmistresses office at least once a week because I would come home in tears. Don’t trust teachers, they’ll only help as far as they can without falling out with the Beautiful People.
My status? Nonexistent. Well, actually that is not altogether true: by junior or senior year I was at least not being actively picked on most of the time, and once I went out for a walk and some random kids invited me to a party. It says a lot, however, that I didn’t even consider going because I assumed the invitation was a joke. Ten years later, I kinda wish I had … but then again, maybe I knew better at the time.
Lousy time of life. If I ever have kids of my own, I’m giving serious thought to packing up when they’re twelve and taking them on a six-year expedition to Antarctica.
I was the nerd, geek, loser, etc. but that was only freshman and sophmore years because I tried really hard to be “cool”. by junior and senior I just didn’t care anymore. I never became popular, but at least I wasn’t being picked on so much.
I think at many schools popularity is inversely correlated with intelligence. I think intelligent people find it a lot harder to do the mindless things that are typically required of a popular person (eg. pick on everyone who is different, shoplift etc).
I am always amazed and saddened by how long it takes for the scars of high school to heal. At the moment in my city there is an anti-bullying thing happening, but we need so much more. I would really like to see self-esteem and other mental health issues introduced into the curriculum, along with the physical health stuff like the healthy diet pyramid.
I’m still in high school, but…
I’m mostly a freak/punk. The preppy kids hate me, but not so much that they pick on me or anything, they just completely ignore me, which makes me happy, quite frankly.
I have alot of friends from most of the cliques and I’m pretty happy with my status.
Like androyd_nyc, I went to a Jesuit boys’ school, and likewise found the social dynamics to be notably different from what I remembered from junior high or from what I heard from people who went to public high schools. What you looked like, the clothes you wore, whether you had the right friends — these were not important.
My first three years in high school I was pretty much a loner, spending lunch hours reading in the library or cafeteria, and neglecting to make any friends. Senior year was my remedial year for socialization. I came out of my shell, made friends, did fun things with them, met girls. What a difference. This high school thing was great!
Memorable moment when we lined up to register for senior prom. When I got to the table, I gave my name and the name of one of the most popular girls at a girls’ school in town. Lots of surprised looks from my fellow classmates. As I walked away, I sighed and thought, “Well, now all I have to do is ask her.” (She said yes!)