High school is a combat zone. Perhaps incognito, high school is vile in all ways, shapes, and forms. High school is destruction of humanity. From blondes to redheads, nerds to football players, and albinos to bronzed beauties, there is no fair play. The people we hang out with show who we “truly are”. And automatically we are put into cliques. These cliques define us, and we are only to hang out with them. Right? Every school has their own cliques of people; the nerds, the jocks, the preps, the fresas, the freaks, the Goths and etc. We usually follow the high school trend, and keep into our own group. Why do we do this? Is it because we are scared to hang out with people who are below our social standing? And afraid they will corrupt our reputation? Who really knows? We just follow what we have learned to do, and created these groups of people. I suppose you could say there will always be those girls, who think they are better than everyone else, just because the have a lot of money. They My freshman year I took part in the production of a musical and fell in love with the cast. It was amazing how they made me feel so welcomed. I felt like I belonged. The seniors took me under their wing and guided me through the year. And then people started telling me, “Oh you hang out with the drama people,” “ Oh your in drama.” And I didn’t understand why it was such a bad thing. For the musical we needed actors of all shapes and sizes, therefore bringing in football players, the drill team, and other forms of people were necessary. We quickly bonded and became a big family. We all shared a passion for this musical we were producing and we all cared about each other. At that point a lot changed. We started tearing pieces away from the “High school status quo”. We proved that anyone could hang out together. I guess you can say there will always be those “popular girls.” The ones that think they are better than you, and can make you do whatever they want. Those girls really don’t see the cliques in high school because they are to busy with their own people.
High school can be a place full of cliques and groups of friends but some people aren’t always in cliques. If there is a person who doesn’t always like the same things as other people they might not fit in with a group of people. In high school a person may become different and not find a group of friends that they fit in with. With no group of friends a person in high school may start to become an outcast. Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of Speak used Melinda to show that any high school student can become an outcast.
Students are labeled and are not allowed to change "their worlds". Students hang out only with people who look, dress, and live like themselves.There are nerds, freaks, cholos, etc. There's the Math Club, Prep Club, Latin Club, Physics Club for students who belong.
Recent studies show that high school students no longer only talk to, and/or become friends with the stereotypical cheerleader, jock, or band geek that they are, but rather look much farther than that. Maybe a quarterback does not understand his algebra class, and his nerd of a classmate wants to learn how to throw a perfect spiral for physics. Tradeoff. The quarterback asks the nerd to help him, and visa-versa. Wait a minute. They actually had fun together, and are now fr...
People these days, especially teens, hold themselves to the standards society advertises. Everywhere you look, there are stereotypes and images of what a person should be, according to society. There are many cliques that offer these easy fit in standards, but school is not the only place that the pressure to fit in is affected. You can be uncovered through your efforts to blend in, thus causing you many problems as you try to make it through high school without a couple bruises.
Every person has different personalities that they develop during different stages in life. Many personalities start with parents and how they educate their children. That is the basis of who someone is. Once you get older you start to finally try and figure out who you are. High school can be either the best or the worst place to figure it out. High school is usually thought of a new scary place when starting freshmen year. There are kids who will be older and you will meet different types of people that you might have never met before. The way parents treat their kids can affect their school life. Meaning that if student’s lives at home are not good living conditions that can cause a gap between other students at school. The movie Carrie made in 1976, Carrie was bullied at school but also in way by the hands of her mother who also bullied her at home.
For many of us, when asked “what social group do you fit in?” it may not take much time to identify our place in the society. Some people may respond being apart of a higher class, an artistic crowd, or just look around to their friends to say “I’m with these guys”. Being social may come as natural to most of us, yet why be social? Why be apart of a crowd? And how do the people you associate with affect you? Thinking about why your friend is your friend can help answer these questions. For instance, I became very close friends with someone at my school because they work at Chipotle. My reasoning for associating with this person is discounts. It is common for people to form relationships based on dependence, many teens wouldn’t associate with
Cliques and Outsiders The Emotional Trauma That is Fitting In Be afraid. Be very afraid. Wipe that goofy smile off your face. Whether you know it or not, that clawing, itching, quaking sensation seething beneath your skin is the feeling churning inside you every time someone of a superior clique comes rumbling down the halls, a contemptuous sneer playing on his lips. But whatever you do, keep that fear under wraps. You do not need to be shoved into your locker or called derisive names again. Cliques in high schools are a microcosm of a society dominated by hierarchies. Look around. It is hard to find one fully united school, devoid of the intricate social castes. In the wake of the now-infamous Columbine High School shooting, society was mercilessly slapped with the harsh
High School can be directly related to Jamestown. Every year, many freshmen catch themselves doing a complete turn-around soon after the year begins. Freshmen usually split into different cliques soon after High School starts. These cliques are usually groups of people with similar interests, whether it is fashion, sports, or math club. All through Middle School, the children were guided along by the administration. This leads them to believe that High School will be the same way. Once in High School, many feel lost and unprepared. The first day of High School, many freshman get to the lunch room, sit at their tables, and wait to be called up to the lunch lines. They were pampered all through their earlier schooling, so they figured that they would be told when to go eat.
A large majority of teens want to fit in and feel like they belong, but how far are they willing to go to fit in? The more they want to fit in the more likely they will be easily influenced by suggestions from others. During my second week of eighth grade, I felt like I wasn’t fitting in and that everyone was silently judging me and criticizing me. Of course now that I think about I don’t think anyone really cared about me, but I was more self-conscious about myself then. One day during lunch my friends and I sat next to a couple of girls who were known as the “popular” girls and I thought that maybe I would fit in more if I was friends with them. I spent the rest of that lunch hour trying to build up the courage to talk to them and at last minute I told the friendliest looking girl, that I loved her shirt and I asked her what store she bought it from. She told me that it was from Free People; she then gushed about the store and told me how everything there was amazing. She suggested that I should check it out sometime so I did. I, of course couldn’t wait to shop there. I told myself that if I shopped at Free People, I could maybe fit in with her and even be a part of the popu...
As preteens and teens push for increasing independence from their parents, they tend to turn to their peers for guidance, acceptance, and security. For those who are low in self-esteem and confidence, their safety lies in fitting in and having a place to belong. Most people find a group in which they connect with in a healthy way while others make their way in cliques that give them security but at the price of their own values and individuality. The movie Mean Girls portrays how high school female social cliques operate and the effect they can have on girls. I will argue how if one doesn’t have a strong sense of self-identity, the opinions of others will become their identity.
As an individual stuck amidst a foundation known for its propensity to breed social congruity, college has opened my eyes to numerous distinctive reasons why individuals decide to act in ways they wouldn't regularly act. Since they ordinarily aren't certain of their character, adolescents are more inclined to similarity than others. In the most essential structure, college is tormented with congruity through the generalizations that learners seek after and explore different avenues regarding trying to uncover their personality. There are two sorts of Conformity: the kind that makes you do your errands when your father authorizes you to, and the less than great kind in which you aimlessly take after the thoughts and tenets of an inner circle or gathering, without addressing the negative impacts it has upon yourself and the improvement of whatever remains of public opinion. Conformity is basic in that people strive for a feeling of strength and acknowledgement in their lives. As a result of this need, “we therefore figure out how to fit in with principles of other individuals. What's more the more we see others carrying on in a certain manner or settling on specific choices, the more we feel obliged to stick to this same pattern.” Despite the freedoms we are supposed to have in American society most adolescents find it difficult to have their own identity.
In one journal entry I wrote, I brought to light that the popular group is something that every one of us, for some reason feels as though we need to be a part of. This is from my own experience and things I have observed throughout my four-year career in high school. I think it was perhaps worse in junior high, however. When you are in seventh and eighth grade you are not sure of who you are and are desperately searching around for something to belong to, to be a part of. Why is this, why are we a society that are most often drawn to the most popular, "cool" and "beautiful" that high school has to offer? Why is acceptance the most important thing to us, is belonging really as important as losing your own sense of self? Who you hang out with, who your closest friends are as an adolescent without a doubt help to shape who you are. And it's funny that you seem to end up being friends with the ones who are the same type of people as you. Same fashion sense, taste in music or cars and movies. When searching for an identity in high school, it is hard not to just attempt to pick up the one that seems the most socially acceptable. I know that my personal experiences include these conforming characteristics. Still as a freshman in college I am constantly looking at the fashion of my peers, wondering to myself "do they think I fit in"? This was especially true the first few weeks of college when I wasn't sure who my good friends were going to be; I made sure that I dressed as well as I could everyday, in all the new clothes I had bought specifically for college.
Fitting in in adolescence is important and everybody should feel like they belong. Both psychological and physical bullying are a problem and need to be stopped. Students should make new kids and “outcasts” feel welcome, but those that don’t fit in need to make an effort themselves. High school can be difficult, but fitting in and having friends can make it a whole lot better.
Groups, such as cliques, are formed with other kids, most likely within their gender, who can all relate to each other in some aspect. According to Patricia Adler in Socialization to Gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Boys and Girls, she states that “segregated sexual cultures have been observed as early as preschool” (pg. 169). They observed both genders in terms of popularity and the formation of these cliques and had regular kids (meaning that they didn’t have popularity status) comment on each factor that either helped or diminished the “status” of boys and girls who are popular or more popular than them. In studying about the factors that determined what would make specifically a boy supposedly popular in a school environment as opposed to what would do that for a girl, “Eder and Hallinan (1978) compared the structure of boys’ and girls’ friendship patterns and found that girls have more exclusive and dyadic relationships than do boys, which leads to their greater social skills, emotional intimacy, and ease of self-disclosure” (Adler, pg. 170). The ways that kids believe they should go about making friends or being known in a place like school is definitely contributed by gender role socialization. This is true because why else would boys believe it’s okay to go forward with the behaviors and attitudes like toughness in order to gain such a status that only
teens are pressured to fit in with others to be considered “popular”, but this ends up making their