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High school is an interesting place. Not just an interesting place but a place full of rowdy hordes of boys filled to the mouth with testosterone and dishonest complicated girls who will twirl their opposite sex schoolmates around their finger to their will. A place where athletes are made into all-stars or are broken. A place where Hollywood stars and talented voices of soon to be radio singers dominate the stage of their auditorium. It’s a place where tears are shed in school bathroom, where the real world starts to open its gates for the soon to be adults and where seniors prank on not only the freshmen but the staff too. All of the moments experienced in high school generally happen with friends; people with corresponding interests and activities. The pretty girls strut with other pretty girls, athletes chill with other athletes and the math geeks spend their time with other math geeks. The concept is simple; people who are alike hang with each other. The term clique, has arose as the dominant term used to called a group of particular individuals. Cliques, to some students, can be intimidating and in some cases, can completely separate a high school. So, two questions conflicting ideas arise: is having a school where everybody knows everyone a good thing? Or are cliques beneficially and just preparation for the real world? To get a better understanding of cliques, I will shed some light on what exactly a cliques is. Every high school student can be found in one of three clique categories: troublemakers, nerds and popular kids. Nerds have the biggest category, by far, while popular kids have the smallest group and the troublemaker group is right in the middle when it comes to size. So, even though the nerds hav... ... middle of paper ... ...for a kid to go through high school scared of another classmate. It’s not fair for a kid to be made fun of because he loves to play video games. It’s not fair for a kid to be made fun because he wasn’t born with an athletic bone in his body. High school is meant for kids to have fun one last time before life becomes serious. There’s a foggy haze around the word “cliques” when being referenced to high school. Some people have the best times of their life in high school. Others suffer everyday from torment and loneliness. No matter what the verdict is on cliques, high school can be improved and kids can learn to get along. I’m not saying the jocks and preps need to become best friends with nerds, but they don’t have to victimize them. For decades high schools have constructed these cliques to separate. Hopefully someday cliques can be abolished or revamped.
The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth is a book by Alexandra Robbins which summarizes the story of seven different teenagers that have many different problems, which many of todays teenagers also have. I found myself having many similarities to the teenagers in the story, for example, when with her group Whitney, the popular bitch, thinks “You didn't day that when we were alone, but now that you're in front of a group you do” (Robbins 21). I can relate to this because I feel as though many people are pressured to say or do things they normally wouldn't whenever they are with their group or ‘clique’. Robbins has this idea that the freaks and geeks, or “cafeteria fringe” will someday grow up and use what they are criticized for to become more successful than the other peopler people. She calls this the ‘Quirk Theory’ (Robbins page 11). This helped me to learn that right now, in high school, not being ‘popular’ may seem like the end of the world, but the reality of it is that after these four years, it wont even matter, but what will be important is how you learned to grow as a person and the true friendships that were made. This makes me want to focus more on my education and learning to grow as a person instead of focusing on how many friends I have or who I sit with at lunch, because truthfully it wont matter once high school is over.
The article goes on to say, "Yet cliques are more than that: they have a hierarchical structure, being dominated by leaders and are exclusive, so that not all individuals who desire membership are accepted" (Adler & Adler 145). These two statements explain how influential cliques are on young children, and how they often lead to social isolation. In the book, Blanco is never really accepted into the group she so desperately strives to join. The experts also agree with the fact that if a person does not fit into a social group, it is possible that one day that person will be tormented. Adler and Adler give a possible answer to why this is happening: "Being picked on instilled outsider with fear, grinding them to accept their inferior status and discouraging them from rallying together to challenge the power hierarchy" (Adler & Adler 154).
When in fact the high school outsiders become the more successful and admired adults in society. Botstein. states that team sports in high school dominate more than student culture.... ... middle of paper ... ...
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...
High school is one of the most memorable times in a person’s life. For some those memories are full with excitement, happiness, and joy. For others it ends up being a stressful and a hormonal rollercoaster of a nightmare that they wish they could forget. And of course, there are always those stuck in between, who just float on by through their 4 years, whether going unnoticed or just sticking close to the shadows instead of the limelight. This dynamic can be broken down between social classes within the high school scenes, using jocks, class clowns, trouble makers, and the Hollywood favorite, geeks. Movies such as Revenge of the Nerds, the Social Network, and Super Bad have shed light on these clever misfits who make you question the amount of attention we all gave them during school. For this essay I will analyze the social class within the movie Super Bad and describe what high school was like for the “Super” trio of Seth, Evan, and, Fogell, through the focus of 3 main lenses: Friends; Social Experience; and Sexual Experience.
Imagine being alone with no friends and no one to talk to. Now, place yourself in a location where you are surrounded by closed tight-knit groups where acceptance from those groups is a challenge to obtain. Then, picture yourself back when you were in high school, but this time, apply the image you have created for yourself. Do you wish for acceptance? Or friendship? Do you feel confident in taking the challenges that high school will bring? High school has a significant impact on an individual’s development. Whether it is their personality or behavior, an individual who goes through high school can see changes in their characteristics. A common stereotype in high school that is largely portrayed in the media is the existence of cliques. Cliques can give an individual a sense of belonging or a sense of betrayal. These two behaviors are commonly seen with the acceptance or rejection from these groups. An immediate result from these two actions is a change in morale or confidence for that individual. Cliques exist in high school due to individual conformity. An individual conforms to the group in order to feel accepted or to feel secured. Groups or cliques in high school have a significant negative effect on an individual’s development of characteristic and personality and the reasons as to why individuals join these types are not justified.
Identification with a peer group is a critical part of growing up because even though there is a mix between valuable and invaluable points, no one wants to be left with nobody to help them figure out how they fit in the world and get pass tough times. Peer pressure can have positive impacts and not so good but the postive are too valuable to overpass, leaning us over to conclude that classifying with a circle of close friends are a key factor when going into the real
In my school, the popular kids, otherwise known as the jocks or preps were at the top of the food chain. They were the star football players, cheerleaders and homecoming queens. They were the most attractive, most competitive, and most social of the other groups. The boys wore blue jeans with rolled cuffs and t-shirts with their letterman jackets, and the girls wore skirts with patterned stockings, matching sweaters and sequined hair accessories. This group was the most highly regarded by the adults in the school, and were often given special perks like preferred parking spots. Oozing with school spirit, they were the pride and joy of the school (and the whole town). Most of the kids in this group were bright, well-adjusted, and happy as they strove to do their best to conform, and to meet the expectations of their parents, coach...
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.
Social influence/peer groups were one of the dominant themes in my observations, survey, and literature. Social influence looks at how individual thoughts, actions and feelings are influenced by social groups (Aronson, 2010).The desire to be accepted and liked by others can lead to dangerous behavior. College life can be an overwhelming experience for first time college students and or transfer students as they struggle to manage class time and social activities in an attempt to fit-in in the new environment that they may not be used to. Students can experience too much anxiety and drop out of college or fall behind classes. Working at the Cambell Student Union information Center, I observed a great deal of students falling into this trap of social influence and peer pressure. A female student tripped as she was going up the stairs to Spot Coffee but did not fall. What appears to be a group of guys who are not popular (guys who are not very well known), were seating where popular students normally seat. The group of guys started laughing at the girl and stopped. One guy kept laughing, but it was obvious he was forcing the laughter as to purposely attract attention. He started making jokes about the girl and carrying on the laughter so he would appear to be funny. Another example, which portrays peer influence, involves parties over the weekend. Multiple students stated they were falling behind in classes on the grounds of their friends wanted to go out the night before and they did not want to seem/appear “lame” so they tagged along. The influence of a group is intensified by the person’s desire to be an accepted member of the peer group. To achieve this desire he tries to conform in everyday to the patterns approved by the grou...
Most popular kids engage in a school sport which makes them well known and liked throughout their social atmosphere, not only by their peers, but by their teachers as well. Many outcast do not engage in these acts of physical teams like sports, but rather in other institutions such as a culture, theater, and various academic clubs. These tend to be labeled “uncool” and separate these kids from other students. Their “abnormal” interests, that vary from the conventional athletics, can make them looked down upon and questioned by others. Having these preferable extracurricular activities is normal, yet these kids tend to be misunderstood by the jocks who don’t have a particular preference to these clubs. Based on the same survey from stageoflife.com, interests are the second leading cause of teens feeling inferior to their peers at 49% (stageoflife.com). Also, “63% of teens say that their appearance is an important factor in their identity” (stageoflife.com). Kids feel that their ability in activities causes them to subordinate to others. Teens are often judged for these interests which should not happen since their enjoyments are irrelevant to popularity
Above all, Students who understand the differences and learn how to bridge the gap between high school and college should have a greater chance for success. while high school gives students a slight of taste of what it’s to have
The second group, known campus-wide, is the nerds because they are obsessed with books, constantly studying and learning about their interests. The nerds are usually annoying with their obnoxious laughter regarding a really stupid joke. The nerds wear a nice shirt with a bow tie, or a tie and a nicely ironed dress pants and always has a pocket protector to prevent ink stains from their pens. The nerd spends their school night with a tight schedule for recreation, school homework, and learning new things that captures their interests. Computer programming, calculator programming, the biology of their pet frog are some of the common things that interests the nerds.
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