NationStates Jolt Archive

Okay, I know I haven’t posted on the NS forums a lot, but I’ve often visited the forums and looked at the different discussions with great interest. To what I’ve seen so far, this place truly is an internet think tank, and so I would like to know your opinions on this subject.

More than likely, many of you, if not all know about America’s great social divide, and especially the sub-cultural boundaries that keep people apart in high school, known as cliques. Different kids will try and join and form different cliques, accepting members of similar interests while rejecting others without. If any of you have seen the movie Mean Girls or have attended public schools in the states recently, you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about.

While most high schools have relative balance in its social sub-cultures, ours doesn’t. In our small town, we have two major high schools, one located in the historic downtown region with more social and ethnic diversity, and the other one located in the “rich people” district, which I attend. This could be my extremely biased opinion, but our school is completely divided into the rich, popular, athletic group (60%), and everyone else (40%).

Normally, it would be somewhat obvious that “preps” aren’t going to get along with “goths”, “gamers”, “geeks”, etc, but I believe that we can overcome social boundaries set by prejudice and the American media. I’m going to give you guys a little background on myself. I don’t exactly fit into the mainstream pop culture of America. I’m a rather socially deviant person, although I have plenty of friends in school. I like to think that I have a relatively stable and well-sized social network of friends, and it has I’ve been trying to unite the different social groups together in our school for a while now. (Since the “popular” kids get all the representation in student council, and they always come up with crappy, boring, events and assemblies) Basically, we have almost no school unity or spirit.

I was sort of an annoying kid back in 6th grade. I was terrible at sports, wasn’t too social, and used to like pokemon, which led a lot of the “preps” of today to pick on me and make fun of me. However, in 7th grade my parents and I moved to florida, where I was met with a completely different social scenario (constant bomb threats, drastic decrease in income level of all families, constant fights occuring in school, huge increase in diversity of people) and I was able to completely changed my image. Anyhow, we’ve moved back since then, and tis been about four years. However, my previous bad experiences socializing with the popular kids have left me with a permanent prejudice against them. Even though I get along quite well with almost every single person I meet, somehow I always end up feeling uncomfortable when I’m around the “rich kids”.

And here’s the major situation. There’s this girl. She’s in the popular crowd, but there was something different about her the moment I met her. She seemed kind, polite, caring, friendly, intelligent, and most of all, she is absolutely gorgeous. She’s one grade above me (I’m a junior, 11th, and she’s a senior, 12th) but we have two classes together and talked for a bit in the beginning of the year. She seems like an amazing person, and I would really like to get to know her better, but there’s just something in my head that tells me we can’t. It’s like, that terrible feeling when you realise that you could have the chance to meet someone that could change your life, but yet you cannot because they’re something and you’re something else. Because of her, I decided to change my views on people, and truly give everyone a chance before I judge them. I’ve done so many things to convince myself that the “preps” of today weren’t the same as those rich middle schoolers that taunted me in middle school. Well, it really troubled me for a while since I couldn’t talk to her without being all nervous and formal, but lately, there’s been a few breakthroughs.

I conducted a few social psychology experiments on myself, and worked out quite a bit physically. Let’s just say that I am much more confident and secure of being myself, than I did weeks ago. Also, we recently had a Socratic seminar on prejudice, and it seems that her views of cliques being unimportant aren’t so different from mine.

So that made me wonder. Could I really break the social boundaries and become friends with her? (And I truly mean, just friends. Let’s not set our goal that high, yet.) I mean, things are looking good, because if we see each other in the hallways, she’ll smile, and we’ll have the occasional conversation of a few sentences. But at the same time, things aren’t good, because for some reason I get so nervous and self-conscious when I’m around her, and I’ll always end up making myself seem like a spineless idiot.

Any thoughts? Comments? Similar personal experiences?

Why did Jolt move the damn "Reply" button?

Anyway, you've already said you're more confident, except for when you're around her. Well, women will do that to you (they've done it to me and I am one). Take a deep breath and talk to her. Say anything. You'll never know unless you try and if it doesn't work, it says nothing about your worth as a person. Heck, start with, "I don't know why I get nervous talking to you, but anyway, what did you think of ..."

Oh, and all this free advice will require a full report from you afterwards. :p

Also, your thread title gave me a scare, I thought it was another trollish "We have to do something before the underclass of America outbreeds us" thing. Whew.

Amazing post. Really. I my school it's mostly teh same way, with the preppy grounp of people who live in suburbia to the more urban, interesting kids. But I have freinds in everygroup, all you have to do is strike up a conversation.

sure you can jump the social divide.

as long as your clique isnt important to you. if she has some kind of investment in being a member of the in-crowd (that she isnt totally aware of) she might have to drop you in order to regain her position but thats for the future.

for other people wanting to bridge the divide. that is what drugs are for.

everyone is your friend if you supply the dope. social class becomes irrelevant.

Also, your thread title gave me a scare, I thought it was another trollish "We have to do something before the underclass of America outbreeds us" thing. Whew.

Does that usually happen?

I should change the title or something.

And thanks to those that have already replied.:)

How do I edit titles?

I don't see why you couldn't be friends with her, especially as she's a senior and will soon be leaving most of those people behind, anyway.

You’re school sound nearly the same as mine, nearly. Fuck, I even went to a shitty school in Florida before moving back to where I am now.

As for this girl, becoming friends with anyone isn’t hard if you’re a confidant, likeable person.

First off – you shouldn’t judge a 17 year old by what he was like at 12. That is a massive amount of personal growth.

Secondly – the whole cliques thing is half your fault. Your reluctance to socialize with them is simply mirrored in their reluctance to socialize with you – if you are nice and accepting of them without prejudice, the vast majority of people will treat you in the same manner. Of course there will always be assholes, but they really are in the minority.

In middle school I was a social outcast – a total nerd unable to communicate with kids my age. I got along great with my parents coworkers (scientist who spend all their time in a lab, rarely seeing the sun much less being social) but had difficulty with children.

The few friends I had were the nerdiest of the nerds. We started the chess club, kept the computer club going, started the science club, etc. That started to change by the time I turned 15. We just started behaving a little differently – we really stopped caring about the whole nerd/jock animosity and just didn’t care. We socialized with every different type in the school. It was slow at first, as only a few people in those groups would respond, but once you befriend one gearhead, it is very easy to gain acceptance by almost all gearheads. Most people are nice people, and they are all just as insecure as you are. Be nice to them (genuinely nice, not a lapdog begging for acceptance, just a person in your own right treating others with respect) and they will respond in kind.

Eventually, we stopped being the ‘ubernerds’ and became a small group of 8 guys completely outside the ‘normal’ social strata. Simply by not caring what others thought of us, and not being prejudiced about others, we got out of the whole social rankings problem. Jocks, preps, ghetto-thugs, rednecks, goths, stoners, gearheads, nerds, dramas, bandies, and all the unaligned accepted us as individuals because we accepted them as individuals in their own right, instead of just a drone of their cliques.

We actually became quite well known – it was a little disturbing to find that the entire school knew who we were, even the freshmen (who had their own campus a couple blocks away from the main campus) knew us by sight.

The point of this long ramble is that if you stop behaving like a high schooler, and behave like a normal member of society, crappy high school social politics no longer apply (with a few exceptions of the rare idiot or asshole who is desperately insecure and has to try to cling to such designations in a desperate attempt to feel some semblance of security).