On High School Social Structure...

[Demon]

The following is adapted from a newsgroup discussion.

You don't want to put too much weight on junior high/high school popularity or lack of popularity. High schools are an insanely artificial social environment, almost like prisons. Including the part where the behaviors that work well 'on the inside' are often useless to outright destructive in the real world.

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Whether you like high school or hate it, pretty much the minute you get that diploma the entire social structure goes away never to return. (Except at the 10 year, 20 year, etc. reunions, where its reappearance is more pathetic than anything else.) Even if you stay in your hometown and go to a local college or into the work world with lots of your high school friends, the rules change. The prom queen who was too cool to study and made nerds lives' hell, more often than not, winds up as the best-dressed cashier at Wal-Mart with no money to move out on her parents. (Or as the choir director's new wife who was the reason he had to move to a different state and get out of teaching. Life's funny.)

 

[bluemc]

that's too long ;(

 

[Boricua_33015]

hmmm, ill read this tomorrow.

 

[DarkfalconIV]

I read a lil of it. It works for more than high school structures too. You can apply it to allot of other things in generl. A good but long read.

 

[Need-2-B-Pimpin]

Good read, but according yo the article I'm screwed cuz I dont have time for this popularity ****.

 

[DarkfalconIV]

screwed's the wrong word. More like not screwed casue your NOT gonna be popular. lol

 

[Need-2-B-Pimpin]

Well, not screwed in the literal sense (I wish), but metaphorically screwed in the sense of the last couple years of high school are gonna suck if this dude's right, but not metaphorically screwed for life...wow that was confusing.

 

[DarkfalconIV]

I was just joking but yeah. But yeah....That is confusing.

 

[Boricua_33015]

I read the article. It was interesting but too damn long.... my eyes are tired as hell now.

It is my ultimate goal for high school as a DJ to be smart yet popular in the remaining years of high school.

I beleive I can do it!

**** the system. Im going to influence people to be like me.

 

[Smooth as Anything]

That was an amazing read, I read it all from start to finish...

It is the truest thing I know of that can punch you in the face with the truth about high school.

Read it.

Demon - You've always known the reality about highschool from a third party perspective, whereas many have spoke from within it. Good job, despite your advantage (having graduated).

 

[jive]

Cliff notes version: High school is bs.

I agree with what the author is saying, but here are my thoughts:

If you're smart you can be popular/successful in and out of high school.

Not smart, as in knowing a lot, but smart as in being adaptable.

The popular people focus on being popular, and the nerds focus on learning and doing good in school. The losers don't really focus on anything because they realize that high school is bs, but they aren't adaptable. They just indulge in pleasure (drugs, sex, etc), and do horrible in school.

Focus on having fun. Realizing that high school is bs helps in that you won't totally devote your time into being popular and you also won't be a total school nerd.

But unlike some people, realize that it has its purposes, such as bettering yourself and challenging yourself. If you don't use your brain, you will lose it. High school is pretty good at making you use it, which is one good purpose of high school.

Really, success in life, whether it be in high school or outside of it, is all about balance and moderation.

 

[Demon]

Originally posted by jive
Really, success in life, whether it be in high school or outside of it, is all about balance and moderation.

There are too many exceptions to that statement for it to be true. When you think of success, think of goals. If you reach your goal, you were successful. Saddam Hussein was successful. Osama bin Laden was successful. Stalin was successful. Bush, Jr. was successful.

In order to be successful, you have to reach your goals. Your goals are dependent on your philosophy (e.g., altruism, egoism, MetaVirianism). Therefore, being successful does not necessarily mean you are a good person in the same way that being intelligent/knowledgeable doesn't guarantee that attribute.

The kids in high school who hang out in the upper quad, and ignore the rest are not people you want to associate with if your goal is to be a good person, and if your goal is to be a good person, that does not mean you cannot be "popular."

Back in the day, the kids who were perceived as nerds were, in my opinion, idiots. They lacked knowledge and intelligence and were generally anti-social. Perhaps my view of them stemmed from stereotypical expectations of them being really smart. A year in Honors English taught me that it was not the perceived nerds that were smart, but the athletes. I had a few football players in my class that were astoundingly intelligent. It was quite amazing to realize that. From there, my "faith" in stereotypes and "ignorance is bliss" dwindled until now, where I am on the opposite side of the fence fighting against prejudice, dogma, ignorance, stereotypes, etc.

If your goals cover a wider range of activities than just being successful, and you realize that high school is more like a prison for children than a center for education, you'll accept that you have a responsibility to get out of high school.

High school is a waste of time. Your career, if you decided already, will require a very different education than what you receive in high school. I knew a guy that used to give me rides every now and then who was upset with me because I graduated earlier than he did (he went through the whole thing), and he told me that I didn't know economics because I didn't take it in my senior year (because I never had a junior or senior year). Well, the funny thing is that he still had to take economics in college even though he aced economics in high school. After the semester, he admitted that economics in college was a hell of a lot more extensive than what he sat through in high school.

High school doesn't even teach the basics. Most of the teachers, at least at my previous high school (which was noted as the premier southern California high school), really shouldn't have been teaching. I now feel that high school is more like a preschool for older children. The education is useless (if you paid attention from grades K-8) and there's that damn social structure which you have to be a part of in order to "survive".

Speaking of lesser grades, I didn't learn anything in 8th grade that I hadn't learned in 7th grade. Ninth grade was more like a mosh pit than a time for learning primarily because you have to adapt to the social structure of high school, and 10th grade was just a repeat of the previous year.

Don't you feel tired every time you walk back into your school?

"Ah, shyt. I have to do this again..."

Honestly, I didn't like who I was becoming when I went to high school. Combined with the DJ Bible, as a high schooler, I felt more like a fraud than a real person, and I was in the popular crowd... hanging out on the upper quad with the people two years older than me... away from the sophomore and freshman "groups", etc. High school is a terrible place...