Middle School Cliques

The narrator, who does not come from extreme wealth, privilege, or class has trouble dealing with his lack of social prominence. The school has an elite group of boys, which the narrator is not a member of, who are understood to “get a leg up from their famous names or great wealth”(3-4). Being a senior, the narrator has spent the past three years assimilating to the social customs of his school and adapting the attitude of the elite boys. He has recognized many normalities that some of his peers such as Purcell and George Kellogg live by. The boys have a constant laidback and relaxed attitude that is fostered because of their innate understanding of their wealth. They wear clothes loosely and without care and do not give much thought to their future. Additionally, through their class and wealth the elite boys are grouped together and bonded by what seems, as the narrator describes : “tribal tattoos”. This high class attitude of some of the students is ever present as the narrators says, “Class was a fact….His way of turning cold at the mention of money, or at the spectacle of ambition too nakedly revealed”(15). The narrator realizes that public school attitude and being on scholarship, like he is, are repugnant at his school. Rather than announce his perceived shortcomings, in social capital, the narrator is very quiet and abstains from showing his true self to his school.

Everyone faces varying degrees of peer pressure at least once in their lifetime, but what matters is how one reacts. In Bad Haircut—a collection of short stories—the author, Tom Perrotta, examines the effect of peer pressure on the main character, Buddy, in a comical yet informative light. Buddy faces peer pressure consistently and ends up associating with the wrong people, due to a lack of backbone. Yet Buddy is different and a better person than those who he associates with because he is compassionate and able to recognize that he is a follower; therein lies the irony that only the reader sees Buddy’s merit while the other characters only see the results of his friends’ poor judgment.

In An Argument for Being a Poser, Liz Armstrong describes the crucial dilemma every young person faces about their identity, and to which subgenre do they belong to. Armstrong argues that such question can be both totally ridiculous, and actually very important; which leads to beginning of the process of discovering “who you are.” Furthermore, she describes the fictional subculture that you chose for your escape; within your chosen subgenre you don’t have to pretend to be different, and people understand you. In other words, your chosen subgenre is your place of escape, it is the place where acceptance and freedom is present. Besides, the fact of looking for a hidey-hole, she informs us with a life changing situation at the age of 16 years old. She describes the experience as being life changing, the kids she came across were simultaneously were role-playing and professing as being someone which they weren’t part of. Consequently, Armstrong used that moment to adapt to new change, which she describes as “not dressing up or being normal again.” She describes herself looking like a punk one day with a spiked collar, a crushed-velvet mini skirt the another day. Thus, for that reason she couldn’t fit in with honor students, nor the art kids. She couldn’t fit in with the honor student because for them she was too weird, but for the art kids she couldn’t draw. For this reason, she went from being a straight-A student to a what she describes a poser. Furthermore, Armstrong argues

Middle school was the point in every middle scholar’s life to find a group where they fit in. These groups were called cliques, a group centered around gossiping about others and even gossiping about one another in the group. In middle school this group became your community. The group you do everything with and told everything to. This group is almost like your other family. Sadly, this community, the people you surround yourself with can lead to negative thinking about others. Your community can easily persuade your actions and thoughts because the people you surround yourself with have such a big influence on your life.

When I was in high school, we had several cliques (preps, jocks, choir kids, etc). The group I was apart of, we were like the misfits. Although we came from several different backgrounds, we all came together and developed closely bonded friendships. We were all in the same grade and had basically spent everyday together from sixth grade to right before college began. But our group did have some similarities, we were all white, born biologically female, of the same age, and all came from working class to lower class families. I still talk to at least two of the members today. Although the clique of misfits I was apart kept to ourselves, we were targets of the people ‘mean girls’ of our class.

An example of the insecurity that is demonstrated in the story is mentioned when the narrator's teachers were of "no help, they looked [his] way and talked about how foolish [he] looked in [his] new jacket" (paragraph 7). The narrator feels insecure because of his assumptions that his teachers are making fun of him when in fact, they are not noticing him at all. Further more, he continues to say, "At lunchtime I stayed with the ugly boys leaned against the chain link fence… our mouths" (paragraph 9). This statement proves the narrator is having bad luck because of the jacket and is destroying his reputation at school. A third reason why the jacket symbolizes insecurity is because the fact that his classmates see him with the jacket, he feels that they "…say out loud "man that's ugly", I heard the buzz-buzz of gossip and even laughter"

In the novel, The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, the theme that prejudice leads to violence and oppression is shown through the the Greasers and the Socs. The Socs were shown as the upper class in the book, the people who looked down on the rest of the Curtis, and society. The a greaser. most important characters in the book are Johnny Cade, Ponyboy greased, and Valance. Each Cherry Ponyboy, leading and every one of these showed the theme. One of most important and touching characters in the book was Johnny Cade. Johnny is mostly judged by other people by his appearance, his hair is Curtis. Ponyboy Church. This his clothes are is vulnerable is sixteen years old and he is in the Johnny is vulnerable each, but he was also kind and cared about people. Johnny was gentle, and he would not was not talk much, since he got jumped, that is. Johnny is involved in one of the main events Greasers. Another Also the Bob. In book, which was killing Bob. In the book Johnny kills Bob to save himself and Ponyboy,leading them to run away to the similarities. Ponyboy brings us to our next main character which is Ponyboy Hinton talks is also a Greaser which most people see as the lowest class of society, like johnny people judge him for his appearance and by his social class. The greased hair and the dirty clothes. They judged him just because he did not like the others. He is the youngest of the Greasers, he is

Thesis: Beyond the obvious social disparity that exists between popular high school students and outcasts, there exists an inner wisdom that outcasts inherit from not being part of the “in” crowd. Outcasts are able to form the most important relationship of all, a relationship with themselves. Target Audience: The target audience of my essay is going to be all the popular kids in High School. I want this essay to be able to convey to them that outcasts come out ahead in the end.

In movies and TV shows, highschool is fun. It’s filled with friends, sex, happy families, and the best part, love. I, along with every other teenager in the world was expecting a high school experience similar to the TV show “Mean Girls” but of course, to no avail, that was the wrong thing to be expecting. News flash, it’s not at all what it’s made out to be.

There are many elements that affect high school, some are even timeless. One of these rare elements are cliques. A clique is defined as a small exclusive group, or associates. The main reason why cliques are so timeless are because they are instinct, people are scared, and they are the social dynamics of high school.

In your letter, you express that ALL the girls in the middle school only care about one thing, their weight. Do you think that is really true? Do you think there are other girls who really feel the same pressure of being thin as you do? I’d like you to think about what you need and love that makes you feel confident. Believe it or not, most boys and girls alike are attracted to people that are confident.

I went to Middle School in Knob Noster Missouri for half of Middle School, then moved in the middle of 6th grade. I started Middle School when I was 10, in 5th grade. It was unusual to start Middle School in 5th grade, but at the end of 4th grade, the school education board said that there wasn’t enough room in our elementary school, so they moved the 5th grade to the Middle School. We were the first 5th grade class to experience Middle School in the whole community. I felt older and cooler than all of the other 5th graders before me. When I came in on the first day of school, we made a time capsule and buried them in the supplies cabinet, instead of outside because it was against the rules to dig up school property. We brought in some things that were really important to us, and put them into a large pringle container. The neatest thing that we did was cut a piece of string as tall as us, then at the end of year we would do the same thing and see how much we had grown in that year. I had grown 1.5 inches that year. I was also the tallest in the class back then.

I will be providing an example of conformity from my life that happened during high school. In high school I took this English class with a friend of mine and one day the teacher decided to have a debate. The process of the debate is that if you agree with the statement then you sit on the right side of the class but if you disagree with the statement you sit on the left, now I can’t really remember which statement it was, but I remember it being very one sided and I remember everyone in the class, like literally everyone sat on the right. Now I obviously was against the statement, however, I decided to join everyone else in conformity because I believed that no matter what I was about to say was probably going to be wrong because I would be

"Why fit in when you were born to stand out?" -Dr. Seuss, this remarkable quote illustrates the true importance of fitting in. Eddie, a fictional character from the debate, “Should Eddie buy these sneakers,” desires to fit in tremendously, hence he wishes to purchase some sneakers. Nevertheless, his mother believes, along with Dr. Seuss, he is “born to stand out,” thus, she does not prefer for him to acquire the shoes. Although Eddie makes an intriguing argument regarding the Adidas NMDs, the shoes will not quench his desire to fit in, considering the fact, real friends appreciate one another for who they are.

]When I was in the second grade my school bus broke down on the way home and we had to call for a bus from the middle school to finish dropping us off. I sat huddled in the torn green back seats with five boys from my class listening intently as a sixth grader explained to us some of the games the middle schoolers played at recess. “It’s called FMK. Fuck, Marry, Kill. You have to choose which person you would fuck, marry, or kill.” Some of the boys giggled but some stayed quiet, not understanding what he meant. The older boy, Josh, relished in the moment, thinking it funny that he knew so much more than us and giddy to be the one to corrupt our young minds. He said, “Okay I’ll give an example so you understand. Gerard you have to choose, FMK- Johnny, Kevin, or Veronica. You’d have to choose to fuck Veronica and marry and kill Kevin or Johnny because you can’t fuck a boy if you’re a boy. Moms and dads fuck, it 's how they make the babies. If there were more girls here, you’d have to choose which one you’d rather make a baby with. Which one is prettier.”