Stereotypes

Definetly, the popular people, the brainiacs, all of everything!! Because my friends and I are smart we tend to fall under braniac. At this age, popular girls seem to think smart is bad so they don't try their hardest. I don't get it!! Shouldn't you always try your hardest????

My school has clicks, just like most schools do. We have the popular kids, the preps, the 'nerds', the artists, the drama kids. It does not really bother me, anymore. It's almost normal for human society to divide itself to find people like yourself, it's a natural instinct. If a kid feels like they need to stupid to fit in that's their fault.
As for trying to sterotype me, I don't think I have one. I'm frieds with everyone.

Cliques are everywhere, but at my school they aren't necessarily prevalent. Also, I find that most people don't fit into one particular group or another: they have friends in different types of groups, and so are a part of more than just one. I will admit, though, that everyone does have a main group that either they associate with, or that they are associated with. Our groups include jocks, preps, sluts, pimps, gangstas/wangstas, drama kids, band kinds, nerds/geeks, dirtbags, homosexuals, sped kids, goths, emos, gamers, and sometimes there are groups of immigrant kids that band together.
Personally, I prefer not to pay all that much attention to what category others fall into, but recently I was asked to think about it and the results surprised me: I only really associate with people in either the smart, prep, slut, or jock categories, which I hadn't realized. Also, I had never really thought about what my own label was until, in class, we parceled up the cafeteria into groups, and discovered that I was firmly in the prep/smart group. It was definitely strange for me to think that even without realizing it, I'd become part of one of the most cliche parts of high school.
Upon reflection, I think that stereotypes are not always an intentional act, nor are they always negative. I think that stereotypes are really only about survival: on an instinctive level, we need to be able to break down people we meet into friends or enemies, and we each have our own personal basis for making that determination. While this may seem petty or even plain stupid, at one point in our history we would have needed to be able to discern between friend and foe.

Stereotypes are unavoidable.
Whether you like them or not, find them right or wrong, everyone tends to make them, sometimes conciously and sometimes not.
Like most high schools, the people here tend to divide themselves into cliques. It's a smaller school, and the problem is not as bad as it's been at bigger schools I've gone to. Of course, there's the occasional drifter; the clear prep who spends all his or her time with the goth/emo kids, or something like that. But for the most part each sticks with his or her own kind, and that's the way it is.
I dont like the idea that people are labeling me- I like to be who I am and not a puzzle piece that only fits in one spot of the puzzle. But even when I am firmly against stereotypes, I find myself making them at the most random times, unintentionally, but making them all the same.

I totally agree with kathrynmaurer. That is so true.

We have such stereotypes it's not even funny. People are distinctly seperated by social standing and those lines are very rarely crossed. If they are crossed its done by more than one person together because one person alone crossing the social lines will be thrown back to their place. The high may sink down (if they so choose which they almost never do) but the low may not rise. The worst part is that our teachers are CONVINCED that we're all best friends and everyone loves everybody else and we're just one big happy family. They don't hear the gossip and the mean things people say about others outside their social class.

Lets get this thread moving again. Personally, I hate cliques. They are stupid, and they mostly yield only negative outputs for both those inside and those outside. These little "groups" of friends is why i am stuck as a loser in my school. Nobody has ever wanted me in their group of friends, and i have never really had anybody at school who i could call a true friend. It is thanks to these kind of people that i am a social outcast. And JUST FOR ONCE, i wish people could see what these stupid cliques do to other people.
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"if it's wierd, then i done it right."

It's hard not to be stereotypical sometimes.
Sometimes, you just assume what you see. It may be that it is true about someone, and it may be inaccurate, but it just gives us as individuals more responsibility to behave in a manner that will not leave others with conclussions about us.
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"if it's wierd, then i done it right."

At my old school there obviously were cliques, but I don't think it's all that easy to actually label the cliques themselves; based on the people that made them up and if they had glaring similarities with each other. The thing was, I don't think there really was a group of "nerds" or "jocks" or really anything of the sort. The truth is, there were people who stereotypically should have been in the same group, as in smart/athletic girls, smart/athletic guys, etc., but that wasn't how it worked because their personalities just somehow didn't match. I mean, one of my friends pointed out that we were the "freaks," and we didn't have any argument against it. Really, we didn't have names for the groups; it was just us and them. You'd hope this wouldn't happen in such a small school, but it did anyway. Now I'll have to step into a new school. Who knows what'll happen next?
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"Perfection doesn't exist, in my mind. Only greatness does." ~Geist