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The importance of friendships in school
Socializing problems due to bullying
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Friends can make or break your middle and high school social life. In sixth through twelfth grade it’s all about who you are friends with, then after that no one actually cares. Honestly I’m not in any specific “clique” that hangs out all the time, that would probably explain all my hours of time Netflix. A nine year old me wanted to be in those cliques, go to all the raging parties, and have perfect grades, yet I just couldn’t do it. I did go to one “popular” party, it was a pity invite since we were in the same math, at the same table, and she was talking to her friends about it. Basically, my life is much different than the expectation. Think of me as one of the one’s who jumps around, and can be friends with practically anyone, but as the great Aristotle once said,”A friend to all is a friend to none”. …show more content…
Obvious cliques formed and I of all people have chosen to avoid it, most of my time is spent on my phone or in sports leaving little time for outside people. The lunchroom at the beginning of the year is horrible, I had many acquaintances in many groups yet no place where I fit in. Walking into the lunchroom every weekday was painful, look to the left, look to the right, there is no where to sit. “Long table with cool people or short table with lame people?” was a constant thought. Eventually I find a middle ground and settle in with a group of girls and stayed there for the rest of the
High school can be a place full of cliques and groups of friends but some people aren’t always in cliques. If there is a person who doesn’t always like the same things as other people they might not fit in with a group of people. In high school a person may become different and not find a group of friends that they fit in with. With no group of friends a person in high school may start to become an outcast. Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of Speak used Melinda to show that any high school student can become an outcast.
Up till middle school, it seemed like I fit in pretty well at school. I was decent at sports and I had a good amount of friends. Life was pretty good at the time and I was enjoying it. Once high school started, I could see a shift in my life. I had lost most friends from prior years, and I was not good at sports; I struggled to fit in.
A large majority of teens want to fit in and feel like they belong, but how far are they willing to go to fit in? The more they want to fit in the more likely they will be easily influenced by suggestions from others. During my second week of eighth grade, I felt like I wasn’t fitting in and that everyone was silently judging me and criticizing me. Of course now that I think about I don’t think anyone really cared about me, but I was more self-conscious about myself then. One day during lunch my friends and I sat next to a couple of girls who were known as the “popular” girls and I thought that maybe I would fit in more if I was friends with them. I spent the rest of that lunch hour trying to build up the courage to talk to them and at last minute I told the friendliest looking girl, that I loved her shirt and I asked her what store she bought it from. She told me that it was from Free People; she then gushed about the store and told me how everything there was amazing. She suggested that I should check it out sometime so I did. I, of course couldn’t wait to shop there. I told myself that if I shopped at Free People, I could maybe fit in with her and even be a part of the popu...
Adolescence and high school years are marked by the development of identity, relationships, and societal roles. It is during this time that adolescents begin to place a significant amount of importance to whether they belong or not, their physical appearance, and friendships. During this time, everyone experiences being labeled or classified into a category that more than likely, they do not belong to. This is because society tends to place people in groups according to hobbies, personality traits, and common interests. In most cases, stereotypes motivate this kind of behavior. For example, there is a saying that says, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.” In other words, your companions say a lot about who you are as an individual. These assumptions are what
From a young age most people have gone through many relationships with other people who were not their family. Thus, we often acknowledge these relationships as friendships. But the word friend is too broad, so people categorize their friends to several types. In her book “Necessary Losses: The Lovers, Illusions, Dependencies and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow”, Judith Viorst divided friendships to six types. Those are convenience friends, special Interest friends, historical friends, crossroad friends, cross-generation friends and close friends. In my life, I have been friend with many people since I was little. Although I have met all six kinds of friend of Viorst, convenience friends and close friends are two important kinds of friends in my life.
It was the first day of school. I was eager to see most of my friends who I went to middle school with. There was one big thing that struck me; I noticed my friends changed. They started dressed differently, acted differently, changed their hair style, and even started wearing makeup. Since the transition fresh out of middle school and into high school, my friends wanted to look older. The biggest factor that bothered me was how they would conform to look like the sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I felt that my good friends wanted to conform and be something they weren’t. In my personal view, Americans in general want to feel mature sophisticated but also want to have fun. Individuality is essential because it allows people to express who they are as an individual. When people express themselves differently and in their own way, they elucidate uniqueness and universal truth. Values in American culture can contradict with family, fashion, and the workplace.
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.
I have been to so many different schools that I cannot even count them all using all 10 fingers. You would think that by now I would be used to being the new kid, but with every move it just gets harder and harder. I have learned that it is harder to be the new kid when you are older versus when you are younger. As a kid it is cool to be the new kid and everyone wants to be your friend. In high school it is the complete opposite. Unless you approach them, most high school students won’t even bother talking to you. Every time that I think I have finally made a friend, I am almost immediately shot down. I am beginning to feel like I don’t belong
Adolescence is, for the most part, about fitting in. Most everybody wants friends and wants to feel like they are a part of a social group. Young childhoods are spent meeting new people and making friends that share your common interests. However, in the teenage years, it gets a lot more complicated. Some people will start to leave their old friends for newer, “cooler” ones, and start to wear new clothing to make themselves popular. Everyone wants to fit in, and some people will make more of an effort to do so than others. In middle school specifically, cliques and social groups start forming. This is the time when teens and pre-teens figure out who they are and start to fit in with their friends.
In college a student should question what it means to be part of a clique. Although they were popular in high school, many students do not belong to cliques in college. In fact, being involved in a clique simply portrays a student as being scared to make new contacts and expand his or her world. In sum, how a person socializes in college can lead to one’s development or downfall. Losing track of goals is the last thing a student wishes to do. How we socialize tells our classmates and future employers who we are. Socialization in college makes us open ourselves to the world, and in so doing, we must assume responsibility for all our choices.
In one journal entry I wrote, I brought to light that the popular group is something that every one of us, for some reason feels as though we need to be a part of. This is from my own experience and things I have observed throughout my four-year career in high school. I think it was perhaps worse in junior high, however. When you are in seventh and eighth grade you are not sure of who you are and are desperately searching around for something to belong to, to be a part of. Why is this, why are we a society that are most often drawn to the most popular, "cool" and "beautiful" that high school has to offer? Why is acceptance the most important thing to us, is belonging really as important as losing your own sense of self? Who you hang out with, who your closest friends are as an adolescent without a doubt help to shape who you are. And it's funny that you seem to end up being friends with the ones who are the same type of people as you. Same fashion sense, taste in music or cars and movies. When searching for an identity in high school, it is hard not to just attempt to pick up the one that seems the most socially acceptable. I know that my personal experiences include these conforming characteristics. Still as a freshman in college I am constantly looking at the fashion of my peers, wondering to myself "do they think I fit in"? This was especially true the first few weeks of college when I wasn't sure who my good friends were going to be; I made sure that I dressed as well as I could everyday, in all the new clothes I had bought specifically for college.
When walking down a high school hallway, it is almost impossible not to notice all of the different kinds of cliques people are categorized in. A clique is a fairly small group of people who share the same interests, spend the most time together, and do not easily allow other people in their group. There can be many different types of cliques, such as the stuck-ups, the fakes, the know-it-alls, the bitches, the druggies, and the teacher’s pet.
I remember a time a few years back when I had a group of fairly close friends. We would always hang out with eachother and we would await the day at which we were to enter high school together. When we finally reached high school, there where now a whole new group of people that were older than I. I still had my group of friends, but gradually I started to lose one of them. My friend was going against my other schoolmate, and before I knew it I was hurling the same insults as they were. It was all part of a process; a process, I thought, was going to make me popular. I thought that if I could make someone look lower than I was, I would gain self-confidence and become more popular.
As I reach the seemingly boring age of 19, I am able to look back and reflect on how my choices in the past have gotten me to where I am today. One of the most significant decisions I have made in my life was to minimize my friend group. Now, losing friends is something you hear about before you even hit junior high. The common phrase is repeated over and over again, when referring to high school, “You find out who your real friends are.” As a scrawny little freshman, with no sense of reality, I refused to believe that that phrase would ever apply to my life. The end of my sophomore year is when my then, sixteen-year-old self, realized that that overused phrase was more relevant to my life than I wanted it to be. So I did something about it.
Throughout high school, I had my same friend group that I had since middle school and elementary school. I always tried to make new friends, and join groups when I could, but I learned that the group of friend’s I had were a great group. My friends and I were in many of the same clubs, which made it more fun being in those clubs, and knowing people.