A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal

New "you look much prettier without all that black shit under your eyes" answers.

Boarding school is a foreign country. We did things differently there.

We were grouped according to intelligence, yes. It started out as a streaming thing but we found it worked well for socialising too.

We ranked on sporting ability and general street cred. I had neither.

We just had one great big sliding scale of coolness (obviously us at the bottom = supercool). The people in the middle refused to give up on trying to be cool and were lost in limbo (how we laughed).

I was going to say sporting ability (which [fish symbol] coolness), but actually we were all equally rub and being picked for teams was entirely dependent on chumminess/perceived coolness with games teachers. All the sad kids couldn't be coincidentally crap, could they?

Oh for culture based cliques.

Grammar School.

Years 1-3 > sort of athlete. In all the teams, but not the best at anything.

Years 4/5> punk rock athlete!

Sixth Form > slightly wierd athlete

Can't imagine any school where people WEREN'T divided along those or similar lines. Weirdest variant at my primary school - during the 1987 (I think) general election campaign there was a constant guard at the entrance to the playground who would grill you about your parents' voting intentions. You were only allowed through if you said Labour. I wonder what those kids are doing now...

Should've read the question. In the above school the ranking was based on sporting prowess, followed by brains and if you had neither you were one of a small underclass who hung around together all the time.

Musical taste didn't really act as a major differentiator. For example one of the underclass couldn't 'get in' with an athlete based on a shared liking of say, punk, because sport trumped music.

Give you a clue: why do you think I use the pseudonym Judd Nelson? Because of his voiceovers in the Transformers movie?

I was definitely a brain. I was briefly famous for beating someone up and stuffing him in a locker, though.

let's just say that if school was an island, i'd have been brained to death with a giant rock for my glasses' fire making abilities.

My school let people choose what level to do subjects at, though would advise students individually. It wasn't the worst place in the world for divisions really. I guess my mates and I were quite popular in the sense that we knew everyone and would have conversations with most people in the year.

It wasn't so much a tiered system, thinking back. As I try to think of the most popular people I draw a blank really. There were unpopular people, and then there were half the year who kind of mingled in the same circles, very broadly speaking. I actually got alot of respect oddly for having an obvious interest in music, and as school went on for being outspoken enough at times.

I have a theory also that in a fee paying ultra posh school like the one I went to, it's kind of a sharks in the pool atmosphere. That is to say the potential bullies tend to have a very high respect for people who get involved in school activities. This may be because most of them were rugby players, their heads filled with school spirit mumbo jumbo. I just remember being the lead in one drama and there being half the senior cup team at the show. I mean wtf?

Having said that by about 4th or 5th year my year became quite friendly. Everyone seemed to grow up and even those who had got a hard time before weren't treated so badly, beyond the usual dickheads being smart.

I guess I was kind of an indie kid, but always a bit of a closet punk.

Actually I think it was based most around geography. Being a private school, it had very large cachement area, and people from Bromley, Beckenham, Blackheath or the local Dulwich area tended to hang out more. Beyond that, just y'know - the same as in adulthood: conventional people hanging out with one another, artier ones doing the same. Sport - yeah, that was a big thing, though people would sometimes have their football/cricket pals and then other non-sporty friends depending on the situation. Orchestra bods hung out together a bit. So did computer/sci-fi geeks. There was a small gothy crowd but they didn't just talk to each other. There was quite a lot of mixing. I flitted between crowds as and when they'd have me. There was certainly no Heathers/Popular thing going on in a serious way.

There were vague crowds...it's all pretty distant now, I admit. Like N., I just sorta floated through group by group.

In high school I hungout with pretty much everybody, but was classified as a "Stoner" by the jocks and such. My close friends were of the "alternative/indie" crowd and we got labeled druggies because we liked the occassion hit from the bong. After college I stopped smoking pot and everytime I see the so called jocks from high school (who never did any sort of drugs mind you) they are all addicted to cocaine and are the biggest pot heads going.

I wanted to hangout with the people I did because we had the same interests, granted I was a varsity hockey and baseball player, but so was one of my other close friends and we never hung out with the jocks. We used to get shit for wearing Ween and Smiths t-shirts in school. See in Grafton High School if you didn't listen to Bad Company and The Steve Miller band you were labeled as : gay, a freak, a stoner or a weirdo.

There were groups but they were based on people liking each other really, I don't recall there being a football group, a music group etc etc. The only group in that sense were the geeky bastards, inc. me of course.

I don't think I paid enough attention to any of it, to be honest.

I was a geek for a long time, then in high school I inhabited the role of the transgressive geek. Despite my efforts to show up at the right places and do the right things, I never found myself fully intergrated into the ways of the cool. It wasn't all their fault, though, my continuing spinelessness certainly didn't (and doesn't) help things, but they are not without blame.

There were groups, but I crossed over quite a lot. I was one of the clever kids, but I was tennis champ and in the football team, and I went out drinking with the laddish ones at weekends, and went to gigs with the weirdos and later was one of the punks. I fitted in pretty well, and was popular because most of the teachers really hated me. I made it my mission in life to undermine the senior ones, to some minor effect. At least the other kids enjoyed it, which made them like me.

Divided by ethnicity, music taste, appearance, and intelligence. Went from nerd to hip hop fan to Asian activist to depressed quasigoth.

Now you can be all at once if you like. :-)

we had streamed classes at my high, but this didn't affect where we got placed on the ladder of cool. how cool you were depended on yr parents income and how good you were at sports.

I thought this was going to be a thread about the people I hang out with and/or hung out with til recently based on the title. Throw in the professor and Maryann and you've got like everyone important in my life in the past 5 months. I'm so upset that it's not a discussion of that.

I alway's admired the smartish kids who could be in with the jocks and generally liked by everyone.

When I was in school I was referred to as the "Satanic Smart Girl" this being because I wore all black (and loads of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult t-shirts) and got good grades. I started wearing all black because when I switched schools and starting hanging out with the smart kids group, they decided they didn't like me (i.e. they had already all been together friends for years), so basically, I had no group until I met a senior with a passion for all things Danzig. I wore black clothes for 2 years and then starting just dressing plain weird. I thought i was funny too. During the last 2 years I befriended the remainder of the weird smartish kids and drama kids and we started a newspaper. It was pretty funny.

The last week of school a girl in AP Chemistry turned to me and said, "You know Marianna, you're really cool" and I said, "I wished you would have thought that in 7th grade when you and Elizabeth said I wasn't allowed in the girls bathroom because I wasn't wearing makeup." She didn't even remember. :)

I would somewhat repeat this cycle at university.

*monster flashback to high school*

My ever-so-dear Academy was seriously clique-minded: you had the "cheerleaders" with sky-high hair, the skirts barely covering their behinds and the older boyfriends with cars; the "Guidettes" (mostly Italian gals with strong New Yawk accents); the "Brains" who were hated because they regularly made A's (rarely less than 90%). Then, there were the crowd of fellow Black gals that all stuck together.

Since I refused to be pigeonholed, I was attracted to the cynics and the "rebels". We were a definite mix: one of my best friends was a Hungarian girl who had an older boyfriend, got pregnant and nearly ostrasised for it; another was a striking Amazon (a bit lighter than I) who was also the shyest person going; still another had French roots that was the toughest, and let you know it, dammit;>

We were all intelligent, but it was more common interests that divided us. The "cheerleaders" and "Guid-ettes" were more athletic than the rest of us.

I'm not sure why we were divided like that; it was probably due to the comfort level. Being teens, it would be hard to intro yourself to a new social group, so you would stick to situations you were comfortable with.

For myself, I worked on getting to know people as individuals. I was flying solo from my school/area, so I had to discover folks to hang with.

(---Still---A Goth Nerd, and Proud of It)

My school self-segregated according to our extra curriculars. playing netball, dancing with big socks on, doing butane and bulbs, being schizophrenic, cross dressing ( reserved for the football guys-an australian phenom? ) In public school there was definately no cross fertilisation, except between the sportos and the dancers, who are happily now married and in situations of domestic violence. when I changed to a "progressive" private school, it was mainly the teachers who were substance abusers and all the kids were one big happily dysfunctional family that were all fucking. salad days.

Football chums seguing into theatrical dahlings in upper school.

If I had been an American teenager (oh and a hottie of course) I would defintely have been a cheerleader! Not like how Carmen is a cheerleader though I would haf been like the sassy brunette cheerleader from Bring It On! Yes!!! Ra ra ra *shakes pom poms and ack acks*

As it woz in high skool there was a groop of FOUR gurls, TWO were self admitted sci-fi dorks but popular with it, *I* was a MUSIC-sci-fi dork but NOT very popular, and the other actually was NOT a dork but still hung about with us anyway hooray. I do not know of these divisions along SPORTING lines as I tried never to do sport whenever possible. High skool woz horrid.

In college there was a large group of 'misfits' cheers cheers who all hung about together and got called wierd names by the trendy dudes gosh nooo ect ect. We tended towards the GOTHY side of things although I was far too indie ha ha. ALTHOUGH R__ the Goth and I had lots of music arguments mostly abt the Pixies/Joy Division/Nine Inch nails oh wot fun we had. Then there were the INDIE kids in lacoste/cords/addidas ect who I was friends with in a smaller way in classes/nites out but who most of my 'set' despised because they hung out in the same places as the trendy dudes ie ORANGE FACES shiny trackie bottoms stupid braindead morongs a-hem hem. College was GRATE.

And now out in the *shudder* real world we are divided into employers, employees and middle fucking management

Did not have friends in own year. Had two friends not in my year. Was regarded with suspicion by all. Deeply upsetting for five years. Illogical name calling, ie I was both a stuck up swot and a weird gyppo witch fat lesbian. Those were the days, eh?

Yeah but you had mates with whom you published a brilliant magazine. I never had that

But they were the only friends I had and I think that, should you read that magazine in the sober, non wood pannelled light of day, you might change your mind about its merits.

Blimey, does the wood panelling now have hallucinogenic effects?

ALL IS KNOWN! FLEE!

It's just that according to Steve's Birthday Book people born on May 17 are not allowed hallucinogenic drugs so I thought I'd better check.

Ha Matt! ive not entered the real world yet! YAY! Hi Skool Roolz!!!

I seem to remember dividing the girls by their musical taste more than the boys. Most of the girls liked Wham! and Spandau Ballet. A smaller group liked the Cure and the Smiths. The latter were very dismissive of the former. the former group may well have been unaware of the latter group's existence. there was a very small group of female goths, limited to four or five individuals in the whole school. a strict ban on make-up made it difficult for them to express their gothness until they reached the sixth form.

We were far more inclined to split ppl into groups according to intelligence. This was because we were divided into sets (3 for the non-compulsory subjects and 6 for English and Maths) by ability. The idea that intelligence does not necessarily = academic prowess did not occur to us, but that's true of most kids, isn't it?

If you were good at sport, you were not academic and vice versa. This rule seemed to hold but all except a handful of individuals. Uni, with ppl who were very good at both, came as something of a shock.