Were you Popular at School?.........why?

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Lecks
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15 Oct 2010, 6:02 pm

I was quite liked, yes, for reasons that elude me even today. I was quiet at school, ocassionally making smartass comments when I deemed them funny or relevant enough. My grades were average at best, due to my reluctance and often refusal to do homework or even study. My tendency to call teachers out on stupid things they said or the relevance of assignments landed me in detention fairly often aswell.

During the later stages of my school career I found out that the teaching staff had a somewhat negative oppinion of me, though that was overshadowed by an apparent sense of dissapointment, like they felt I was wasting my "talents". Or some such.

The best explanation that I can think of for my modest popularity was that I appeared to be a mysterious, brooding, deep-thinking rebel. While in reality I was just bored and half-asleep most of the time.



Kiseki
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15 Oct 2010, 6:41 pm

In middle school, not at all! I was completely socially clueless and quiet and had no confidence whatsoever.

When I started HS I decided to make my weirdness work for me. I took my love for creativity and ran with it and I became kind of the class clown. Nobody hated me then, or made fun of me, but they still all thought I was weird. I just became "weird and entertaining!"

I still had no social skills though. I used to watch the popular kids on Monday, talking about their weekends, and be totally fascinated. I couldn't imagine! I just stayed home and watched "The X-Files" or went to work at my animal hospital job.



happymusic
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15 Oct 2010, 7:26 pm

I was very confident but had no friends. I was just generally ignored and the popular girls could be really kinda mean. Sometimes people started rumours about me. I didn't care, though.



PunkyKat
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15 Oct 2010, 8:34 pm

mechanicalgirl39 wrote:
Horus wrote:
Yeah, I was popular.....I was the most popular target in the entire school.

I was voted the most popular punching bag, BB gun target, stoning victim, spittoon, etc....ad infinitum year after year. Try learning anything when your "educational environment" was little more than a concentration camp and your fellow students little more than the sadistic SS guards at said camp. Thanks IN PART to my peers in K-12, i'll have to take remedial math classes when I return to college at the ripe old age of 41.

That's not to say I don't have a bonafide learning disability in math. Nor is it to say that I always tried my hardest to improve my math skills. Nonetheless... my fellow students in K-12 didn't exactly make the learning environment anymore commodious. :x


As horrible as this sounds, I would probably laugh if I heard that one of my bullies was dying of AIDS.


Those pigs are lucky I didn't pull a Columbine on their a**es. I came darn close to doing so and I had the means (dad had plenty of semi-automatic firearms), the motive and the opportunity.

I would've been the Cho Seung Hui of the late 1980's and in retrospect, perhaps I should've been.

Maybe I would've rid the world of 30 or so sadistic pests who have likely gone on to be bullies, wife-beaters, child abusers, rapists and republicans, ( :wink: ) in adulthood.


I know how you feel.

I remember being 12 and planning to get a machine gun and walk into my school and waste everyone who'd ever bullied me.

I even told one of my few friends this and it went all around the school...*sigh* More trouble.


I remember having fantisies about that as well as young as eight.


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orsman
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15 Oct 2010, 8:40 pm

my last year of high school
always dreamt about getting a gun and killing the bullies
but sometimes revenge isnt the best way to go with



OddDuckNash99
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16 Oct 2010, 3:13 am

I was never "popular", but I was well-liked and well-known due to my intelligence. I enjoyed high school, unlike most Aspies, because I loved my classes. I stopped being teased in 8th grade, because people respected me for being "the smart girl." I was always the one people would go to when they needed help understanding something right before a test. I had friends in high school, but I only hung out with them at school. I had no desire to spend time with them outside of school. I didn't make friends I actually enjoyed spending time with until college, when I found Internet forums and I met my handful of good college friends.
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Dnuos
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16 Oct 2010, 11:01 am

There's a bit of a change in generation, eccentric people currently aren't really as accepted, though I'm noticing that this is changing...

Elementary School, Middle School, first few years of High School, no I was not popular - but bullied and thrown down.

The last few years of High School seemed to change things up. By then I wasn't really myself anymore (I lost my eccentric values, my sense of self and individuality, etc... just blended in, which was actually not fun), but I was accepted. Still too late at that point to develop friendships.



PHISHA51
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16 Oct 2010, 12:10 pm

During elementary school, I became well known. When I was at middle school, the same thing happened, and now I'm at high school and even my friends and parents were surprise to hear about my popularity. Even the teachers always say hi to me in the hallways and I would be well known in areas outside of school. A lot of factors could be a reason to why I was popular. 1) I have a couple of unique talents in drawling, music, and sports which could have amazed everyone around me. 2) I was known to be nice by girls, cool by almost everyone, and hard-working by teachers. 3) My brother could have played a role because he talks with people my age (especially the football players because he is one) and that many are shocked to see that we are brothers because we don't look alike. :lol:


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dalurker
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17 Oct 2010, 12:50 am

In elementary school, I was for the most part withdrawn and avoided others and daydreamed a lot. I didn't really like myself or know myself well. Sometimes I tried to get attention by doing silly things. The other students seemed to wonder a lot about why I was so reclusive. I stayed reclusive in high school for a while, all the while I was still the dumb foolish boy. But I became increasingly interested in and curious about the things the other kids were doing and I was getting very interested in girls. So one thing led to the other, and I started talking to some of the popular students some of the time, sat with them at lunch and stuff. I was kinda motivated to do so cause we sorta had similar interests in things.

This occurred around the time when I was feeling very sullen and alone. My grades were quite random. So I wondered how the kids I knew perceived me. I guess they realized me to be weird and confused and foolish, but they were encouraging of me and I started to feel eager. I once went over to one of their houses to hang out. I even went to a couple of parties, which were the last and basically only ones I've ever been to. It's been about 10 years to this date since I was last at a party. I had some fun doing that and it was very thrilling although I was nervous as I didn't know how to interact much at all or how to make conversation.

But things didn't go well as I still didn't know any better how to deal with others and I was still faulty minded and humiliating of myself. I was still sorta detached and on the side as I never became one of them. I guess I didn't know them that much to begin with and couldn't really keep up. The girls who knew me were acting kinda maternalistic with me, cause they knew I was vulnerable, not treating me like I was one of the guys we knew whose level I wanted to be at. I was realizing that those who I knew were kinda keeping in touch with me so they could laugh at me for my stupidity. Sometimes they would get me to say weird phrases and stuff. So I eventually became withdrawn again and lost touch with them, and it was like that for the rest of the time I was in high school.



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17 Oct 2010, 1:46 am

In my first elementary school I was very well liked. I was occasionally teased for my weight but people for the most part liked me, even though I was completely shy. I was the kid that many people thought couldn't talk, but I think the other kids thought I was the nicest person there.

In my second school, they shyness went to a whole new level. Nobody hated me or anything, but I just didn't really talk. Everyone was really sweet to me though, so I guess they liked me.

In my third school it all went to hell. I'd rather not say what happened but I was caught doing something (probably not what you think) and some people saw me, laughed and I obsessed about it all year, thinking people were laughing at me when they most likely weren't. I got on Paxil, and it was like a miracle drug, it instantly just made me happy, a little too much. I just didn't care about anything.

In Middle school is when everything got so cliquey and it was very hard to find a group. I should have went to the nerd table, it's were I belonged, but generally I sat by myself at luch.

HS was the same until my junior year or so and I kind of came out of my shell, and although I still didn't have tons of friends, I at least talked to people and I kind of miss it. I wish I had done more, joined the band or something.



AmberEyes
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17 Oct 2010, 3:04 am

It's funny.

When people realised that I knew a lot of the answers to Maths, German and Science questions, I suddenly became popular.

Not popular in the traditional social sense though.
For a while people treated me like some kind of guru.
Which was silly: I didn't know everything and I still don't.

The teachers soon got in on the act and sat the trouble makers, people who were messing about and people who were stuck next to me.

The teachers would apologise to me and then say that I would have to "babysit" so and so.

This mentoring that I did was basically unpaid classroom assistant work. I thought: "Hang on a minute, surely I'm meant to be the student here, and the teacher was meant to teach the class."

It was like a complete role reversal.
I used to be the one with academic problems and the classroom aide, now I was the classroom aide!
So I've basically been on both sides of the fence.

Now I realise that everyone is a teacher and everyone is a student. People learn from each other in a community: it doesn't have to be lecturing at the white-board. It can be unpaid informal mentoring also.

A relative once told me that people suddenly want to become your friend when you're rich and/or know a lot of information that people desperately need.

He's right.



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17 Oct 2010, 3:49 am

I'm not sure what I am, I'm not popular, not unpopular. I'm sort of, fade into the distance and try not attract attention with my weird ways.

I don't have any school friends, as such. Mostly just people who I know and like, who I say hi to in the corridoors occasionally, but not people who I go round their houses, hang around with and chat to all the time.
I guess it's because I am ZERO skilled at making friends with any degree of permanence. My closest aqaintance, who I sit next to in maths (and copies all my work)!, said that people DID like me, but they kept their distance, because it looked like I wanted to keep myself to myself, which I do and don't at the same time. And she said people thought I was quite shy and strange, but kind and a bit gullible. And of course, she was dead right.


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industrialx
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17 Oct 2010, 3:59 am

I got on relatively well with people at school, despite the fact that I disliked most of my peers. I was always known for being quirky, but it was different sort of bookish quirky when compared to the plain old Straight A students. I was very individual (apparently), and independent, and always stood up against the mainstream (if that doesn't sound too banal). I was more of a nomad, floating around each social group, as I was on good terms with people from each clique, but I never had any close friends. I was the person who sat in the library talking to the school librarian. My personal favourite thing would be to sit on the floor outside the Classics room and read Dante before I went to registration - I'd be the only person there, and it would really help centre me. Another thing that I just understood the other day was why I hated to sit in our Sixth Form common room - my form teacher used to pull me aside and accuse me of not being a joiner, and of being unsociable, and that I needed to make an effort and mingle, because I would sit on a chair outside the room, reading. I had to do that because I found that the noise and crowding and lighting in the room would make me agitated and I would feel like I wanted to attack people, so I needed to remove myself from the situation. I tried explaining it, but she wasn't interested. And like i said, I've only just come to understand the reason for it - too much sensory stimulus.
But aside from that, I was never particularly hated, but neither was I invisible.


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Italianwolf77
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17 Oct 2010, 6:40 pm

I'm fairly popular. I'm not really popular with a lot of the sports players, but considering how big my school is that's not a huge chunk of the school. I'm known for being eccentric (usually in a good way), being funny, being very nice to everyone, and being respectful to teachers. I have a talent for being a class clown in a way that's funny to the students and the teacher too, so I don't get in trouble very often at all. Out of the groups of the school I'm most popular with the theater crowd (considering I'm a theater kid), the band, hipsters, and the weird kids in general.



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17 Oct 2010, 7:03 pm

I went to a ghetto-ass high school, and because of that I would be picked on every now and then by some random student just for the sake of them picking on someone. It was most likely because I was usually withdrawn and I looked really nerdy.

Other than that, I wouldn't say that I was popular, nor would I say that I was unpopular, but I did have a number of popular friends/acquaintances. I was known for being the shy, smart student who was really nice. A lot of people seemed to like me for that reason alone. Otherwise, not many people really noticed me.