Personal Narrative: My High School Subculture

For four long years I felt as if my high school was in a world unto itself. I spent that time interacting with an extensive amount of groups, or “cliques,” and getting to know what they do. Through my experiences, I realized what made this “subculture” high school run like it did. High school is an incredibly dynamic time for people, and I had changed dramatically from my freshman to senior year. Like many, my freshman year was quite awkward, as remnants of my middle school self remained with me. As time went on, however, I talked to more people and grew out of my passive and shy personality. This did not just randomly happen without reason though. I learned and realized who I was and whom I enjoyed talking to in school, which explained why …show more content…
The new friends I had were exceptionally different from the others I had for basically two years. What was different about them was that they were much more apt to easy going conversations, as opposed to the more awkward and forced ones of my old acquaintances. However, what did not change was that they were both prone to be judgmental. There was zero chance of them changing what their concept of the social norm was. From the card gaming club to fantasy football trash talking, there was no doubt that these people saw “normality” at polar opposite ends of the social spectrum. What I began to realize about myself is that I had a particular repugnance for the “weird kids” who were also my old friends, more than my current friends who just thought of them as “different” or …show more content…
I started out talking to my more quiet friends as opposed to my more outgoing friends. After around a year, however, I began to realize their strangeness and why they do not change according to what the average high school student is like. Their concept of “normal” was who they were as people, which was similar to others. They found outgoing athletes to be “weirdos” as opposed to themselves. As high school continued, this proved to be the case for every group I socialized with. This explains why different groups do not mend, but instead chose to remain separated. My junior year was the first year I finally found a respectable group of people that I enjoyed being around. This was the more outgoing group due to my previous and somewhat odd encounter with other cliques who viewed themselves as normal according to the high school subculture. The utmost outstanding factor about these different groups that I learned was that no matter who it was or what group they associated with, it was almost certain that they thought of themselves as normal, or even “cool”, to be apart of that clique. All groups of people view society differently, and they will almost always settle where they think they can fit in. In other words: the subjective, highly sought after, social nirvana known as being