Recasteing High School Hierarchy

Recasteing+High+School+Hierarchy

Avah M., Executive Editor

The high school popularity ladder has evolved into a hierarchy similar to the caste system. The faults of our elementary and middle school days haunt us through high school and the weird phases that we all “forgot” about are somehow permanently etched into everyone else’s minds. The mishaps of our younger days follow us like shadows and sometimes they determine our social ranking.
“I was sort of mean as a kid and unfortunately, no matter how kind you are, people won’t let you forget those kinds of things,” says sophomore Zaryea Khan. Most of us regret at least one of the phases we went through, whether it be the bootcut jeans phase from elementary school or the phase in sixth grade where you felt the need to match your eyeshadow to be the exact same color as your Hollister t-shirt. But the real regret is the fact that you still socialize with the people who were with you at your lowest points, therefore making it virtually impossible to escape your past-self. “Friends follow you throughout your school years, so any dumb nicknames or embarrassing stories will likely stay with you,” says sophomore Samantha McLoughlin.
Our generation is obsessed with labels: clothing labels, restaurant labels, and most of all, people labels. We have this inner urge to categorize people based on their appearance and the stories we’ve heard from the grapevine. We classify each other into ranks allowing little to no social mobility, turning the high school social scene into a caste system. “Teenagers shouldn’t be worried about how they are ranked socially because after high school, the only thing that matters is their grades. The people you hung out with or prayed to be friends with won’t matter,” says sophomore Jessica Garcia. After high school, the social standing you held for four years terminates and becomes unimportant. After it’s too late we realize the time we spent emphasizing popularity was a waste and we should’ve focused on just enjoying ourselves.
We all have things that we look back on and cringe at the fact that it ever happened. But one regret that no one should ever have is that they focused too much on their social ranking, and therefore didn’t get to enjoy the full fledged high school experience. They say high school is the best four years of your life, but how can you enjoy it if you’re labeling and placing each other into ranks creating a social atmosphere with little mobility? Being popular has it perks, but being unpopular isn’t so bad either. Our generation focuses on what other people think of us, which isn’t necessarily a problem. But when we categorize people based on their past, appearance, and what other people claim to know about them, we create an anti-social atmosphere with little invitation to diversity.