I don’t think I’m allowed to say what school I came to before I came to Mississippi School of the Arts, but I just wanted to talk about some of the things I felt about my old school. If you know me, you should be able to know where I’m talking about, and if you don’t, you may just have to guess.
In any case, I wanted to talk about the differences between the schools, and how I feel about where I was before.
I never really fit in at my old school. I was a bookworm throughout a lot of elementary school, and as I got older, my anxiety got worse, and that prevented me from fitting in even more. A lot of kids in my class were sports kids, and I, being a chubby, short girl, never really found the appeal to them. Imagine why?
It felt like there were certain “groups” within our class. Last year, there were about four distinct groups.
The first group was “the cool kids,” or as I liked to call them, snobby girls and guys who only ever really cared about themselves and acted like they owned the class. They never really talked to those outside of their group, unless it was to tease them or they were forced to because the teacher put them in a group together. I was put with two “cool kids” during a biology assignment- we dissected frogs- and I remember being annoyed out of my mind by the way the other girl in the group would ignore the assignment and would talk to her friend in another group.
The second group was “the boys,” better known as all the boys who didn’t fit into the cool kid group. A lot of them were loud, obnoxious, and rude, and often they would get on my nerves to the point that I just wanted to scream, despite the consequences of doing just that. One in particular stuck out to me. It always amazed me how he managed to be just the right amount of annoying at the one time when I needed silence the most.
The third group was “the girls,” also known as the girls who didn’t fit in the cool kid group. For the most part, they were nice enough. A few of them were on the rude side, but amazingly enough, they didn’t act all that mean. There was one girl who seemed to flop back and forth between the “cool kid” group and “the girls.” Man, sometimes I wished I could have that ability.
And then there was the last group, the one I was a part of. I’ll coin us as “the misfits.” We were a small group, only about five or six people, but we made do. We didn’t really fit in anywhere else, and we never found a proper “place” to be. The group consisted of myself and a few friends, and we made do. We sat together at the lunch table, away from everyone else. We made jokes, some of them only we would understand because of past experiences. Most of all, we were there for each other. If one of us had a problem, we were a support group. We were there to comfort one another and lift each other up.
The other groups couldn’t really say that, I think.
I think most schools are made up of factions like that. There’s always the preps/jocks, the nerds, the misfits, whatever you want to call it. At least you had your own group and that you were all close in some way. Hopefully you’ve found your own group while here!
I totally feel you on this. I never quite fit in to my old school because of who I liked, what I liked. So glad we’re able to be free here.
I was the leader of the misfits. My “followers” haven’t contacted me since I started here. I really miss my other misfit buddies, but I feel more alive here.
Wow, did we come from the same place? I felt the exact same way. I’m right at home now though.
That’s always something I did in my head, was to pick apart the “groups” of people in my school and classify them. It sounds weird, but it’s a thing.
I relate to this so much, but I always felt like “the misfits” were a little bit more real than the rest. A little more alive.