Cliques

1. FYS
Assignment #2
Cliques
On January 20th, the class was given an assignment to bring in a list of the types of
cliques they had in their high school. My list included the football players, cheerleaders, band
kids, rednecks and the nerdy students. The class was divided into small groups, and we
compared the types of cliques on each person’s list. During our discussion, we decided as a team
what we thought was the “typical” high school clique stereotypes. Once each group picked their
cliques, we then discussed the top five cliques of every group. The majority of the class chose
basically the same set of five cliques. I found this to be interesting, because the majority of the
students in the class come from different high schools as well as from different states. After we
made a final list on the board, we were asked a set of questions about what made each of these
individual cliques different from each other. What makes a jock a jock? Are rednecks smart and
do they do well in school? What makes these individuals fall into a certain category of clique?
These questions really made me start to think about how badly we label and stereotype everyone
in today’s society. For example, a person is not just a person anymore. A “preppy” person is
considered stuck up or pompous to some, but they can actually be the nicest person you have
every met. A nerdy person is labeled as smart, weird or lame, but they can be the coolest guy
with no common sense.