After High School: Do Cliques Persist?

After high school, due cliques persist? Yes and no. The definitive barriers that kept us from really getting to know fellow students become less; sometimes we lose all of our past segregation tendencies, sometimes they just lessen and, in rare cases, none is forgotten. The usual and logical effect is that we mature and the sense of segregation become a blur and a kind of smoothing of the cliques occurs.

I believe that one of the main differences of how we perceive past segregation depends on the cliques to which we belonged to in the past. I am sure that members of the more popular cliques in school did not really notice the differences and just ignored members of the other cliques. Many of them did not acknowledge the cliques in the past and do not acknowledge those cliques in the present. If they did then or do acknowledge it now, some of them probably say that we all matured and the cliques of the past no longer have any bearing on the present, which is often the case but not always true.

Members of cliques that were not as popular remember the group segregation more than the popular cliques. While many of them have matured and forgotten about the past, some of them have not forgotten due to having more vivid memories or, in the worst cases, permanent scarring with varying degrees of psychological damage. I know it is a harsh statement but I think it is true in the most severe cases. Most less popular people, who do remember the past vividly, chalk it up to immaturity and the belief that most people have moved on from the past.

I was in a unique situation in my high school years because of my disability, which many people of any age do not know what to think of it. I was quasi-popular because my wheelchair was hard to forget and I was outspoken; albeit I said some things that were said in the heat of the moment that I regretted soon after. I was a member of the student Council because other students voted for me and signed my petition, for whatever reason they had. Almost everyone knew my name -- it was said over the loudspeaker enough. I experienced a type of popularity that most people are not privy to. I know that many students laughed at me but some students actually liked me and some looked up to me.

I was a semi-member of many different cliques, from the nerdy and academic to the outcasts and popular. Why do I say semi-member? I say it because, while members of other cliques heard me and sometimes allowed me to take part in their activities, I was never really a member of any clique. I considered most of these people to have been acquaintances at best; they were never really friends. During school, everyone said hi and knew me; I was even elected freshman class secretary. However, as soon as the bell rang at the end of the day, everyone disappeared and I didn't see them until the next day in school. Make of that what you will. .

Enough about my experience, let's get back to the subject as a whole.

There are really three different outlooks on this subject, which I will explain by using the viewpoint of three different people -- myself and two friends that I won't name. Let's go from one extreme to the other.

The first viewpoint is the more optimistic one. The cliques and the differences between people become almost nonexistent years later. My friend with this viewpoint is a 33-year-old married female with a few children. She told me that she talks to alumni more now than ever. Now, she talks to people that she never would have spoken to in high school. She is of the opinion that similar life experiences, such as getting married, getting a career or having children, creates a sense of commonality that makes everyone be on the same level. This does make sense, in a way, because people are usually brought together by shared experiences; not shared in the sense that people shared the same exact experience together but that they each experienced a similar event or activity separately.

Think of it as some comedians, like George Carlin, who make the audience laugh by making jokes about things that most everyone has experienced or know of -- such as news. The comedian relates their jokes to old events that the audience has experienced or current events that are popular at the time, so that everyone can quickly understand the humor of the joke. The best jokes are those that are relevant to the majority of the people. It creates a sense of camaraderie that people like because they feel like they are in on the joke.

The second viewpoint is the more pessimistic one. If we didn't associate with the people during high school, we sure wouldn't want to associate with the people years after we graduate. My friend with this viewpoint is a 49-year-old divorced female with two adult children. She told me that she rarely talks to most alumni and especially not to people that she didn't like or talk to during her high school years. This is a straightforward opinion that some of us agree with. This also makes sense because, if we didn't really know them in high school, how or why would we get the chance to talk to them after we graduate? Sure, it might happen eventually by accident but most of us would not actively seek out those people that we didn't like during high school, so the chances are very slim that we would be a situation that would bring us together.

The third viewpoint is my own and it is the middle ground, based on a combination of my own opinion and some of each of the other two viewpoints. Depending on the situation, people from different cliques might come together after they graduate. The chances that we talk to people that we did not talk to during high school are increased because of the fact that we, most likely, have more in common with each other based on life experiences. At the same time, we will most likely not actively seek out people that we did not know well or like during high school because of human nature. We usually hang out with our own friends from the past and present and do not actively talk to those that were not our friends. Still, the chances exist that we will become friends with people from other cliques in the future because we believe that most people have changed for the better with maturity.

A while ago, I was talking to the people who are organizing my class's 15th year reunion; again, I will not name names. Each of these organizers was members of the popular cliques in high school -- football players, student Council members and cheerleaders. Members of the popular cliques are usually the people that take it upon themselves to organize our reunions. We don't usually vote for them, they just start organizing, maybe as an extension of their roles during high school. For whatever reason, it's not really a bad thing but some people of less popular cliques might resent that because they probably feel that the same popular people are still the popular people.

The turnout for our last two reunions was not really good. One reunion was canceled due to lack of interest and the other reunion had a good but relatively low turnout (25% of our class as an estimate). The organizers are expecting a larger turnout this year.

I talked to a few alumni that were members of less popular cliques about the reunions and their experiences at the one reunion that actually took place. The general consensus was that, when they went to the reunion, the cliques from high school were almost the same -- each of the groups of people hung out together and it really was not much of a mingling across clique lines. Some of the less popular people left early because there really was nothing for them to do or talk about.

One of the unpopular people said that they hung out at the bar for most of the night and really did not mingle with the popular people. I find it interesting that, when I asked one of the popular people and reunion organizer about it, he said that he hung out with the unpopular guy for most of the night but, when I asked the unpopular person, he said that the popular guy was only talking to him at the bar for a few minutes before moving on. Chalk it up to difference of opinion?

The organizers of this year's 15th year reunion talked to me a little bit to see if I had any contact info for alumni that they could not reach yet. I helped out a little bit with that. This is also the time when I got the idea for this article. After talking to the unpopular people that I mentioned above, I told the reunion organizers that, if they want to really get people to come, they should get people that are representative of each of the past cliques and have them each work on inviting members of their respective groups. I was told that it was a ridiculous idea and one of them, half jokingly, that I was a communist (however that works out). The general consensus among non-organizers was that it was a good idea. They did not listen to me and now their reunion is receiving a low response rate again. Oh well, what do I know?