The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [120]
High schoolers might more easily find a home. More subcultures exist in high school than in middle school, offering more places in which to belong, and the presence of older students can create a more supportive environment. Upperclassmen are less likely to feel like they have to conform to group norms because their group boundaries aren’t so strict. In addition, their social understanding has broadened enough for them to make more sophisticated distinctions among individuals and to begin to discount stereotypes when forming opinions about their peers.
By the end of high school, students are usually less concerned with popularity and group membership. They become more self-reliant and more interested in individual friendships or romantic relationships than in traveling in a pack. They are not as vulnerable to peer influence and are less bothered by criticisms. So the sting of seventh-grade exclusion is sharper than the same treatment might have been at age six or sixteen.
With all of these issues in mind, it’s no wonder that decades of studies indicate that students experience a drop in self-esteem in early adolescence, at the time that they make the transition into middle school. When these various external and internal factors converge, the resulting panicked confusion can cause some kids to take desperate coping measures to restructure their worlds—which might explain why seventh graders were so desperate to belong that they formed a group so expansive that the only person excluded was Danielle.
Chapter 9
WHY LABELS STICK: THE MOTIVATIONS OF THE NORMAL POLICE
After only a few days or weeks of unsuccessful attempts to find a table at which to fit in, some of the cafeteria fringe opt to escape the lunchroom entirely. At lunchtime, Blue ate in Ms. Collins’ room, Joy went to biology, and Danielle usually went home. Eli was fortunate to find fellow “nerds” in his senior year lunch period; as a junior, he ate in the library. Noah sat in the cafeteria, but was unhappy there.
Why do so many students believe they must sit at the same cafeteria table with the same people every day? Why don’t they view lunchtime as an opportunity to socialize with new people? Why are students convinced that once they are part of a group or cafeteria table—or shunned from one—they cannot change their situation?
Trey, a senior at an all-boys school in Connecticut, is, to his classmates, a musclehead. They use that label because he works out, takes protein supplements, talks frequently about lifting, tends to pick up heavy items—and people—and because he sometimes doesn’t think before he acts. Trey doesn’t always mind the label, however, because some classmates admire him for his strength. But there is more to Trey than weightlifting. Few people know, for example, that in his free time he sings and writes poetry.
Sometimes people exclude Trey from activities because they’re afraid he’ll hurt them. They tell him he hugs too hard. He doesn’t mean to. He doesn’t know his own strength. “Watch where you’re going, you lummox!” a student shouted when Trey turned a corner and accidentally knocked him over. Some classmates call him Caveman, insinuating that he is “big, stupid, and hairy.” For years, Trey’s older brother called him Lenny in front of his friends and said that Trey couldn’t hang out with them because he was “too much like Lenny.” Trey didn’t know what his brother was talking about until he read Of Mice and Men, and was crushed. His brother was calling him a clumsy oaf who broke or killed practically everything he touched. The worst part of the name-calling, Trey said, is that “once you gain a label, you can’t really lose it, no matter what.”
Teenagers change their minds about a lot of things. They change their minds about their favorite songs and TV shows and regularly ricochet from crush to crush. But they do not easily allow each other to change their minds