Audience participation is needed for this post. Please answer the below question to whatever extent you can.
What does it take to be a cool high school student?
Be as detailed as possible, as stereotypical too. Things like having the shiniest car, the coolest pencil-case, or girlfriend with the biggest breasts are all similar things I’m looking for. This will be very helpful to me so answer to your heart’s content.
Oh and if you haven’t already check out Yesterday’s Post. More people have snatched up free copies than I ever expected and a good majority are complete strangers. This let’s me know people care, are interested, and are incredibly cheap. Be sure to leave a review, unless you hate it. But if you hate it then it means you hate this blog because it’s pretty much the same style of storytelling.
I wonder how many hits you’re gonna get from that tag “high school girl with giant boobs.”
It’s the second time I used it. With WordPress’s new stupid “we don’t do search engines” junk they’re pulling who knows? Today my highest search engine is “alf eating cats cover” 2 people
I have some thoughts on this, I’ll get back to you!
Thanks! Take all the time you need.
I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t cool in high school and I honestly didn’t care to be. I didn’t like the cool kids cause they were mostly arrogant assholes and jocks.
I’m look for almost tongue-in-cheek thoughts and ideas. One prime example is “wearing a book bag with one strap on” Stuff that was cool in high school that makes no sense now.
Oh, how about the french roll? A bunch of kids did that in high school back in the 90′s…
Is that a hairstyle?
Here you go… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tight_rolled_pants
Ha that’s a nice silly thing that fits well in what I’m looking for. I always associate that look with skinheads these days.
Oh? People still do that? Wow. I haven’t seen that since 1994.
Yeah Neo-Nazi skinheads always do that. It helps them wear their big boots better.
Oh, wow. I’m glad I don’t ever run into any of those idiots.
Was Jeff Spicoli even cool?
There are different things that girls need to be popular from what boys need. In my school, to be popular you needed to be likeable. You couldn’t just survive on a good body and a good face. Those were very close to the top, but you still needed to have a shining personality so that even the lowest rung of students thought you were cool. Not as many girls were concerned with this issue as guys were. They guys were all really nice and I can’t even remember a mean/bully popular guy.
Guys and girls in my school definitely needed to have the right attire. The kids that went to my school weren’t poor either, so clothes and shoes and jackets (and cars) made most of us look better than the teachers.
You also had to have good skin, and a good body. If you didn’t develop well (and early) you were pretty much done for. Unless you were a female jock-type, then it was overlooked. Basically, if you were different than the norm, it would harm your chances of being popular.
I was lucky because my year was really nice to me considering I was a foot taller than everyone and didn’t really play any sports.
Lastly, I think the key to being popular, was being social. Which I definitely wasn’t. Going to parties or throwing parties was the best and fastest way to climb the popular ladder.
Some good insight. Our high school experiences were way too different. Thanks for the help!
Not sure how much help I can be. I had lots of friends but wasn’t “popular” in high school. All those friends I made a couple years prior (the whole TA/gradebook thing) didn’t carry me through to high school. I didn’t play any sports either. I lettered in Choir. o.O Nobody gets popular from being in Choir. I also transferred schools my jr. year so that didn’t help. I was also super shy so that probably didn’t help at all. I never got shoved in a locker or stuffed in a trash can so I guess it could have been worse, right?
I wasn’t very popular either which is why I need to know some different things we should have done. I’m asking this all basically as a joke and any recommendations don’t have to necessarily be as serious as they should be stereotypical. Like if a high school senior tried telling a freshman what he needed to do to fit in would be completely illogical. Stuff like that.
Based on my high school experience popularity meant being attractive, slightly stupid, captain of some random sports team, and an insufferably hypocritical asshole. One of these individuals would rush around campus whenever fights broke out excited to join in and praise both sides, but was actively speaking out against violence on his platform for student president several months later.
College destroyed almost all of them. When grade points started to matter more than sports points they fell faster than Blockbuster’s profit margins post Netflix. I’d be lying if it wasn’t extremely gratifying to pass by one of these jerks as I watch them toil away at the same menial jobs many of them worked in high school. Apparently, I’m kind of petty.
All I asked was a simple question and you brought some serious venom. I’m so proud of you
Thanks for the help.
What does it take to be cool in high school? Well, at my high school, you had to put out. And yes, I just said “put out” since I evidently went to high school in the ’50s. Playing a guitar (poorly) doesn’t hurt, and neither does having a seemingly endless supply of weed. Cool kids were able to suck up to the cool teachers and give the unpopular teachers just as hard a time as they gave the students.
Things have changed a bit. Now you don’t even need to know how to play a guitar poorly, you just have to look like you can. Thanks for the input!
OOOOOOO!!!!!! A pop-quiz!!!!!! LOVE those!!!!
☝ That’s how cool I was. I was so cool I didn’t know cool existed except in movies and they weren’t real people so it didn’t matter. There was me and there was everyone else. I didn’t care what they were doing. That’s cool.
Nerdishly cool? My world was defined by classical music and science fiction. I didn’t know I wasn’t cool, assuming I wasn’t, and I still don’t know. That’s been useful in life, though. I’m still so cool I don’t care if I am or not. I sometimes define “cool” situationally and in the negative, as in: buying Reeses peanut butter cups half-price after Valentine’s Day is cool. Telling that to everyone you meet (for the next month) isn’t cool.
“High school” cool? Ugh. No idea. Just being a teenager means you’re a little un-cool, anyway, at least in most situations. Kids can’t help it. Those hormones are killer. I used to think the cool kids were the ones who were screwing around in the back of the auditorium during rehearsals, but some of them ended up pregnant at 16 or on drugs, and that’s not cool. And cheerleaders whose boyfriends played on the football team? I assumed they were cool. But a couple of them had hip replacements in their 50′s and that’s REALLY not cool.
::shivers::
Cool should last. “Real” cool is ongoing, systemic, and impossible to hide.
Maybe I’ll stop back with more. Maybe not. I’ll wait to see how the “cool kids” are replying here, and then do whatever I want to. Cool is setting your own agenda. Crowds are never cool.
This is a wonderful post, Tim. When do we get our grades? Er… marks. I want this on my permanent record.
Ha no grades, just need ideas for something. I’m looking for stereotypical cool things anyway, not necessarily truly cool. so this is helpful. Thank you!
LOL!
Yeah…I’m not much help there. My “cool” would be from the Ice Age, and I always ran away from stereotypes anyway so I don’t really know what cool was (specifically). There was pot and Woodstock and acid and flips and candlelight vigils and The Association and hating the Man and the lottery for ‘Nam. Some of that was cool and some of it wasn’t. I met Sonny and Cher before they were famous. Was that cool? They probably didn’t think so. But look what happened to them.
If you had a car you were cool. That’s all I can remember, it was so long ago.
I hope it wasn’t the original Model T.
Don’t be silly.
Model A.
Be late for class because you can. If you’re a guy, casually drop a condom on the floor (you’ll be using that later, nudge nudge wink wink). Swear every other motherfunking word. There’s only one way of getting from A-B (if you’re cool), pulling up with the roof down on your sparkling new set of wheels – getting a seat in that vehicle is like a golden ticket for your buddies. Work out and BECOME Arnold (AH[emphasis here]-nul-d) Schwarzennegar. Make out with yourself, not literally, that would make you the shifty-eyed, pale kid in the back of the class. But look for the version of you in the opposite gender (or the same gender, whatever floats your boat, no prejudice here!) and make them your biotch. Whilst on the subject of attraction, pull the Derek Zoolander blue steel at your nearest candidates and you’ll bag a date in no time. After school activities, standard 101.. Males: Sports, Females: Cheerleaders. If you’re a female you need to be emulating “model” daily. School is a fashion show and every day is your runway. Lunch consists of water with a side of water, food was so last century: a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. And finally, girls need their sistahs in the form of sororities: the alpha beta zeta schmetas.
Also, as a side note. Not so much about HS “cool students”, more the sub cultures but still worth a watch for the laughs:
This was an incredibly perfect response and you understood my assignment completely. Thank you a lot!!!
You’re welcome
Stereotypes are my thing, just check out my hipster blog post: http://theuniverseandmeblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/the-birth-of-a-hipster/ (I think I earned a shameless plug).
Oh and thanks for the video. I wish this was around when I was in HS. It would have been my anthem.
Likewise, Rickayyy.
I was not popular by any means but i wasnt terribly unpopular either. These are some rules i lived by:
1. Never use your locker because remembering your combination is lame
2. You have to have a jansport backpack
3. Wear as many bracelets and sparkly items as possible (this disorients enemies)
4. Drive to school and use the “if anyone mentions skipping on the way we absolutely have to” rule
5. Skip school to do nothing but sleep
6. Go to the bathroom just so you can walk by friends classrooms and wave
7. Dont smoke but hang out where everyone does (cancer corner)
8. Occasionally use LSD in the middle of the school day and then wonder why you thought that was a good idea.
9. Dislike anyone who was an overachiever, never enjoy school events and NEVER join any school extra curricular activities
10. Finally, be such a nihilist that you fail gym class only to have to retake a whole semester of 5 gym classes a day to graduate. That’ll learn ya
A completely perfect list! Thank you for the input.
Now I realized who this was. I was so afraid some random black chick had commented and would find something racist here. This is beautiful. Thanks Rae!
hahaha no i dont think im black..although..
In this day and age over here? Probably wearing a hooded top with the hood up and a baseball cap underneath, yelling abuse at old people while smoking cigarettes you paid a tramp to buy for you and drinking one of your dads beers on the corner of the street while at the same time causing criminal damage to property such as bus stops etc. Maybe I just live in a bad neighbourhood.
Man those kids sound awesome….
Our coolest high school students were the people who went out a lot, tried to act cool because of lots and lots of alcohol, being a bit badass, pretending not to care about school really.
O, and they deny the existence of belts. Please note that one!
Existence of belts is a really good one I didn’t think about. How is it that “cool” kids in high school are the same no matter where you grew up? It’s like they’re a cult.
They should be slapped with belts.
Being good at sports is another one, and being together with a girl just because you belong to the seem group is good as well. Don’t love each other that much. You’re just at the same place on the social scale, but you like gaming more in fact.
I like this quiet rage you have for your high school classmates. Don’t worry NBI, it fades over time the more you distance yourself and actually achieve things. A few kiss my ass now. It’s cute.
Woah, that’s like THE achievement in life, isn’t it?
I don’t know if you’re done with your homework but let me see if cool in my high school is the same as yours.
1.S-P-O-R-T.
2. Girls, learn how to smile at everyone even people you wish don’t exist. Guys, be tall and do the same thing as girls. And laugh a lot–the louder the better.
3. If you can’t do 2, be rich and good-looking and treat 90% of the people as if they don’t exist.
4.Belong in a large group who crowd the hallways and intimidate passers-by during break time.
5.Your social media friends should NEVER be less than a thousand.
6.Have the latest cellphone models.
7.Be sure to have older siblings graduate from the same high school and enjoy basking in their leftover glitter.
8.Be a guy, and join gangs, and seduce gay teachers enough for them to have a drink with you and spread rumors/truth whatever you call it. Photos/video evidence the best.
9. Be fashionable. NEVER wear the same outfit twice. (We’re lucky ones since we have uniforms 4 days/week haha!)
10.Have some “showy” talent and flaunt it. Ass-kissing not included. Join the student body or the theater club but NOT the science or math club, nerd.
11. NEVER be ugly. If you’re ugly, go home schooling!
12. Change girlfriends/boyfriends twice a month. Or once, it’ll do.
Thanks these are helpful and no I’m on a hiatus from the project this was for. It’s weird you talk about social media making a person cool because when I was in HS the cool kids were the last to get accounts and a lot still don’t have them.