high school never ends

Bowling for Soup had it right. In their 2006 single “High School Never Ends”, the pop-punk band sang, “And you still don’t have the right look, and you don’t have the right friends, nothing changes but the faces, the names, and the trends…high school never ends.” Whether a person’s role in that social hierarchy can change is a question I’ll leave for another day, but I think we can all agree that several years out of high school, the hierarchy still exists.

You see it all the time. Instead of going to the office today, my division of about 12 people had a day-long retreat. It wasn’t quite as cheesy as it sounds – no trust falls or awkward icebreakers, thank goodness – but there was time for a little reflection and honesty. During a discussion of lessons learned this year, one of my coworkers said her biggest lesson was that she “just didn’t fit in.” As I’d gotten to know her over the previous months, I had sensed a frustration in her general demeanor and under-the-breath comments, but to hear it stated so candidly and in words a teenager might use made it much more real, and much more poignant. It wasn’t a matter of time, I knew. She’d worked there for years and felt that way; I’d worked there eight months and felt perfectly at home.

It’s just as apparent in our personal lives. Last year, one of my friends often confided in me about the group of students in her graduate program. Of the 20 or 25 students, there was a “core group” of about six or seven, and my friend began the program as one of them. They’d spend nights and weekends at each other’s apartments, and as my friend said with some hesitation, spent a good part of their conversations making fun of their classmates. As the year went on, she told me about how one girl got systematically excluded from the group. Whether it was consciously planned or unspoken, that girl gradually stopped being invited, her calls stopped being returned, and she eventually found other friends. Hearing the story, I felt like it was something out of Mean Girls, but these students were in their early twenties at least.

Sadly, but perhaps not too surprisingly, my friend was the next one to be pushed out of the group. I saw her spend several Friday and Saturday evenings choosing outfits but waiting for a phone call to be returned before changing into them – a phone call that many nights, never came. Like her classmate before her, she eventually decided to find others who appreciated her more.

But that insecurity never goes away, I realized. This past weekend, the core group seemed to change their mind about my friend, and invited her out with them for the first time in several months. She was genuinely excited about it – and she is not an excitable girl. I watched the same scene from last year play out again as she mused over what to wear and when to leave, and crossed my fingers that they’d be nice this time. Luckily, they were, but what struck me more than their sudden change of mind was her sudden change of mind. Once they wanted her back, last year’s inexplicable rejection seemed forgotten. I cautiously asked her about it, and she explained to me that while she did remember what happened, “with this group, it’s better to be in than out.”

It’s a pragmatic answer, yes, but there’s no way feelings don’t get involved. You could see it in my coworker’s avoidance of eye contact while she admitted to feeling left out, and in my friend’s disappointment in not being called back. And yet we persist in wanting to be part of these groups that reject us – why? And why do we blame ourselves for what is more likely the sum of group dynamics, chance, and self-preservation? I’m definitely guilty of it myself. When I get rejected from anything, be it a romantic prospect or a job interview, the first thing I do is wonder what I did wrong. The second thing I do is resolve to win the person over. It’s completely unhealthy, and we should be beyond it, and we know it.

Easier said than done, though, right?