3// PoPuLARrr- A Story of High School
My
best memories of high school involved laughter after swim practices,
creating layouts in the yearbook classroom, learning percussion pieces,
and having great mentorship in excellent teachers.
However,
my worst were positions that I or other well-intentioned people put
myself in or what I think of as homecoming court. I had many wonderful
memories from high school but for the most part, I didn't like my
experience. It seems silly because I can account for beautiful
friendships and great times, but people can be mean and the school
system continually failed at monitoring bullying. I was honored to be
nominated for homecoming court but the problem is that most of these
events are a giant popularity contest. While I was well-liked in my
peer groups, I wasn't a popular kid and instead of enjoying my
experience of being nominated, I was just stressed out. I
had to change my slogan several times to fit school policies and it
ended up being something that I didn't really like but I went with
anyways. I spent my paychecks getting posters made and my parents
invested in t-shirts because that was a big thing back then. It was
legitimately a full campaign. The girl who won wasn't even there on
voting day but she had pretty flawless popularity. People had even
witnessed her friends tearing down my posters, which was pretty mean.
An opportunity that I had wanted to be a part of so badly was ruined by
flawed expectations that I had. If I could go back, I would tell high
school Kim to just enjoy everything and not worry so much. I disliked
being on homecoming court so much that when I was nominated for two more
different courts, I was dreading it.
People
who were my friends voted for me and I dreaded being a part of those
experiences. That's messed up. I felt like I had failed them and it
was difficult being a part of programs where the popular kids always
won, regardless if better qualified people were running.
The cake topper was
our senior awards night. Brandon and I ended up getting the "most full
of ourselves" award and I was mortified. He wasn't there so I walked up
to the stage by myself to accept my award and put a big smile on my
face. I wanted to disappear. When we were filling out our superlative
charts leading up to that awards night, I had left that one blank because I thought it was pretty awful
that they even made that a category.
The
experiences, though stressful and that last one- horrific, taught me a
lot about myself and others. It taught me to enjoy things and to
simplify as much as possible. I spent so much time, money, and energy
into homecoming. Instead, I should have focused on having fun. I didn't have
fun, invested in a campaign that realistically wouldn't win against one
of the most popular girls in school, and the experience left a really
bad taste in my mouth.
It
also taught me that in the simplest of terms sometimes people suck.
Though I would never have been mean to any of those kids, they chose to
be mean to me. All you can do is love them. Would it have made me feel
better to get revenge or say something nasty? No. Treat people the way
you want to be treated. Sometimes it's a battle but don't be on the
judgmental side at the end of the fight.
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