<p>lol, just wondering.</p>
<p>Not just the "popular kids", but did the burnouts and cheaters actually make something of themselves? </p>
<p>In my mind, I like to say they didn't and would end up working for the kids that actually deserved something, but that's not how the world works...or is it?</p>
<p>Please comment below!
I ask parents because those who are still in school probably haven't seen enough of what has become of these people yet.</p>
<p>I had to laugh at this! I just had a reunion this sumer, and it was interesting to see how things turned out. The popular guys that were also smart all are very successful. Lots of engineers, business owners, etc. The dumb jock, party guys are both on their 3rd wife with multiple DUIs, etc. The women are more of a mixed bag. The most popular girls always wanted to be mothers and wives, so they are successful in that regard, but most of them didn’t venture far from my little Midwestern town. Those of us that “got out” did better than most.</p>
<p>I have no idea what many of them are doing. I keep up with some of them a bit on FB, and I see some of their jobs, but I have no idea whether they are really successful. For instance, I see one woman is a Realtor. I have no idea if she ever sells anything, however.</p>
<p>By the time you get to our age, you pretty much cease to care. :)</p>
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<p>So true.</p>
<p>Teenage years are a strange blip which have so much import in the American imagination that we somehow seem to think that they define us. But, they honestly have the least to do with who we really are as people of all the years of our lives.</p>
<p>Enjoy it, if you can. Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides. Everyone is miserable to some extent in high school, some people are just better at hiding it. I’ve never met anyone I really, really liked who loved jr. high or high school. As a great friend of mine said once, “You really don’t want your kid to “peak” at 16.” So true.</p>
<p>Yup it doesn’t much matter after the five year reunion. One of my son’s friends that everyone thought would flunk out is in med school and the kids that had everything hated his college, left at Christmas Freshman year and has never gone back to college and is working construction…there’s a couple surprises in every class. Fact is OP, there will be some successes in your high school class that will surprise you and some perceived failures that will surprise you. But the guy working construction could be very successful in a few years… There are no “do-overs” so you can’t go back to high school and “do it differently”…and everyone starts with a clean slate after high school.</p>
<p>What I found most interesting was how well the socially adept ended up doing. They may not have been at the top of the class academically, but outside of school, being ‘people smart’ counts for a great deal.</p>
<p>It was a mixed bag. Some were more successful, some less.</p>
<p>The handsome football jock who was the big heartthrob of all the girls in high school ended up working as a manual laborer in the local saw mill. He wasn’t a failure, but his life’s social high points probably all occurred in high school. Last I heard, some of his buddies were recovering from various forms of substance addiction and had managed to put their lives back together.</p>
<p>Most of the nerds (my crowd) turned out to be reasonably successful. A couple of lawyers, a scientist (me), some successful businessmen. </p>
<p>Probably the most spectacular scholastic success was the girl who was the class intellectual/hippie (or intellectual/beatnik as she was back in junior high). She went off to Macalester College (which none of us had heard of at the time) and from there to Harvard Law School. Last I heard she was a staff attorney at the Federal Labor Relations Board.</p>
<p>Several of the girls who went to college became teachers. I would estimate that no more than about 20-25% of the class graduated from college.</p>
<p>Since I lived in a rural town in Oregon, some of the kids just went to work on their dads’ farm/ranch and then presumably took over the business when dad eventually retired.</p>
<p>As I think about my “class”…yes people smarts does count for many successes!</p>
<p>My son, who graduated HS five years ago, was home for a few days this week, and commented that his classmates seem to have divided between the people who stayed in our pleasant-but-somewhat-dull suburban town and those that have moved out for good. Both groups are successful in their own ways.</p>
<p>That being said, he was surprised to find one of the honor students from his class now making a living as an exotic dancer…</p>
<p>Most of them ended up in the local Applebees bar…drinking their sorrows away. Some still don’t understand that the point of college and adult life is to branch out and meet new people. I have found that those “popular” kids encountered a rude awakening when they found out they were no longer the center of attention.</p>
<p>Nope, and the popular kids I envied so in Middle School did even worse.</p>
<p>Had a reunion a few weeks ago. General rule seemed to be (and this is obviously a simplification):</p>
<p>Brainy + Popular in High School = Very successful and in prominent positions </p>
<p>Brainy but not as popular in High School= Successful but less prominent roles (eg backoffice wiz rather than front office exec)</p>
<p>Popular in High School but w/o brains = Seems like their best days were in high school and it’s been downhill from there.</p>
<p>Again, I’m oversimplifying but in most cases the above classification was surprisingly accurate in seeing where people ended up.</p>
<p>Interesting question!</p>
<p>Of the top 4 students in my hs class (126 students, very small town), two students became pharmacists and two became lawyers (going to U.Va. and Columbia for law school). I never heard anything more about the cheerleaders (the popular girls), except for one who died in an auto accident soon after graduation and the other who got married and dropped out after becoming pregnant before graduation.</p>
<p>As the other posters have suggested, people carve their own paths and success can be defined in numerous ways.</p>
<p>Intellectually, my fairly large Midwestern high school class saw almost 100% of its graduates attend some form of higher education, mostly at four-year colleges, but with a reasonable number pursuing vocational training. No one considered not doing anything - however that might be defined, either. When I last attended a reunion, I was pleased - no, delighted! - to discover that the people I had truly liked in high school, I still truly liked (even if we hadn’t had any contact for years), and the people I hadn’t been as fond of or hadn’t been part of their high school social group, I didn’t find objectionable on any grounds whatsoever. These were all people who had lived life with all its unexpected ups and downs and, presumably, payed taxes and could sincerely enjoy each others’ company, at least for a few hours every five years.</p>
<p>From a young, entirely unassuming computer scientist who began work (and stayed with) with a then start-up company called Sun Microsystems, to higher-profile service academy grads now with general-officer rank, to doctors (some “jocks”, some “nerds”, some neither), lawyers (same), CPA’s (same, etc., etc.), investment bankers, a concert pianist, property developers, car dealers, nuclear physicists, dental hygienists, architects, academics, delighted parents (many of whom are now becoming grandparents), a football All-American and Pro Bowl player, small business owners, civil servants, home-schoolers, farmers, engineers, to at least one incarcerant, the one thing that my former classmates all commented on was how few of them truly had any idea what they would be doing or where they would be living even when they had finished any type of school. Life beyond high school is like that. A few, too, have now died by accident or through ill-health. And there are others, who have never returned to any reunion and haven’t ever sought contact (hard as this Facebooking day and age makes that seem). I have lived long enough to know that, as in any population sample, there will be the full gamut of both the best and the worst types of human behavior resident in our midst. But that would cut across all high school social categories, I suggest, because that’s how life is, too.</p>
<p>By and large, the most “popular” kids in my high school - and the occasionally ethically-challenged kid - achieved what they could. The “nerds” have, too. Whether they have achieved what they may have liked, is an entirely different story. It seems to me that the idea is for everyone to do what they can. And to turn the magnifying glass on yourself periodically to ask whether you are achieving your own maximum.</p>
<p>I don’t know whether the OP - or any despairing high school students - can agree, but it seems to me that ultimately it’s not about a comparison (gleeful though that may be in fantasizing about). It’s about what you seek to achieve for yourself - and through that, for your family and community, wherever that turns out to be - and hoping that everyone else can do that for themselves and their families and communities, at whatever level, too.</p>
<p>Hard to say I went to a girl’s school</p>
<p>The three most popular: public administration, New York Times writer, school board member, book editor
My friends the nerds: English professor, homeschool Mom sometimes a model, architect, social worker, lawyer at the Justice department</p>
<p>Lots of girls I wish I’d known doing fairly interesting things now.</p>
<p>I went to school with a kid who always seemed to be in the middle of some sort of mischief and then mysteriously disappeared after 11th grade. My friend speculated that he had done something really bad and got kicked out. He showed up at our 30th reunion and it turned out that he had decided rather quickly to graduate early, went to college and med school, and is now a very successful specialist. I told him what we had thought might had happened to him and he thought it was very funny. I don’t judge people based on their careers but, in my view, he’s a success because he helps people, still has a great sense of humor, and doesn’t take himself too seriously.</p>
<p>…“In my mind, I like to say they didn’t and would end up working for the kids that actually deserved something, but that’s not how the world works…or is it?”</p>
<p>I am wondering… What kids actually deserve something? You think kids that are popular or athletic aren’t good students? That they don’t deserve success? But if if one is not “popular” or athletic, but a good student, that student “deserves” what? Success? No, that is not how the world works.</p>
<p>Two of the popular boys in my class ended up playing pro baseball (no wonder our HS team won the state championship when they were seniors!).</p>
<p>One of them climbed out the window during a class when we had a substitute. For some reason, the woman asked ME where the kid had gone, so I told her. I sure got a lot of dirty looks for a few weeks after that!</p>
<p>At our 30th reunion this year, this man stood off to the side and didn’t really participate in the festivities at all. He’s been through some legal difficulties, so maybe he didn’t want to have to answer any questions. I was surprised at how silent he was, though.</p>
<p>A boy from my elementary school recently passed away in a workplace accident (at 55). He was one of the very cute, most popular kids – but didn’t do the college thing. Last I had known he was fixing cars at the local garage. BUT – somewhere in his 20s he’d grown up, gotten some training in copier repair, and made a career and a business out of it. He was (I believe) a partner and VP for one of the biggest copier suppliers on the east coast. </p>
<p>Message – there are do-overs. You don’t have to be number 1 coming out of high school to have a great life.</p>
<p>I went to a fairly rural regional high school, and now D is at a different fairly rural regional high school-- and I think that matters in that “popular” at this age really means that kids are right in the center of the local milieu, whatever it is. If their parents grew up together, and stayed local, then the kids know and feel comfortable with each other-- thus they’re “Popular”. There are enough of them that they don’t reach outside that circle. In my HS, those kids stayed around, became teachers or small business owners or whatever…and I’m guessing their kids are the popular ones now. </p>
<p>Some of the odd ducks, on the other hand, went on to be quite successful in the larger world. The qualities that made them fit in less well at school were signs that they were less insular and more promising. And their experience at school, awkward though it was, was good practice for life in a world made up of very different kinds of people. </p>
<p>But I think it depends a lot on the school–at a public HS in a wealthy suburb, or a boarding school, popularity would mean something different altogether.</p>