<p>The one that popped into my mind was a guy I had a couple of classes with. He was big and communicated in grunts. I was a little scared of him. He turned into an Enron exec.</p>
<p>The kids who were popular were popular for different reasons. The intellectually popular ones are generally doing well having graduated from college and have good jobs as engineers, business…still working hard. Then there was a girl who was popular because she was just a sweet nice girl. Not particularly academic bur definitely people smart. She landed a job as a secretary for a start up company in the 80’s and promptly cashed in her stocks before the crash. Financially, she doesn’t have much to worry about and she’s still a nice person!</p>
<p>Some people were popular because they had great people skills and those are the people who are well liked no matter where they are. Others just happened to be a part of the popular group and if they didn’t have something else (brains, talent), They were the ones who peaked in HS. </p>
<p>Most of the top students in my class did well no matter where they fit on the popularity scale.</p>
<p>I went to my 40th reunion last June. I had literally seen none of these people at all since the day I graduated. </p>
<p>The football jock who was dating the head of the cheerleader squad married her, they had several kids and last year the divorce was finalized – she told me he’d been cheating on her for years (She was the head of the Reunion committee, though, which was dominated by former cheerleaders, so nothing has changed there).</p>
<p>I went to the Sr Prom with a tall, shy guy who was always kind of quiet - but we were friendly with each other. My husb & I were in the large room at the reunion a couple of minutes and a voice drawled from above me, “Hi!” and it was my erstwhile date. He said to my husb, “I went with JRZMom to the senior prom, I’m X, and here is my partner, Dan.” They have been together since college. </p>
<p>One of the “greasers” is now an ordained Deacon in the Cath Church, and a rock band drummer. </p>
<p>My husb, who grew up in upstate NY, later commented on two things — one was that he thought an awful lot of the guys were rather short. The other was that overall, he got the impression that even today, an awful lot of my h.s. class is “cool.” There are a lot of musicians, etc. </p>
<p>Well, it is NJ— the school I went to had a lot of Italians & Jews – groups not known for generating many NBA players — and hell, we all know NJ is the coolest state.</p>
<p>When I moved back home (to care for my parents), I was really surprised at how many of the popular girls became teachers in our hometown schools. I see one woman who used to laugh at me directing the drop off parents in the am at the middle school, kind of makes me smile. Just wouldn’t want to have spent my entire career stuck in my hometown in the very same middle school, if you know what I mean. One of the popular girls who had brains, did become a teacher but after a successful overseas stock market job and a PhD. She’s a professor in Singapore. The football captain had a son (same name, add a jr.) who is in my ds’ class who looks just like him, dashing good looks, too bad his dad has lost most of his hair!</p>
<p>I agree with the posters pointing out that it depends on the HS and the criteria for popularity in that context and also how success is defined. </p>
<p>My brother was extremely popular and well liked and socially smooth…but always into trouble and never got out of it. </p>
<p>Few in my HS went to college and those who were popular partied a lot and were, and remained, well socially connected in the immediate area: stable but uninspired jobs, close old friends, married with kids, vacation a year to camp or a hot location, and maybe a boat in the driveway. They are successful i think in the context of the 'hood I grew up in, but those that went away, went to college, were the nerds but because they moved away and went to college, they have had more ‘conventional or bigger success’ in a more worldly way- as proessionals, with larger incomes etc.</p>
<p>Our quarterback and captain of the football team, naturally very popular, was also co-valedictorian. He’s now an orthopedic surgeon. The captain of the cheerleading team, voted most popular girl as a senior, is also a doctor. She was top 10 in the class. Another all-around popular guy lettered in 4 sports, went to Harvard, and ended up with a big role on a major sitcom you all know. When visiting my grandmother in the hospital, I was stunned to find one particularly unpopular classmate was her cardiologist. </p>
<p>The list goes on, but the common thread–they were all smart. Popular or not, eventually the smart will succeed.</p>
<p>Some of the cool/popular/athletic kids in my 1960s (suburban but not wealthy) HS class went in surprising directions. A tall blonde cheerleader became a nurse who served in Vietnam. A very good-looking jock who didn’t behave especially well or do especially well in class is now a prominent professor at a very well known university. Some of the “bad” boys I went to HS with and was scared of are now local police officers and were very kind to my aging parents both in terms of law enforcement and emergency services. </p>
<p>Everyone was very nice, surprisingly so, at the one reunion I went to, about fifteen years ago. There isn’t always the kind of payback you think there will be, no matter which end of the social spectrum you thought you were on.</p>
<p>Upfront confession…I was in the popular crowd.
We went to a small town h.s. in the rural south. My friends in h.s. had been my friends since kindergarten. Over the years we just evolved into a group. Some were smart and some were popular just because of who they were (personality). We all went to college and became teachers,nurses, one in the fashion industry, one a minister, one a town manager, one a pharmacist, one a hotel manager in a resort town. About half of our group went back to our town after college (not me). Nobody became rich or famous. Most of us got married, settled down, had kids and are just living life.</p>
<p>The most popular guy in my high school class (his parents were always gone and he hosted wild parties) ended up in federal prison for cocaine distribution.</p>
<p>One of the strange outcomes was one guy who was popular but sort of on the juvenile delinquent fringe of the in-crowd. He was something of a bully and troublemaker. Right after high school he got a job as an apprentice to an undertaker. He eventually got his license and opened his own funeral home. So he was successful in an unusual and unexpected sort of way.</p>
<p>I like hearing the ‘happy ending’ stories. There was a boy (next door) that was always getting into trouble at church. And that pastor must have been praying pretty hard, because at the 30th high school reunion, he was described to me at the ‘most religious’ person in the room. </p>
<p>We lost our class president at a very early age. And the most popular group ended up not in college, but starting their own businesses (everything from construction to fashion boutiques). As it was a farming community, a significant number of my class took over family farms. </p>
<p>And yet, one did become a surgeon, another a scientist, one a policeman, one a body builder (female), one married her college professor and became a teacher, and yet another works in HR for a large megacompany. Many had children, some never did. Most never left the area they grew up in, most never traveled beyond the U.S. And one ended up on a prime time reality show for one moment of fame (imagine my surprise as I sat there and watched!).</p>
<p>Wow this sounds so fascinating! Now I am waiting for my HS class reunions to see how things will turn out. But the first reunion will be, I think, in 3 years time so I have a while to wait.</p>
<p>With the exception of s neighbor who found me on facebook, I do not know anything about anyone I knew before college. Oh wait! One good friend is an actress with reasonable success.There where more than a thousand kids in my graduating class, and I can’t really remember anyone being “popular” among them all.</p>
<p>Hmmm. I moved away, and don’t have a clue. I’ve been contacted a few times by people who tracked me down from high school years and I’m always amazed that they would bother to spend the time to find me. High school seems so irrelevant to me. My spouse went to a very small high school and one of spouse’s classmates (a “popular” kid) became a tv star.</p>
<p>I’ve only worked with one person in his 50s who repeatedly brought up that he had been a national merit winner in high school and went to Harvard as an undergrad. (We used to make bets on how soon it would come up in conversations with new people, before he was selected for lay-off). Based on lousy interpersonal skills, I’m sure this person was not in the popular crowd in his high school. Whoops, the thread is not about whether the unpopular kids in high school actually make something of themselves… </p>
<p>I did look at one of those reunion sites to see if anyone’s name would ring any bells. It appeared that the only people who bothered to keep posting their current status and trying to get a reunion going were the high school cheerleaders and class officers. </p>
<p>IMO high school – and the people you met in high school – become more irrelevant the more educated or more successful you are.</p>
<p>I have a class reunion this summer , and I already have an idea what a lot of my former classmates are doing . I no longer live in my hometown , so I am trying to recall the social status of some of the people. I see success measured in all kinds of ways …some of the below average students doing a lot better than I could have guessed…some business owners. A few professors are in the mix, writers, professional musicians and actors. Last year , a couple of the burn-outs ( who married each other ) had a daughter that was on American Idol.
The thing that surprises me more than anything is the amount of former classmates who have very young children , or the ones who never married</p>
<p>Agree with Olympic Lady, in post #17. Seems like a lot of hostility in the opening post.
Concentrate on what you want to do, and don’t worry so much about everybody else.</p>
<p>I have a 40th reunion this summer & we have a FB page, which has been kind of fun.
Several classmates were murder victims, a couple in prison as well, kind of shocking, cancer victims, car crash victims & so on. A reunion person did a musical type thing on our facebook page with our deceased classmates, very emotional. </p>
<p>One I felt kind of bad about, top of the class, National Honor Society, went to an Ivy League school & so on, became an alcoholic & the booze killed him. He could not stop drinking evidently. That particular outcome was rather surprising.</p>
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<p>That is easy for us adults to say, a lot harder as a teenager in highschool (even though it is good advice). </p>
<p>I remember highschool as a not-popular kid. It sure didn’t feel so nice, fun or kind being outside the popular crowd. Imagining things, like revenge of the nerds, sure can help you to cope better with it. </p>
<p>One thing I would tell the OP is that my experience was that once I got to university, all those different teenage tribal lines seemed to disappear. I found a wide mix of people, various different friends and clubs to join, and there was no longer a ‘popular group’ I was outside of, nor any group to compare my group to. It was so much better than highschool! Once you are out in the real world, none of these groups matter.</p>
<p>So as homecoming queen, vice president of my senior class, and a cheerleader, I have to say that I am doing all right. I gave up my lofty aspirations of having a great career when I had my first child, but I have a really hard-working husband who can work long hours because I keep everything else going. Life is good.</p>
<p>And I have my 35th reunion coming up this summer, so we’ll see how the rest are doing very soon. I will say that the girl I admired the most and who came from a great family and seemed to have the world by the tail had poor taste in husbands and has been divorced twice. She is a pharmacist and still a lovely woman.</p>