EPTI'm a high school student and my school is fairly small. We are the smallest grade in the school with 93 kids and from about the second semester of my freshman year, I felt something was off about our grade. Well, here I am now in our Junior Year and the problem I sensed a long time ago is quite evident: Our grade is just lame. When I came to the school, everyone was friendly. The upperclassmen in the orientation did a great job introducing us to the school but my classmates were always a negative bunch, either not caring or focusing on graduation too much. So when I compare my class to say the Senior or Sophomores, they just have a completely different outlook on their school experience and although I do not understand what kind of outlook they have, I desire that same positive aura for my grade.
My Physics teacher recently heard about this dilemma when he was told by seniors and some anonymous juniors that our grade seemed to be unhappy and made a point that every grade generally has an "igniter." I'm pretty sure the sophomores already had their ignition cause they're a jolly bunch and distinct group. Our grade although the smallest is like the feudal lords of japan where we all created small "cliques" for ourselves. In that, we only hang around with the same people most of the time. Breaking into other "cliques" is just hard, I guess I personally tried to get to know others better but it didn't happen. I'm not the most sociable or charismatic person. (Though i need to work on that somehow) And regardless I see from time to time a very small amount of underclassmen hanging out with our grade.
Our grade even on Facebook people seem to just act differently. The patterns and trends I see in other grades don't happen in my grade. It's like, my entire grade is there to prove their worth to some mystery Jesus and my friend describes my grade as selfish for their own goals from his own experiences (but I don't take this personally as bad. I trust my friend's view because it is a load of horse shit how some kids in my grade act). My school is one of the top public schools in New York City that required a dumb test to get in so we aren't all that dumb but our grade collectively has developed an interesting fondness for being redonkulously lazy.
Back to my physics teacher because he's the one who actually really got me to start thinking about this predicament. So he describes every grade as its own organism and this is very similar to how I have been describing each grade. This "igniter" as mentioned before can be in the form of an event, or a person, or anything to get the grade's collective interest. This is incredibly hard considering our grade is very "cliquey" and I would say they are cynical brats sometimes.
Just a month ago our school held an annual Inter-Grade Olympics where we compete for Spirit Week points by participating in athletics. This was before all of this came to my attention, and as reasonable people a couple of people in my grade thought our chance to win this was very good (even with the Senior bias, we were confident in our 17 Cross country runners and our hustling basketball team including me :D). We also reasonable assumed that most of our grade would be down for an event like this, where we would show the other grades that we are indeed the shit. No, but we were as close to shit as possible. We won 1 event (Guy's Basketball :D) but that is really sad considering we had the most people in cross country in all 4 grades and there were a number of running events as well as ultimate Frisbee which is endorsed by the team. Why we lost everything, I do not know but throughout the entire event, you would see something incredibly funny watching the bleachers. The Seniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen were cheering on their fellow classmates to pull through in their efforts. Our grade, did jack. You would barely hear anything from our grade. The seniors at one point wanted to organize a wave and everyone agreed except my grade. When we were somehow awarded 2nd place (we must have gotten 2nd in all of our events that we did not win x_x), our grade was really quiet. Heck, even the freshmen who won last place was probably the loudest.
So I want to make the "igniter" happen already and I come to you Teamliquid to offer anything of value that may be able to save my grade from utter inadequacy. We are piled with much work in the next three months (AP, SATs, Finals) but my teacher had said something that is worth supporting will support itself on its own so whatever I do should be able to snowball itself despite my lack of time but that's being optimistic.
