Personal Experience

High school was very a very humbleing experience for me. Going in as a freshman, I didn't know what crowd i should belong to. Throught middle school, high school cliques and "gangs" was all anyone could ever hear about. When the day finally came for me to decided where to stand, i remember buying all new clothes, mostly black, and decided "hey, the goth/scene kids dont take shit from nobody." Turns out, they do. They take the blunt of most cruel jokes and hard times imaginable. After a while I stopped wearing all black, but the kids who first accepted me still were called my friends. I joined baseball my freshman year, only to be mistaken for a Jr. A lot more was expected out of me i felt than was expected and shown from the other players. Thus enters, the Jocks. Egotistical, and extremely selfish, the jocks on baseball only accepted me for the only reason that i was actually on the team, and I grew to hate them for it.
Sophomore year wasn't that much diffrent from freshman year, save i was a year older and not too much brighter. I broke my hand at the beginning of season and didn't play but 3 games the whole year, though i did show up everyday to afterschool pratice and weightlifting. It impressed my coach yes, but overall i couldn't see any real reason not to show up, I was just going to go home and do nothing anyways.
When summer hit i contuined to go to baseball weightlifting, but one of my friends had convinced me to join Cross-Country for the summer and see if I would like it. Turned out that i absoultly loved it! The kids running were the smartest in the school and thusly enjoyed higher class jokes and a more submerrsive humor. They helped each other and there were no individuals on the team, we were one well oiled machine. This contuined throughought senior year and i have never looked back from quitting baseball over running.
The biggest lesson i learned in high school was not to judge people on who they are, but rather what they do to themselves and others. I still loathe the baseball kids for who they are, but i must thank them for showing me a possibility that i could've been exactlly like them. Just as snobbish and stuck-up.