What ever became of the ‘popular’ kids at your school?

[Bigchoice]

I was talking to DD and she said she wasn’t ‘popular’. She’s 14, got a good group of friends, does sport and generally seems happy. From what she means by ‘popular’ I assume she refers to those who are conventionally very good looking, vape/smoke, engage in precocious behaviour, are generally considered cool. I won’t pretend I didn’t understand what she means by it and to be honest I’m absolutely delighted DD isn’t popular- by that definition. To me as long as she has friends, does well in school and is happy that’s really all I care about. But it got me thinking, whatever became of the popular kids from your school days, were you a popular kid? How did their life turn out?

@GoldilockMom my experience is very similar to @Icouldsmellspringabitthismorning

We came from middle class loving families. Unfortunately (for our parents at least!) our desire to have fun was stronger than our desire to please our parents.

Despite our wild ways we all went off to university and have professional jobs now.

I left school 25 years ago (the fucking horror!).

Bog standard comp in a town in the south. Not 'rough' not 'posh', just pretty standard, in the days before social media (thank goodness). We didn't have mobile phones until we were on the verge of leaving school and those were the first 'pay as you go' type ones that Elton could only ring and text on.

The 'popular' ones at my school were a mix of sporty high achievers and sporty mouthy bullies who were disruptive and not very bright (or if they were bright they hid it well in their showing off). They smoked, drank, swore, had sex, hung around with older 'boys' (actually young men who would collect them in cars at lunchtime, huge safeguarding concern these days!) and smoked weed.

Then we had the middle of the road people (most people, me included), the very studious kids (boffins, circa 1998!) and the children who in hindsight were probably picked on daily (not by me) because they were unlucky enough to be known as 'blue stripe' kids, as in everything that had was 'Tesco value'. Poor, in other words. Some of them weren't very clean/smelled/wore holey or obviously hand me down clothes. With an adult view it's very likely that some of these children were by todays standards at least from neglectful homes. Horrible.

Anyway, the popular kids. The high achieving ones were generally also nice people and actually most seem to have gone on to have nice, normal and successful lives. The more bullying/disruptive types that I know of have progressed as you'd expect. One dead, several addicts, one in prison, several had 3x kids by 3x men by the time they were 20, one has four children all who have been removed from her care by SS, one has EIGHT children the last I heard, by a man that comes out of prison, impregnates her and is sent back down again with depressing regularity.

Makes you think that actually these children possibly had homes similar to the 'blue stripe' kids that they bullied so badly, but with more cash for nice clothes and regular baths. It's generational - their families are like them and their children will be too.

Sad.

And the pp you addressed, that was their school experience. You understand now.

I said in my previous post that I attended state and private schools, a boarder in teens, so yes perhaps a different experience to your school. Some of the popular children were bullies and possessed negative traits.

this has turned out to be such an eye opening thread. Has made me think…it’s all about the kind of school you attend. Guess if it’s a private or “good” state school, mostly long-lasting values like empathy, being genuinely fun and smart makes you popular, whereas sadly, in tougher schools, being more of a “cool” bully makes you popular. Also agree w the poster who said it’s changed now. I went to a fairly rough school, and it was the “tough” kids who were popular. DD is in a good state school, and the most popular kids in her class are the genuinely kind and smart ones, and yes, also the very pretty ones, that never fails, but they’re more popular w the other sex, the ones literally everyone like are the kind ones. It’s actually so nice to see. Also, frustratingly, it’s true that all the rich kids I knew have done well, because even if they didn’t have the grit or talent themselves, they’ve had so much help they did well anyway. Whereas some very smart and kind but poor kids I knew have ended up just like their parents, unemployed and young parents. The prevalence of class structures truly are depressing.

I’ve got a slightly different perspective on rich kids, albeit based on Uni rather than school. Firstly, I think you’re right that there are some who just get a lot of help despite being fairly mediocre. However, I think there are a couple of other important factors

• normalisation and cultural capital - if you’re from a wealthy family and your parents have wealthy friends it normalises that for you and therefore makes it more likely you’ll aspire to those jobs and feel comfortable around those people. If your parents have friends who are hedge fund managers and barristers and you’ve met them and seen they are just normal people it becomes psychologicalally much more achievable than if they seem some other tier of people who are “other”.
• some kids from wealthy homes didn’t do much because they never had to stick at anything through their twenties as they were being financially underwritten. I wanted to drop out of my grad scheme but I couldn’t as I had to pay the rent. I stuck it out, it got better and the qualification has been invaluable. If I’d been able to Jack it in I probably would have, to my detriment.

Observationally I also think there’s some truth in the saying “first generation starts it, second generation makes it, third generation spends it”.

One of the very popular boys from my secondary school is a very successful professional athlete, he was a really nice lad at school. When I started my secondary school there was a very popular year 11 girl that everyone knew of, Vicky McClure!

I've no idea what happened to the popular ones. I wasn't one of them. But I'm 40 and secondary school was more than half my life ago. When we left there wasn't much in the way of social media so it was easy to lose contact even with people you liked.

My DD is the same age. She said yesterday that she's glad she knew some of the popular ones from primary school. In her words she 'knows people'.
She's a geek and happy to have her own group of friends. There's a lot less pressure to fit in amongst the popular ones which she doesn't have in her group.

For pities sake, I've not finished my cup of tea yet. Sorry, what that last sentence should say is:
There's a lot more pressure to fit in amongst the popular ones...

My school was a little different as it was in a rural town, and the town it's self was quite small. People bussed in from various other villages and towns - some bigger than the place the school was and therefore brought popular groups from each of those, which looked very different depending on demographic of that town. Majority stayed in their friendship groups from primary or blended them so we had no one typical Regina George style popular. Largely though I agree with a pp that said many stayed local, married other popular kids and have fairly text book lives with fairly decent career and 2.5 dc. The more quiet, geeky ones seem to have gone off and had adventures

I think this varies a lot depending on the socioeconomic status of the "popular" group at your school. So the popular kids at a private school or a state school in a very middle-class area will be different kinds of kids from the popular kids at a school in a deprived area.

My secondary school was in a fairly deprived town and when I was a teen in the early 00s, the "popular group" were, for want of a better word, chavs. Some are now in minimum wage jobs or are involved with MLMs. Some ended up with multiple kids from different loser drug-dealer type men. They all started smoking age around 12-13 and a lot of them are now overweight too, when you see their faces they look 10 years older than the rest of us. You can see poor health in their futures.

The “popular kids” in my school were all very high achieving academically, well-off, mostly attractive, polished, overly nice (fake) people.

According to social media… they mostly have good jobs, nice houses or are the school run mums who turn up in gym leggings but not to work out in… you know the school run “uniform”. Generally successful.

The “cool” kids are the ones with varied outcomes…. Mutliple children, low-end jobs vs travelling the world living the hippy lifestyle.

From my school the 'popular' ones who were into smoking, drinking. fighting and taking drugs. A fair few developed drug addictions and are now dead, a couple have been in prison, some fell pregnant 16/17 and some are in and out of abusive/toxic relationships. When you look at the bigger picture their childhood wasn't great, parents with addictions, in prison, MH problems, witnessing domestic abuse.

From the few I can see on Facebook, they've mostly got married, had kids and live pretty normal lives. I heard that one got divorced after her husband cheated.

They did nothing with their lives, most had babies by 21 at the latest. We had a school reunion, 15 years ago now but we were all 30 ish, the person with the (sounds) exciting life was me the class nerd, moved on, I'm in touch with a couple of old friends in my home town who pass on news and I definitely live a much nicer lifestyle

I'm not aware of what happened to all of those who were popular. Of those who are, one is a doctor, two have had seemingly successful careers in legal professions, one worked for a family firm for life, another an undertaker. Only two have had a bad time- one it turned out because of being abused as a teenager (they have gone public in court when he was convicted) and one who is LGBT and given attitudes in the 1980s, was disowned by family.

Most popular are still popular, the most popular girl works in a senior role, for a big pharma company in the US she is as gorgeous smiley and lovely as ever, one is a GP here in the UK, another one lives in South Africa and is heavily involved in conservation, another one has her own technology company in Australia. All in happy relationships and lovely.

In the year below, which was much cooler, one of the most popular girls is a Hollywood A list actress.

I spent time working for the MASH team receiving initial referrals about child protection cases and was amazed at the amount of "popular kids" had children and went on to have horrific things happen to them and their families. Sad. I don't have contact with anyone from school nowadays so no idea what anyone is up to really.

Most of them took the mickey out of those of us who went to 6th form/university,

On Facebook now are super proud of their children who have done the same.

I don’t know why a lot of people seem to suggest that staying in your home town is dull. Good for you if you wanted to move on! You don’t need to put people down for wanting to stay where they grew up and be close to family. I for one like to see my family more than a few times a year and bring my own children up in a place where I have so many happy memories. Sounds like there are some very bitter people who like to make themselves feel good by putting others down.

I suspect things are very different now becuase what makes a child "popular" has probably changed. I think children respect their "clever" peers now, whereas being studious was a reason for ridulicule then (or maybe it depends on the school?).

Anyway the people who seem to have had most conventional "success" are from the second tier of popularity. Not the cool kids, but not the real misfits either.

The very popular girls seemed to have their children very young! But times have changed

The alpha of our year group at school died from substance abuse in his early 40's.

The alpha of our year group at school died from substance abuse in his early 40's.

Sometimes you're wrong about who the popular kids are. I had a discussion with an old schoolmate a few years ago. I'd always thought she was right in with that crowd. Turned out they were pretty hideous to her as well.

And as someone who was in the misfits/saddos group back then...at the time we thought we were so superior but looking back, we were just as bloody awful. We were no different to the cool crowd, we just weren't as fashionable.

This thread is rubbish. Being popular doesn't mean teenage pregnacy!