That's So High School

Posted by Laura

I work at a small international partial boarding school in Germany. We've got a small English speaking community here, and those of us who don't speak German have a small pool of friends to choose from. There are a couple hundred English speakers in town, but how many of you are only friends with your coworkers? I see the same people at work every day, and I have limited options of who I get to hang out with after work due to the language barrier.

Rachel's last post reminded me that I need people in my daily life, and I have a pretty amazing community of people who are passionate about education and Jesus - the things that brought us all here to this school - that are just waiting to get to know me. Well, let me rephrase that, they aren't all waiting to get to know me. Like Rachel said, I have to make an effort, and as I think about that difficult friendship making process, I think about how cliquey people can be. I teach a bunch of really cliquey students, and I work really hard to break down the social barriers among students to get them to learn with each other, but it occurred to me recently that adults don't often grow out of that cliquey behavior.

One of my favorite albums in middle school was Superchick's Last One Picked - the first track was called "High School" and ranted that "high school is like the state of the nation, some people never change after graduation." In middle school I was convinced I'd rise above the cliques and not be held back by the petty social pecking order, yet I find myself ten years later looking to find whether I can fit in with the cool teachers or not. That's so high school.

I need quality relationships in my life, but I don't need to pine after the "cool teachers" - another line in the Superchick song is if someone believes "they're too cool for you, that's so high school; and if you believe it too, that's also high school." I deal with a lot of insecurities here since I'm not the most outgoing and popular person around and don't always find myself surrounded by friends, but that doesn't mean that I'm any less popular, really. I still have plenty of friends, some of them farther away than others.

However, what Rachel's post convicted me of was that I'm not excused from making new friends just because it's hard, just because I'm insecure, or just because I already have amazing friends back in America. That's so high school - making excuses not to do the difficult work of friendship making. What's also so high school is to just seek out the cool people to be friends with.

There definitely are people who are perceived as cooler teachers than others, and I may never make it into the cool crowd, but I don't really care. One woman who's taught here for several years once talked about when she first arrived and started to hang out with the "cool teachers" and discovered she became a little more cynical and a little less like herself when she hung out with them. I did that back in high school; I hung out with the cool kids and slandered the people I once called friends just to boost my popularity. It made me sick, and I don't need to go back to that high school behavior. Because making friends takes so much effort, I don't want to waste it on the people who turn me into someone I hate. I want to work hard to make friends who make me a better person, who encourage me to be more like Jesus. I've got a couple developing friendships like that here, and I'm grateful for them. I'll keep working hard to make them grow while simultaneously holding tight to those friendships overseas which also refresh my soul.