Were you part of a clique during high school?
Want to be one of the boys, or girls, in your high school clique? School can be a mine field of different groups vying for space, so we asked some Jakarta teenagers how they navigated their way around.
Anju, 18, Central Jakarta: I was going to move to a senior high school in the United States, so it would be easier for me to enter university there. But I wasn't accepted while I had already resigned from my old senior high school, which is a top notch private school.
I then had to move to my present high school, which is a public one. So, you can imagine it's very different. I then could only be friends with these three girls who have the same fate with me. My new peers here are sort of jealous of us. We even got into a quarrel. But later on, we started to get along. I think cliques are common and natural for people our age.
Dila, 15, West Jakarta: I'm in this group of five girls, and we've been friends since junior high school. We just get along well, and I feel better being friends with girls because it's more free to talk about anything. But we're still friends with other people also.
Yes, there are cliques in my school. There shouldn't be any, though, but in reality, there are. The obvious one is that group of rich kids. I think they are in the same group only for prestige. But, then again, we're in the same group because we get along with each other.
Unggul, 19, Central Jakarta: Well, being communal is the characteristic of high school teenagers. It's fun to watch the cliques back in high school.
There are several categories. For girls, it's divided into trendy girl, mall rats and clubgoers. For boys, there were drug addicts, troublemakers who like to be in brawls, those who like to hang out after school and also clubgoers. But boys are usually more flexible. So, they can be in different groups at the same time.
But, now, in university, it turns out cliques still exist. Maybe it's because the number of students in a class is not as many as in high school, so we tend to hang out with the same people.
Steve, 22, East Jakarta: I'm glad I've found there's no such thing as cliques in my university. The relationship is now based more on personal reasons. That's unlike in high school, where cliques are so obvious, especially for rich kids. However, for smart kids, they usually don't belong to any group. They couldn't fit in. So, they're usually loners.
Beryl, 18, South Jakarta: Of course, there are cliques in my school. It's natural, I guess, for my age, as we befriend people who have the same vision and get along with us.
But we shouldn't get into extremes. We also have to be friends with people from other groups as well. I don't like it if someone from the "pretty" or "rich" groups only approaches me because they need something from me, but, afterwards, they act as if they don't know me. I hate that.
Jerry, in his 30s, private company employee, Central Jakarta:
We moved around a lot when I was a kid, including overseas, so I got to see that there are cliques all over the place, whether you're going to a school in the U.S. or here.
When I look back, it seemed like such a big deal, trying to fit in. I mean, you knew who all the computer geeks were, the Dungeons and Dragons crowd, the "Beautiful People", the jock crowd -- you identified them and you kind of set your limits in dealing with them. So-and-so was Ms. Popular, so her boyfriend was bound to be a jock, and jocks were stupid, that kind of thing.
I was on a sports team, but I wasn't a jock, I got good grades, was on the newspaper and the quiz team, so I guess I was straddling a few groups there. Ooh, hard to admit it, but I was really crossing over into the nerds there, always early at school and studying with my "group" in the library. Ouch, that hurts a bit to admit it, even now.
But, you finish with high school, and then it's over with, out into the big world, where the clique you were in in high school doesn't count for anything.
-- Hera Diani