The intricacies of secondary school social hierarchy

This is about school day in the perspective of a teenage girl

I woke up. Woke up with strained thoughts leaking out of my ears; my head as if it had been rinsed and left drained. By this point I was used to this feeling it felt familiar and somewhat comforting. I got out of my bed making sure to dodge the mix of: pants with dried up blood, clean clothes and worn-down shoes scattered around my bedroom floor.

It was a Tuesday.

I got ready for school with what most people would probably call a minimal routine. I put my uniform on which tends to be a combination of clothes from the floor, wardrobe and laundry room depending on the day. Then I washed my face, had breakfast, brushed my teeth and left. I was out of the door by 8:30.

I walk to school alone.

Most days on my way to school I see the same things. A boy who also walks to school alone but unlike me listens to music. He listens to God knows what music with the perception that it will block him out from the world. Or the idea that it will help him, detach himself from his problems, but in reality, only helps build an inevitable wall of denial. In his mind music helps him ‘escape’ from his thoughts in my mind it just causes him cower from them.

At the same time, I see 6 girls walk to school. They are known as the ‘popular girls’ in school. Some days it’s 4, some days it’s 7 depending on what the new gossip of the week and who’s fallen out with who. They walk with their skirts way too short and perfectly done hair. They barely laugh and when they do it’s the type that feels constructed like a hair flick or a bat of an eyelash. I hate myself for caring, for envying them, envying the attention they get from boys or superficial big group outings they post on Instagram. As I walked to school in a shell of the person I want to be, these girls radiate with unspoken confidence on the opposite side of the pavement. They wear makeup that embraces and highlights their beauty. Sometimes I picture myself walking beside them and when I do I feel like an anomaly: not pretty enough, too hairy, disgusting. I hate myself for that.

I arrive at school begging for my thoughts to switch off.

Every day before the school day starts, we have form time. This is a 20 minute lesson where you’re paired up with people from all years and forced to make what can only be described as unbearably awkward conversation. I mean yes, it’s true that the occasional year 10 and 11 gets along but for the most part it’s a waste of time. My form tutor is a middle-aged man who’s told the class more times than I can count that he is divorced with two troublemaker daughters. Sometimes he blabbers on about them as if he’s deep into the night on his 4^th glass of wine not noticing how everyone is giving each other looks of confusion and trying to hide there laughter. He threatens us with detentions if we don’t talk to the people around but gets mad if we talk too much.

On my table there was a girl in year 7 shy and to herself, a year 9 football obsessed boy and opposite me a boy in year 11, one year older than me, who loves to speak in a passive aggressive tone. He’s part of the popular boys in his year and loves to act tough or ‘hard’. He is the definition of annoying, the way he thinks he’s above the whole table and act as if his time is only worthy to the prettiest of people. But still every time we talk I can’t help but feel intimidated thinking twice over what I’m going to say just so that he can’t pounce on the tangling of my words or the way I might stutter. I don’t get why I feel this way, it’s not like he’s such a handsome guy, in fact he’s honestly more ugly than he is good looking.

He talks to the table asserting his self-made superiority on the rest of us.

He stared just above my lip. I remembered that I forgot to shave my moustache. I tried subtly to cover my mouth with my hand. I then pulled my jumper sleeve to cover the hair on my hands. How the f**k did I forget to shave my upper lip.

Everyone stood up almost as if racing one another to see who could leave the classroom first. I took the long way to my first class: left towards the playground, past the green picnic area, quick stop at the tap, past IT, up the stairs and finally into maths class. I sit at the back next to ‘pretty miss popular’ and ‘sweaty Pete’.

On the board the teacher has put a starter task.

You wouldn’t think me who since year 7 has had ‘class clown’ plastered on my forehead in bold capital letters, ‘sweaty Pete’ also known as an iPad kid and the spitting image of British beauty standard would somehow get on. But by being forced to sit next to each other in a seating plan made by a clueless teacher who knows nothing about the great social hierarchy of secondary school, somehow, we kind of got along.

The iPad kid is short but not stumpy. He has small frizzy curls which if he actually took care of could turn out quite nicely. Usually in the other classes he sits switching between YAD.com and Friv (gaming websites that aren’t blocked by the school). He never does work and only sometimes scribbles Japanese writing, which at first, I thought was weirdly cryptic but later found out that he’s been learning Japanese for two years. You wouldn’t think the universal loser of the year would be doing something so interesting (at least to me) and honestly in some sense remarkable.

Miss popular is slightly out of touch with reality, boy centred and at times (especially when here friends are near) acts as if she’s above me and ‘sweaty Pete’ but she’s not bad. She can make funny jokes and add interesting perspectives to conversation. Sometimes this annoys me.

In one lesson ‘sweaty’ Pete wasn’t there so one of Miss popular’s ‘friend’ (I think there friends more by circumstance than the true meaning of friendship) came to sit at the back with us. Let’s call her Miss baby voice (which upon reflection may be harsh but true). We were talking, probably slightly more than we should have been, not to the point where we were disrespecting the teacher but maybe just to where we slowed down on our work. I tend to have the loudest natural voice or, so it’s been made abundantly clear to me in secondary school by multiple people, usually given to me in the form of a back handed compliment. The teacher would tell us to quiet down as if addressing a group, but only ever said my name. At the time I didn’t think anything of it but sometimes now I wonder what about me made it so easy to single me out without the fear of any repercussions.

Instead, all I cared about at the time was the perception that Miss popular and baby voice had on me. I would play up to them and laugh to their unfunny jokes, letting myself get told off, singled out, just for their entertainment.

After maths the rest of my day was relatively normal. I sat with the group of people I sit with everyday eating the crap school meals for lunch. My other lessons were boring and non-informative. My last lesson was English with my most insufferable teacher I’ve ever had.

I’m greeted to the door by Miss ‘I’m so happy, and anyone that isn’t just needs to smile and everything will be ok’. That’s not actually her name but when I look at her that’s how I feel, well that and the fact that I want to rip my eyeballs out. Her actual name is Miss Guffey. I’m welcomed to Miss Guffey at the door like everyone else with a good afternoon and a way too widely stretched smile. She asked me how I am and imagine screaming in her face ‘f*****g horrible’ and her not knowing how to respond and instead just standing there frozen. I hate when people ask how you are, like no one ever asks that wanting a real answer but in asking that they’ve ticked the I’m not a s**t person box and no longer have the responsibility of guilt. When I hear ‘How are you?’ what comes back to me is ‘I don’t give a f**k about you but I’m going to gain the moral high ground’.

I went and sat down in my seat. Luckily, I don’t sit next to anyone on my desk.

Miss Guffey starts with her introduction as always whilst being talked over by the same people. She thinks she’s the cool teacher that everyone loves because you can do whatever you want but they have no respect for her. To them she can walk all over them. In this case (like in many) ‘them’ refers to the popular kids who she adores, not the writers who enthuse over expressing a certain emotion into words, or the media nerds who write manuscripts in their free time. The popular kids. Because for some reason a telling off for them is a high-pitched laugh and pat on the back compared to the warning and detention system used for everyone else.

At points throughout the lesson Miss Guffey lights up. Like when she talks about the ending of uncommon books who’s names I can’t remember or the law behind the most complicated sci-fi tv series with 10+ seasons. But most of the time she teaches as if she’s pretending that she likes the date her friend set her up on but the man sitting across from her is picking his nose and then swabbing that finger into his mouth. At least other teacher’s that don’t want to be here don’t waste time putting energy into pretending that they do.

But the things that wants to make me poke my eyeballs out is when she: flirt with boys to the point and strategically places them at the front for better, pretends to be the happiest person in the world but deep down knows that she’s the problem after her 20^th consecutive failed date and wears clothes that could by some people be considered as mildly inappropriate. And this scared me. The idea that these people still exist after secondary school.

In this lesson I sat thinking about when I was little bouncing on my bed as if it was the world’s most elastic trampoline. Full of life. I wonder where it all went. I imagined myself being wheeled on a hospital bed for operation. Doctors cutting me open and injecting a mini vacuum cleaner inside of me. I looked down at myself on my broken school chair whilst the teacher dusts the dirt of one of the boy’s backs. I imagine the vacuum cleaner slowly consuming me.

After school I walk home.

My day ends laying in my bed scrolling through the weekly Instagram dumps from people in my school which I know are fabricated but still happen to make jealous. I scrolled through TikTok’s for hours.

Then finally I fell asleep and repeat.