The teachers are generally pretty decent, and since I like the idea of school, and the atmosphere of it, I'm inclined to say yes. But most people there are absolute jerks, so... no. I'm sort of torn. :/ Me and my friend often rant about how the teaching of some subjects (especially short-course R.E., for people who didn't take R.E. as a subject) is absolute crap, but it's a fairly good school, I guess. Just take the people out of it and I like it.
What kinds of groups/cliques do you notice?
I tend to observe groups myself and give them names and stuff. XD In my year, there are:
- Respectable popular girls: These girls tend to be fairly intelligent, and are popular and respected. On occasion they can be unkind to people like me, but generally they keep to themselves. They're the kind of girls none of the guys tease because they're all attractive and intelligent. They all mostly straighten their hair to the extreme and wear lots of make-up, but tastefully rather than some of the other girls like this. They're not so bad. They look down on me, I think, but if there are any 'normal' groups I respect, it's these lot.
- Dirty girls: Haha, I call them dirty. XD These girls are generally very unintelligent and mess around a lot, they probably all smoke, and drink and all that. They nearly ALL have bleached blonde hair and wear about five layers of orange make-up, so yeah. Cake faces I call them, or pancake faces. They usually all walk around in a big group, some of them are overweight, and they're all very stupid and horrible and laugh at racist jokes and are just... grrrr! They hate me, I hate them. Simple. I tend not to look down on anyone I call 'normal school kids', because I appreciate that they're just trying to get school and sometimes they're kind, but I really do look down on these bitches.
- Unpopular girls: These tend to be rather unintelligent, unattractive, a little slow, but at least they have friends together. These are the ones that tend to get bullied, especially when they're on their own rather than in their group, but most of them are usually happy in their own little world together, so that's alright.
- The rest of the girls: Our year is split into 'north' and 'south' and have classes at different times, so I only see 'south', hence the small number of groups. There are other ones as well, but there's not much difference between them so I've just put the ones above.
- Popular guys: These tend to talk to the respectable/popular girls, and some of the 'rest of the girls' as well. But they're not very respectable themselves. :/ In fact, I hate pretty much all of them. But that's generally because all the guys look down on me and bully me, whereas only some of the girls bother trying (and usually fail, I can often overpower those with wit or something). Basically they'll tease anyone they wouldn't want to fuck.
- Popular guys, group: There's a certain group of these that are complete arseholes that tend to bully me and my little circle of friends whenever they can. They're complete bastards and have done it since I was an unpopular, ugly little kid coming in year seven two months late (hence why getting friends was a hundred times harder for me). Nothing more to say about them.
- Stupid, messing around guys: Basically the ones whose hygiene and humour levels haven't risen much since year seven. They tend to mostly leave me alone though, so that's alright, they tend to let people like the popular guys make fun of me and then just laugh along because they aren't amusing enough themselves.
- The rest of the guys: A mix of the popular guys and stupid, messing around guys. Most of the guys in the year tend to be despisable, whereas at least with the girls it's only like 90% of them are.
- Us!: This is my little group of four friends! We're totally different from anyone else~ We're the open-minded, kind, clever people of the year, if I say so myself. We've sort of banded together over the years and are quite close. Three of us get teased for being openly bisexual, deliberately going against the bullies, and not putting on fifty layers of make-up, and the other because she's overweight, despite being very intelligent.
Huh, that's all I can think of right now!
Is there are lot of drug activity/drinking? Are there popular kids? etc. etc.
Popular kids described above.
I think everyone drinks in private or with friends because they think it's cool to drink underage. As far as I know there are absolutely no drugs in the school at all, because they'd get kicked out if any of the teachers knew. Some people smoke, but that's generally unintelligent ones who want to be cool, and it's viewed as not so cool anymore anyway (which is brilliant!)
The school itself is quite big. In my town, there's a girls grammar school (which I wanted to get into, but we moved here too late for me to take the test), a boys grammar school and our school. Those are the biggest secondary schools in the middle of town. Our school is a mix of very stupid kids and very intelligent kids, and we have a Learning Support as well, with about fifty people from the school who have special needs.
Sorry I rambled a bit there, there's not usually much opportunity for me to mention my school on the internet.
There are a few people in my year who are pregnant, but I don't know much about that. Nearly the entire year is white, but my county is one of the least ethnically diverse in the country, so.