A few friends and I were recently talking about how our friend groups have changed over the years. From the elementary days of playdates, on through early adolescence, high school, and college, we find ourselves associating with different people, and sometimes leaving old friends behind.
Coming from a big school district, my high school's cliques weren't as exclusive or prominent as they maybe were in other high schools. However, they certainly existed. We had the sports kids always wearing Massapequa athletic attire. There were the emo-ish, punk kids always carrying skateboards or something. We even had the classic video game kids that loved Pokemon and cartoons, and could frequently spotted playing Hacky Sack outside the school somewhere. There were all kinds of interesting friend groups.
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College is quite different. People are definitely more motivated to make friends with different types of people, at least in the first few weeks. There are obviously a few reasons for this. One being that people are more mature than they were in high school, and are therefore more likely to appreciate unique individuals. Another being that we no longer have to succumb to high schools social standards anymore, and therefore feel more free to branch out. How special!
But after those first few months of Freshman year, who do we really end up hanging out with? Are all of our friend groups diverse and totally unpredictable? It's possible. I have seen it with a few groups of friends. However, the exact opposite also occurs sometimes because people feel most comfortable being around other people like them, no matter how old they are. Therefore cliques may start to develop within majors and other forms of extra curricular activities.
For example, students may join Greek life to make friends similar to them, and many frats and sororities have group characteristics and traits that they become known by. This leads people on the outside of their group to basically judge them by the traits they all share. It is the same way we viewed cliques in high school. We might not have known the people in the cliques, but we knew of their group by the traits that they had (skaters skate, jocks play sports, etc).
At my college, majors are another key aspect that can define a "clique." When it comes to my music industry major, many students tend to stick together, mainly because of their mutual classes and interests. Personally, I never exactly fit like a puzzle piece amongst the other kids of my major, but many other students did. This allows for non music industry majors to develop clique-oriented stereotypes about so called "music industry kids." These same kind stereotypes and cliques can develop for other artistic majors as well, such as theatre or fashion.
So do cliques still exist in college? Yes, they definitely do. However this isn't always a bad thing. Generally, college students are much more open to making friends outside of their cliques, and college offers many more opportunities to meet different types of people. I find it kind of fascinating that some of the friends I've made in college I probably wouldn't have made had they been in my high school, simply because of social constructs. This thought leaves me with the conclusion that it is always wise to seek friendships outside of your cliques and social constructs. You never know who you might meet!
