blog #1

            I found it very interesting to hear about all the various folk groups in different high schools. There was much more variety than I would have expected. We heard from people who attended both public and private schools, as well as people who lived in different countries. High schools have great ability to demonstrate folk groups. No matter where you live around the world, teenagers seem to gravitate to people similar to themselves. Even in private schools where the authority tries to make everyone appear the same, you see small differences that set people apart. All teenagers are trying to find their identity. “The term folk can refer to any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor (Dundes).” We identify folk groups into two categories: emic and etic. Identifying folk groups using emic categories refers to the insiders’ view while etic refers to the outsiders’ view. The example of the high school folk groups is an emic perspective. The titles are meaningful to the members of the distinct groups; the students themselves use these titles to categorize their own world.

            I grew up in Pleasanton and therefore my high school consisted of about 90% white kids. Ethnicity didn't play a huge role because there were so few students who were not white. First of all, the students were divided by class; you rarely saw a freshman hanging out with a sophomore or any other combo. The only exception to this rule was maybe if they were on a sports team together. This brings me to the next large division: all the students involved in school sports congregated. Then race played a part. Example: all the senior basketball players sat together. This group included all 8 of the 10 black kids in the senior class; the other two black seniors hung out with them. I bounced around from group to group, never really feeling wanted until I finally found a group of people who made me feel good about myself. Those are the friends I still have today. My biggest issue with fitting in during high school was that I was a swimmer, but all of my swimmates were older than me, so therefore I didn’t feel like I belonged with them.

            The four years of high school are the hardest four years of a lot of people’s lives. We place ourselves into emic categories to better make sense of our world. We want to be with others who are similar to ourselves. This brings comfort to our hectic world.