Does Popularity in Middle School Backfire Later?
I was never very popular. For a short time I got to sit at the “it” table in high school and then I didn't. But it was only years later, when rereading (for some reason) the class president's entry in my yearbook, realizing that he had always liked me (he liked me, he really liked me! OK, so I'm no Sally Field). But popular I was not. Now a new study has just come out that says that if you're hot when you're 13, you're probably not, 10 years later. I'm not quite sure that's true. I know a lot of popular people from my high school who went on to become huge successes – a girl from my creative writing class who everybody fought to sit next to since first grade is now a veterinarian, and a boy, an incredible hunk, is a cowboy, riding herd in the Southwest (really). The New York Times quotes an expert as saying that, as fast-moving middle-schoolers, these kids are driven by a heightened longing to impress friends. And that, they...