Of superficiality, conformity and weirdness

Someone once commented that people from single-gender schools are full of superficiality - I beg to differ. I did seem to see a lot of it in one of the better classes, I guess, where the people were used to that kind of pressure - the disgusting atmosphere I feel I'm in now. Where you're always watching your back and afraid of bitching, feeling like you have to give in to peer pressure, feeling like you can't be who you would like to be because you'll be talked about and deemed "weird" and thus become friendless. I hate it and that's also why I was quite glad I didn't decide to opt into that class.

Anyway, I know it's not a single-gender thing. Sorry, person-who-said-this, but Crescent Girls' School was the best experience ever even though it was a considerable lot of shit for me. It was shitty a lot but the one thing I loved about it was the warmth and genuineness of the girls there. Complete strangers could laugh insanely and joke about common topics (usually the teachers). Everyone was friendly and mostly innocent - if one person didn't like another, we'd usually tell that person, trash it out. It was good. And there were people we could really count on. There were people whom you knew would be there to do anything they could to make you feel better (like sit with you for an hour, or skip lunch / sacrifice fifteen minutes of having fun with her friends to share her feelings with you even though she isn't close to you, or send you "virtual cookies and a hug") and you knew they meant everything they said and that they genuinely cared.

Or maybe 4S2A'09 just rocks. (:

But yeah, I don't think it's a single-gender school thing because a lot of us feel the most attached to our single-gender secondary schools. It's because when there isn't anyone of the opposite gender around, you feel free to do what you want to do without having to care at all about anything or anyone. Things like screaming your head off to support your friends, changing openly, singing like a maniac at the top of your voice, and this:

I've also got a lot of other pictures of fellow Crescentians sitting in unglam, uncompromising positions and looking very lesbian with each other (unconsciously). Oh, the days where we could sit like ah bengs and not give a care.

I think superficiality isn't a single-gender school thing but an elite thing. I don't know why but most of the people I perceive to be elites (or see themselves as elites) tend to complicate things a lot, and they're mostly the ones who live in that bubble of gossip and backstabbing and wariness, that choking pressure. I mean, "She told me they can sit in the library for four hours and bitch about her the whole time, because she's one who likes to bitch about others as well"?!?!?! Come on, why complicate things?

You could choose to view everything simply and have a positive and understanding view about everybody, like me.

"Weird" is the reason kids get beaten up at playgrounds in America. I never heard anyone use the word "weird" on anyone until I came to ACJC. And now I suddenly hear it all the time. "Who wants to hang out with him, he's so weird"

Weirdly enough, it's these people I feel compelled to hang out with, even if they wouldn't make the perfect friends and, yes, may seem queer at times. I'm not saying Cuixiao's weird but I know she would be seen as the epitome of weird people had she come to AC, and I know a lot of people wouldn't hang out / be anywhere near her. But she was my best friend in Crescent and she's still a great friend.

It's a harsh world out here.