Morales 1

Mark Morales
Professor Glover
English 114B
2 March 2015
Long Term Effects of Adolescents Behavior
While reading the Complete Persepolis, the author, Marjane Satrapi, describes some of
the terrors humanity has faced within itself. In her story she shows what these events do to the
mind of a child, and later it shows how it made it difficult for her as teenager to fit in with others
of her age. In the beginning of the second part of the book, Marjane is enrolled in a new school
where the rules of socializing are different from what she knows. When I read these pages, and
saw the way they were illustrated, the only thing I could see in my head were glimpses from the
motion picture Mean Girls (2004), Starring Lindsay Lohan. While the time period and situation
of the enrollment were different from one another, those few pages were very similar. Both girls
chose an odd group to join, and had trouble with other groups that brought me to the idea that,
even though high school is only a small fraction of a persons life, the cliques these girls were
involved in set off a series of events that pointed their lives in the direction where they now are.
Cliques are a defining trial in a teenagers life, though many, including my own parents, insist
that high school has nothing to do with a the outcome of that teenagers life.
My first day of school was a blur, a stressful surreal blur. (Waters 1:31) in both stories
the first day of school is just rough having to adapt from completely different prior lifestyles.
Marjanes move took place during the 80s, she left her parents to live in Europe with her
mothers friend, and she actually ended up living in a boarding house run by nuns. Cady
(pronounced Katie) lived in Africa with her parents and was home schooled and never learned to

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socialize in an American school system. Her story takes place in a relatively modern era, early
2000s. Despite the differences in details from both Marjane and Cady stories, neither fit in and
were made fun of for their inurbane behavior and were forced comply with the rules of the
school.
There is no doubt that school is a place to learn, but what I think some people fail to see
is that its not just scholarly material that is learned in school, you also learn the rules of society;
It is a form of institutionalizing. There is lot of scientifically proven observations that cliques are
a natural form of hierarchy. The athletic and good looking are toward the top of the respected
and steps downs all the way to the bottom, the unattractive, un-athletic and socially awkward;
obviously there are always exceptions, and I honestly feel todays students have become more
understanding of those who may be different, unlike these stories.
Social hierarchy is not a new concept; this has been used for centuries by most
civilization in history, and is still used in todays society. So why would someone say that high
school cliques are not important, it runs on the same concepts as the society that they live in. that
is why the arguments for equality appear so much today. Equality is the people that have been
put down for centuries trying to level things out. Martin Luther king Jr., Caesar Chavez, Gandhi,
and so many more were all advocated in social equality. In a high schools scale, cliques is the
society and groups are either up or down on the scale. In class recently, we had two spokespeople from The Blues Project talk to the class about people who contemplate the idea of suicide
because of activities that deprive them of social acceptance. A lot of the people they presented on
were about younger students. All of us that had raised out hands when asked if we knew
someone who had some kind of self harming incident occurred sometime during high school.

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There are those who suffer from depression, or other mental illness, but some of those students
were put in that mind set but the people at school. This gives a huge support to the idea that
cliques have an enormous impact on the life of a teenager. In 2005 Nick Cannon was on
Nickelodeons kids Choice Awards, where he made a statement: you are who you hang out
with. This was deep for me, I have remembered that moment ever since, and I can hear him say
it in my head years later. This was a tool for the millions of views across American. Now, he may
not have thought this was about cliques, but I was. He was warning the youth of America that
your clique, or cliques, will give you a title that has effects on you that effect your out come later
in life. When I was in high school I was in the magnet program, this gave me a higher status; I
was playing sports, even higher; and I was doing real film work and competing in other
education competitions, this made me very well round in the eyes of my peers and superiors;
however I was socially awkward when I started high school, and I was really shy. I put myself in
a position that I knew would give me a positive connotation when I was referred to. Those of
friends that did not apply themselves as much, and fell in the wrong groups that never did work,
had problems with suicidal thoughts or home issues later.
The reason cliques are not a major talked about problem is because not all cliques are
bad, many of them are very healthy, professors and teacher have always told me to sit next to
people who pay attention and get good grades because You are who you hang out with. I feel
parents should find out what kind of people their children hang put with and help guide them to
prevent things like suicide, or mental scaring of never being accepted. I turned out okay, but I
had help from my teachers and but luck I started in the right cliques.

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Work Cited

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007.

Mean Girls. Dir. Mark S. Waters. Perf. Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, and
Tina Fey. Paramount, 2004. Lohan, Lindsay, perf. Mean Girls. Dir. Mark S.
Waters. Paramount, 2004

Simons-Morton, BG, AD Crump, DL Haynie, and KE Saylor. "Student-school

Bonding and Adolescent Problem Behavior." Health Education Research, 14.1
(1999): 99-107.