We’re are you popular at school?

No, I was not popular with either teachers or other pupils, and I was bullied. It was an awful situation which scarred me alot. I have been bullied in the workplace too which I think stems from school days. Sometimes you have victim on your forehead! I managed to obtain some qualifications but I have always had problems fitting in.

I was very quiet at School but I did have a few close friends and got on well with everyone else. I didn't have any problems with anyone, but as I didn't put myself forward for anything I would not have expected to be at the top of the popularity charts.

Maggiemaybe

^Judging a child of 11 on one mornings test was so unfair!!! The 11+ examination had ruined many lives.^

Some recent posts on my Facebook Old Girls' group reminded me that there were 12+, 13+ and 14+ exams for entry to my grammar school. I wonder how many educational authorities offered these? DH is pretty certain that the 11+ was your only chance to get into grammar school in his area. My school had a designated form in each year for the girls who joined us later - I'm assuming they had different lessons to catch them up with the curriculum.

To answer the question, I'd say I was one of the popular ones at my small primary school, but tootled along with my own friends, like Niobe, at secondary level, and was very happy with that. I was never going to be head girl!

There is another similar thread today about failing the 11+. You may read that but am repeating some of it here. Failing certainly didn't ruin my life - the opposite I think. I felt more comfortable at the Secondary Modern. I had good friends and presumably was popular as for some reason I became Head Girl and believe pupils had a vote in that too. I've always felt comfortable in the company of both men and women and think going to a mixed school helped that.

I failed my 11+ as I was ill for one of the tests (Measles or one of the other things we caught as a kid).
I therefore went to Joseph Rowntree Secondary Modern School - mixed pupils and it was brilliant, as were the teachers. Our year was the first to do a foreign language - French - and our teacher was a Professor from York University who took us to the "Language Lab" at York University every week. At 12 we did a 6 week exchange visit, living with a family and going to school with them. Did another one couple of years later.
The reason I stress this is I then did a 13+ and although I passed there wasn't a place at one of the Grammar Schools (in hindsight thank God for that.) For A levels I had to go to a Girls Grammar School and I hated it. You were looked down on by some pupils as you had "only" been to a Secondary Modern and the method of teaching was totally alien to me. After being top of the class most years in French I only just passed my A level because of the way it was taught. Some pupils used to say strange things like "how did you work with boys there" ?? often wondered how they turned out.
Despite "only" going to a Secondary Modern I became a Chartered Librarian and my last job before retiring was Managing a Schools Library Service for 4 authorities - my sister who also went to the same Sec Mod was a Solicitor.
On a passing note my friend passed her 11 + and went to Grammar and always felt she was behind.

I was small quiet and useless at sports. Not popular, didn't have friends and couldn't wait to leave . I hated school.

I loved school, fortunately. It would have been awful if I hadn't because we were out in the sticks so it was that one or none. Don't think I was particularly unpopular, had a daft nickname which had followed me from Primary School so I was probably seen as a bit of a comedian. Think that's how lots of people get through. So glad to miss the 11-plus, my brother did it and he was a nervous wreck. It was a horrible pressure on children that age, but it was stopped just in time for me.

I was a terrible swot, a pedant, a rules fanatic and very uncool until the 6th form when I excelled in school plays and acquired a boyfriend with an MG. I was never very popular but I wasn’t a sneak and I think I was liked by my classmates, who I remember very fondly. We were all trying to work out who we were, at different speeds…

I was not in the popular group of people but I had a few good friends at school and we did our own thing

I went to a girls' grammar school after passing the 11plus. From the start I was made fun of for being overweight and only had one real friend who was similar. Being bright and doing well didn't help either. The popular girls were the ones who made fun of others and bragged about their exploits outside of school. The effects of this are still with me, making me feel inferior, and even though the excess weight has gone I still see myself as fat.

Exactly the se for me, I used to get ridiculed for being overweight which made me unpopular, it was an unhappy time.

No. I had a small group of friends, I suppose we were all unpopular! I met a boy from my year in a pub when I was at university and said hello to him, he actually said to me for some reason ‘You weren’t exactly popular at school, we’re you?’ (I guess he felt he had been!) That haunted me for many years, as I hadn’t realised that was how others saw me - and also because it felt really cruel, almost as if he was scared of being seen talking to me!

Somewhere in the middle I think.
I do know that I was relieved when I left.
Many years later (I am a therapeutic counsellor) my supervisor did a psychological test with me where he read out certain words and I wrote them in the colour I felt was appropriate to the word.
When he looked at the results the first thing he said was you were not particularly happy at school were you?
I had not given it much thought as I am a sort of move on and not dwell too much on the past kind of person.
I did instantly connect with his words though. I had used grey as the colour for any word related to school. I think it was the peer pressure to fit in. I don't like having to be told what I can or cannot do. Oddly years later,for a number of years I worked in many schools as a peripatetic counsellor with students from 4 years to 18 years and thoroughly enjoyed it.
As I have got older I have found in joining various interest groups that the group dynamic is very much like being at school. The same manipulation, bullying and need to control
comes out in people and the other side where people become victimised, are placatory and almost frightened of their own shadow. At least as grown ups we can decide to walk away.

No, I wasn’t popular. I was bullied by my teacher for the whole of my last year at junior school, and it left me feeling that everybody thought I was stupid. They probably didn’t think that, but I carried those feelings with me until about 5 years ago. Even as an adult I thought that if people were kind to me it was because they felt sorry for me. Then I found a good counsellor and began to realise that my friends actually liked me! So I now have a few real friends who I trust.

Anyway, back to school. My sister is one year older than me and very clever. I had a few high school teachers who would say things like “I’d expect A’s sister to do better than that”, which was awful and made me give up and not work. So, not popular with the children because I couldn’t trust them, and not popular with the teachers because I wasn’t my sister. Such fun! Only my English teacher liked me and so I worked hard in his classes.

Don’t remember being one or the other, just one of the kids.
I had a patch over one lazy eye for a time, which led to Long John Silver jokes, but nothing too hurtful.
I could draw and drew caricatures of teachers which went down well and being rather studious, I could help out if someone was stuck (apart from maths).

The patch was over the good eye!
Some teachers were bullies now I come to think of it.
One music master disliked me intensely (I could sing but he never chose me for solos despite the clamour from other kids and often threw chalk at me)
Another said to me scathingly after I sang a solo at a school concert ‘Who do you think you are?”??
So no encouragement there.

My goodness! some of these lads had the gift of the gab didn’t they Kerenhappuch not …. now where is that sarcasm emoji ? Simply charm personified they were

I could have written so many of these posts myself. I certainly wasn't popular; bullied at school, disliked by the teachers, and emotionally abused at home. I couldn't win on any level, and yes, it still affects me today, I still have nightmares and flashbacks.

What surprises me most is that people can't understand why I choose to be a loner and have as little to do with the human race as possible.

Sadly, I was always an outsider, and view schooldays as the most unhappy period of my life! Brought up by my Grandparents, I spoke well and loved to learn, characteristics which made me unpopular with everyone except most of the teachers (which didn't help)! I found it difficult to make friends, and still do.
My grandmother moved a lot, visiting her
seven children, so I was obliged to go to a number of schools. I was almost always the "new girl" who often arrived mid-term. I was bullied regularly and was happy to leave school.

Kartush

I was not in the popular group of people but I had a few good friends at school and we did our own thing

Kartush , your post sums it up for me too.
I was quite happy at school, but popular -that’s something else.
Coming across one of the bullies crying with her mates in Y8 put a stop to the bullying. They begged me not to tell. I didn’t tell them I wouldn’t have told anyone anyway but they left me and my friends alone after that.
Uni was OK too but I never really wanted to be part of the in crowd.
Your last paragraph kwest is so accurate about some of the groups I belong to. Just like school!

I had loads of friends at school, but got bullied by others as I was, well still am, a ginger. It was so bad I begged my mum to dye my hair, now I'm proud of it. A couple of teachers weren't very nice, my Home Economics teacher was horrible to me. Her face was a picture the day I went to get my exam results and I got my O level and her teachers pets had failed, priceless.

I thought I was, but when I went to a reunion a couple of decades later, hardly anyone remembered me!

i was bullied from 1st year to 4th year, not physical but words hurt more, i met one of the girls about 10 years ago when i was on a bus taking me back to the place i grew up, she was sitting behind me and tapped me on the shoulder a few stops before she was getting off the bus, she said i know you from school, i said in a loud voice...yes you do...you bullied me all the way through school, probably should not have done that but then again,,,,i had one good friend, all the brainy kids sat at the front i was often at the back, i learned years later that i might not have got an A in science, history and geography but i do have a lot of skills like being a people person, organising and sorting problems while the brainiacs scratch there heads...lol

I wasn’t ‘popular’ or unpopular ....there was 4 of us that hung out together .... me ,Pam, Janet and Anne , we’d knock for each other, walk home together as we all lived between three streets. We went through whole of secondary
school...together , three of us ‘dragging ‘ one along with us as we were all in top stream but one of us struggled slightly with the work. She was also useless at PE as well but we didn’t care..... we were mates! Teachers mostly were nice and didn’t seem to have favourites..... although the pretty girls were obviously more popular with the boys. Luckily us 4 were neither pretty nor ‘duds’. We were just four girls enjoying each other’s company. I remember school days quite fondly !

No I wasn't and the scars took many years to fade. I wish I could tell my younger self not to care, as things do improve with age. Teenage girls can be very cruel and I often wonder what happened to those popular but unkind girls.

I too attended a secondy modern school - the 11+ was the most unjust method of assessment. My sister and I both 'failed'. Brother went to Grammer school. My sister had a senior position as a special needs teacher , I taught adults with special needs. Took my degree in Manchester as a mature student and gained a first

This sounds like a rerun of my life! I attended Manchester Uni as a mature student, got a 1st in psychology then went on to do a masters and a doctorate. I became an academic and never went back to my original job of librarian.

I was not popular in school as I was a swot and good at all the academic subjects. However I had my own close circle of friends who were also academic like me. We all (our gang) hated sport, cookery and needlework. All the "girly" type subjects. I wanted to do woodwork and metalwork but it wasnt allowed back then.

All the popular girls were sporty. They were also from better off backgrounds so I did not have the right clothes to be invited to their parties.

Never thought much about it, small class numbers at local grammar school so we all seemed to get on together, don't remember being bullied or bullying anyone. Good at sports so very popular when it came to being picked for teams.