Being a ‘cool kid’ isn’t necessarily such a bad thing

There is that thing that happens when you’re in your early teens, the thing where people’s opinions, especially your friends’ matter a lot to you. It’s that thing where you do most of the stuff you do because your friends are doing it. The cooler, more educated people call it the bandwagon effect, while boring old counselors and senior women teachers give it the mind-numbingly mundane term “peer pressure”.It usually happens at that age where the number of questions you ask reduces greatly, but the questions you’re asking now are far more important and more difficult to answer. That age where you’re looking for an identity of your own, but you ironically try and find it in your friends by joining ”cliques”. This either means hanging out with other people who have the same interests as you do or people who are different from you and trying to adjust yourself to fit in.The latter sometimes occurs with those poor lost souls filled with self-loathing; those people trying to reinvent themselves. More commonly, it occurs with people who try and fit in with the ”cool kids”. Cool kids are found in every school worth going. Laws of society and community dictate that a power vacuum cannot exist permanently in any community. Because of this, schools always have those kids who consider themselves ”better” than the other kids. Better, richer, more important and cooler. Because they believe it, the other kids end up believing it as well and in due course want to join these crowds of cool kids.I’m not telling anyone to stage a coup to oust the cool kids from their perch because that never ends well. I’m just saying if you’re not already one of them, don’t try to join. Stay away from the spotlight because if you’re not used to it, it might just burn you instead. You’re better off being a misfit. In the words of Inspirational songstress Britt Nicole, don’t be afraid to stand out; that’s how the lost get found.