Ramblings: Who really has the power over school social status?

I don't know what general stereotype my group of friends came under when I was at high school. We seemed to range from arty to academic and everywhere in between. In fact, most of us seemed to fit into both of these categories. Most of us played music of some sort, and five of us got weekly lessons in school, but that wasn't totally exclusive either. I look at where we all are now, and out of the eight of us, one has a full time job, one is applying to go to college next year, two are studying art, one is studying divinity, one is studying law, and one is doing pharmacy in the same city as I'm doing pharmacology (albeit not in the same university, but who cares). Most of us haven't seen each other in over a year, and some of us have stayed close, while others of use have drifted apart a bit. The point is, we're all different people, interested in different stuff.
I guess in that sense, we didn't fit the stereotypical image of a school clique - we weren't science geeks, nor were we particularly any other kind of clique - but nevertheless, we had our own space for lunch, we spent most of our time outside classes together, and we were just generally a well-established group at school by the time we had been there a couple of years together. We didn't consider ourselves popular, but that's just it - the people who considered themselves popular in my school very often weren't. The people who were considered popular by others rarely if ever actually believed themselves to be popular.
That's one thing about all the high-school based movies and shows that never fitted my experience of secondary school. In my experience, people who acted entitled, as they often do in these shows, never actually stayed popular very long, if they ever got there in the first place. School really isn't like how it is portrayed in the movies and tv-shows. Because lets face it, no-one likes being talked down to, especially not teenagers who are trying to break their own way into the adult world, not even by their peers. And if people don't like you, it's very difficult to claim that you're popular, as much as people may try.
Teachers can, to an extent, prevent the extreme side of cliques happening, where bullying occurs. And this is a good thing. It prevents a great deal of hurt on all sides. But as much as these groups might like to think that they are popular throughout the school, they rarely get the chance even amongst their peers.
I don't think anyone really believes that teachers can make all that much difference to the social happenings in school. That lies with the pupils themselves. I think the larger that schools get, the less difference certain groups of people can make over the whole school anyway. Even in my high-school, of a little over a thousand people, most groups of people had little effect on those outside their own year, or a little to either side, with the exception of the head-boy and girl who, even then, rarely knew very many of those they stood for outside of the senior years.
Within the year though, its true that people do form groups, but you could never never expect them not to - people have a tendency to make friends with certain kinds of people, and they tend to stay together throughout their time in school, perhaps with someone occasionally drifting away or working their way into a new group, but for the most part, they stay the same. That's just the way of friendship. Even the most popular people likely have a smaller group of close friends around them.
But what makes popularity? Having been through the process of starting school, and again at starting uni, I believe that there are three fundamental things which contribute to how easily people make friends at the start of their time somewhere. Most people only get this chance once in secondary school - when they start their first year, because after the initial impression, changes in peoples beliefs about you happen more slowly - but some get this chance a few times over, if they happen to move schools.
Anyway, for me, these things are:

• The willingness to speak to people you don't know, no matter how shy or worried you are about what they will think. It's important to know that this has nothing to do with being an introvert or an extrovert. I am, fundamentally, an introvert, even though I speak to people easily enough, and because of misconceptions about introverts, people may think I'm an extrovert. (More on that in "Ramblings: introvert vs. extrovert", which I'll hopefully have up shortly after this.)


• Confidence in yourself, the way you think, what you do, and who you fundamentally are, and,
• Kindness

I don't think any person can become truly popular without at least the majority of people seeing these traits.

I never cared about being popular, but what I did worry about was feeling alone. What was lacking for me in high school was both a willingness to speak to people and confidence in myself. What was lacking for the start of my university life, once I had found a willingness to speak, was confidence in myself. Indeed, until a few months ago, while I was confident enough in myself to make an impression, a part of the person people saw when they looked at me as was not the same person I actually was. In the last few months I have realised that was because I wasn't so much lying to other people as lying to myself. Now, I have realised myself. I know who I am, and what I stand for, but it may take a while longer before my fellow students and OTC-ers see that I am not that person both they, and I, thought I was. And true it hurts that trying to change that opinion is not having the desired effect. I guess it is difficult to change a first impression. It only hurts when that first impression is already there, and wrong, before I meet them because of gossip, and a reputation I can't seem to quench or shake off.
Now, I have realised that I don't care whether or not people like the person they see in front of them, because that person in front of them is now, perhaps for the first time, truly me. Nobody can change who I am, and I am worth the same as everybody else in this world. I will always have people who care about me. It took losing two people very, very close to me, and almost losing a third to make me realise that. There are so many people in this world who wish me well, as I do them. And knowing that means that I can be myself in this world without worrying about being alone, and so people can see the real "me". If I speak to someone new, and they don't like me, then it doesn't matter. We can both go our separate ways without grief over something lost that was never actually found.