I’ve only went to one of my high school reunions. It was the five year one right after college, and honestly, it did for me about the same thing high school had — not a whole hell of a lot. It was fine seeing some folks I hadn’t seen for a few years, but there was already a sort of gap there. It was becoming clear that about the only thing many of us had in common was based on a map, not on a mindset. The whole thing seemed like a waste of time. Nobody had really changed that much at that point anyway.
The real question is whether or not they would ever change all that much.
If you go by a new survey, it turns out they probably still haven’t changed all that much. CareerBuilder.com asked 6,000 people about their particular high school stereotypes and then compared these with the current job the participants held now. It’s actually pretty interesting. The stereotypes you could choose from were student government, athlete, geek, honor society, cheerleader, drama club, teacher’s pet, or class clown.
Personally, that list was sort of tough for me to pick from. If they had a category that included such things as getting decent grades and getting in trouble, drinking too much and being a decent athlete, screwing around a lot and being on student council, it would have been much easier to choose. I suppose they didn’t want to take the time to add a “general dickaround” category. Because of this, I suppose I’m forced to look closer at everyone else.
If you look at the category of job level, cheerleaders were the most likely to hold a vice president job. That makes some sense to me. I was never exactly clear what the hell a vice president really does and the cheerleaders fell into that same void. I mean, I played sports and I never once gave a damn whether or not there were a group of idiots cheering me on. Sure, they were fine to look at and all, but as far as them having some sort of meaningful job, I just never saw it. I wasn’t a big fan of perky back them and I suppose I haven’t changed much in that regard either.
Teacher’s pets and student government types were likely to be directors or managers of some sort. I guess it’s really hard to stop kissing ass once you’ve got such a good start. Honor society, geeks, and athletes mostly hold technical and professional positions. That’s just another way of saying they’re still about the only people from high school you’d really want to hang out with much.
The industries they’re in are much more interesting. Drama club and honor society members appear to be drawn to the healthcare industry. That makes sense. The drama clubbers can act like they care about the patient and the honor society may be smart enough to actually fix them. Many student government kids were in education. Cheerleaders were in travel and insurance. Geeks were in engineering and retail, while most teacher’s pets were in banking and construction. Athletes and class clowns were drawn to transportation and manufacturing.
One thing that makes me happy is that many teacher’s pets earned far less than the other stereotypes. That’s too bad. It makes sense if you think about it though. They were somewhat successful in a closed environment where ass kissing was enough to fool one or two teachers. The real world doesn’t have as much time for the ass kissing when you compare it to actually getting some work done. It a shame they still aren’t getting beat up every day at lunch, but a lesser salary seems like a small amount of justice.
The job satisfaction stats were pretty unsurprising. Seventy six percent of the cheerleaders were happy in their jobs. No freaking way! Thanks for that, DJ Obvious. From what I remember they were just as happy whether we won or lost a game, so it makes perfect sense that they also enjoy working, no matter what their career is. Strangely, the teacher’s pets were even happier than the cheerleaders with eighty one percent of them reporting happiness. Geez, I must be a real rat bastard, not wanting certain people to be happy.
Geeks and class clowns were the least satisfied with their jobs. I can only assume that many of the geeks are still simply unhappy with themselves and their career has decided to follow suit. C’mon, get a little sunlight every so often and things might seem a little better.
The class clowns are probably just disappointed that their absolute wackiness doesn’t translate quite as well into the world of adulthood. All those guys seemed to lack a subtlety I thought they would need down the road. I guess I was correct.
Basically, I suppose this survey just confirmed what we already knew. People don’t change all that much after high school. Whatever personality made you a cheerleader or a geek is probably the same personality that will guide you into a career. It’s nice to think we all change as we grow up, but the odds of that happening are far less than we think. That’s fine with me. At least now I don’t have to worry about missing any big surprises at those reunions I’ll never go to.
