The Evolution of Popular and Cool

It's been a while I know, but this has been on my mind a lot lately; the difference between being popular and being cool.
Back in primary school, it was so small that they were rolled into one, it depended on whether you wore the right clothes, watched the right TV shows, and played the right sports. Of course having a school uniform took out the clothes factor a lot (as it did at secondary as well) which I am so grateful for (massive believer in school uniforms).
Then you get to secondary school, for me this was going from one class per year, to eleven so quite an increase. With 6 feeder primarys and people coming from elsewhere, the cool/popular groups combined. It was here I started to see the difference between popular and cool. You were able to be widely liked and known without having to be cool. The majority of people knew each other so the cool groups stayed pretty steady from primary to secondary.
6th form. 2000 people per year (no that's not a typo). With so many people coming from around the country and around the world, many of these groups were thrown up in the air. It was too big for there to be a cool group. It was very refreshing. Your "social standing" if you must call it that was determined by which seating area/canteen/cafe you went to at lunch time. There was no uniform but unlike all of the non-school-uniform days in primary and secondary, there was far less competing to wear the right clothes, and dress the right way. In a way, it was a bit like St Trinians with everyone finding a group of people similar to themselves, you had the hippies, goths, varleys, rugby lads, and us average joes.
And then you get to University, for the majority of people, they have come without their friend group from school. Being cool is pretty much irrelevant. It's all about knowing more people, and that comes under popularity. Joining random clubs and societies and putting yourself out there is the only way to do it, dressing in the right clothes and treating people in a way that makes you feel "cool" is going to get you no where. You need connections these days if you ever want to find a job, and Uni is such a great opportunity to do this.
I think in general, it comes down to this; Cool is dressing the right way, acting the right way (often frankly cruel), and keeping to a small group of people. Popular is being widely known, and generally well liked for who you are. I feel like you could write a whole psychology paper on this but I have enough work of my own I should be doing!
Popular or Cool, you decide; I definitely know which one I'm aiming to be
All the best,
Bea x

Bea is back

I have now returned from the land of revision! I am a human once more!
I hope that everyones exams went as well as they could, and that everyone gets the results they have worked so hard for!
Leaving college feels really weird, it's been a very fast two years but I've some of the best times of my life there, and met some amazing people. Leaving secondary school I felt kind of happy, but leaving college is sad and scary. Sad I won't see everyone, and scary that we're all going to be so far from each other. Oh, and the food is amazing and I will really miss the chicken, bacon and lettuce baguettes.
Waking up this morning and knowing I have no more revision is glorious. My wall has been relieved of formulae, equations and diagrams and looks like a wall again.
Top Tip: Be careful when taking blu-tack off of wall paper. lesson learnt
But now the question is, what do I do?
Getting home yesterday and going for a family hike was perfect and I can strongly recommend it. Even if it's just yourself or a few friends, pick a spot on the map and go explore. Getting away from wifi and the constant fear of what the world is going to do next is very refreshing.
I can't really not mention it, but I am strongly Pro-Europe. That's all I'm saying.
Today is my last big orchestra do, and will again be very emotional. I'm going to buy a notebook to make a written diary of this summer, in theory, I'll be starting uni exactly 3 months today.
That's seriously scary.
Along with documenting my time for these 3 months on here, it will be nice to have a solid copy of my thoughts to look back on. I'm also going to carry on my work on my holiday book, so will do a post with a photo in due course.

All the best for the future, onwards and upwards as they say!

Bea x